Meal Kits

TheVoice said:
Not sure what you mean, I can't survive solely off what comes in the Hello Fresh box so obviously I buy other things as well. I'm not wasting anything.
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The general implication has been that this is exactly what people do, with the benefits being that they don't have to go to the supermarket themselves, or have to come up with recipe ingredients lists while someone else picks the list from the piles of stuff that other randoms have touched.
 
Raikiri said:
I don't intend to continue or try any others, although with the introductory offers they actually work out pretty cheap.

It was purely so I could actually try them if I'm going to give an opinion on something, it's only fair :)
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Okay well, please do me a favour - once your HelloFresh is over - try out Mindful Chef. There is a big discount on the first two boxes and it certainly backs up the story much better than HelloFresh.

Please? :)
 
dLockers said:
Okay well, please do me a favour - once your HelloFresh is over - try out Mindful Chef. There is a big discount on the first two boxes and it certainly backs up the story much better than HelloFresh.

Please? :)
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I've just had a look and whilst I must admit, the recipes do look MUCH better and I'm sure the ingredients are too... even with the discount it comes to £49 for 5 dinners for 1 person.

That's obscenely expensive @ £10 per meal. I could eat steak, seabass, prawns etc. everyday for less than half that shopping for myself. Granted doing the same for two is cheaper £6.60 per meal but even then, it's on the pricey side.
 
Raikiri said:
I've just had a look and whilst I must admit, the recipes do look MUCH better and I'm sure the ingredients are too... even with the discount it comes to £49 for 5 dinners for 1 person.

That's obscenely expensive @ £10 per meal. I could eat steak, seabass, prawns etc. everyday for less than half that shopping for myself. Granted doing the same for two is cheaper £6.60 per meal but even then, it's on the pricey side.
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Ah yeah, I have only ever done it across 2 people. For 1 it is obscenely expensive.
 
ttaskmaster said:
The general implication has been that this is exactly what people do, with the benefits being that they don't have to go to the supermarket themselves, or have to come up with recipe ingredients lists while someone else picks the list from the piles of stuff that other randoms have touched.
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I'm not sure it is. Perhaps some do but I get 5 recipes in a box every two weeks, which was essentially the default two-person option. That's at least 10 meals as I can sometimes get 3 decent portions from some of them, which leaves me with other days to make something myself that I want instead, get a takeaway or take something out the freezer.
 
TheVoice said:
I'm not sure it is. Perhaps some do but I get 5 recipes in a box every two weeks, which was essentially the default two-person option. That's at least 10 meals as I can sometimes get 3 decent portions from some of them, which leaves me with other days to make something myself that I want instead, get a takeaway or take something out the freezer.
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So... you still have to cook... and you still have to plan other meals, and go get the ingredients in the relevant quantities from the random-laden supermarket, in effect admitting two sources of Covid exposure into your life instead of just the one.... but with the meal kits you also have the insult of paying lots of money for the priviledge.....?

Serious question - Where is the convenience/benefit in all this?
When we did ours, it was (supposed to be) all about finding the best quality Free Range Organic Free Trade ingredients.
 
ttaskmaster said:
So... you still have to cook... and you still have to plan other meals...
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It gives me the option to get a takeaway occasionally or have something I wouldn't get from Hello Fresh. Last night I had a steak pie with some veg and beer-battered chips.

ttaskmaster said:
...and go get the ingredients in the relevant quantities from the random-laden supermarket, in effect admitting two sources of Covid exposure into your life instead of just the one....
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That doesn't make any sense. I'd be going to the shops anyway for stuff I don't get in the box, only now I need to go far less often. You can't realistically survive solely from a Hello Fresh delivery, you do understand that, right?

ttaskmaster said:
Serious question - Where is the convenience/benefit in all this?
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I wasn't particularly imaginative when it came to cooking, I'd make the same few things myself from scratch or buy stuff I could do in the oven, microwave rice etc. Hello Fresh has forced me out of that habit, taught me a bit about methods, ingredients etc and broken my habits of buying and eating the same stuff a lot of the time. Yes, there would have been other ways to do it but as an intermediate step (I'm not planning on getting Hello Fresh deliveries for the rest of my life) it's worked well.
 
TheVoice said:
That doesn't make any sense. I'd be going to the shops anyway for stuff I don't get in the box, only now I need to go far less often. You can't realistically survive solely from a Hello Fresh delivery, you do understand that, right?
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Someone else brought that up earlier in the thread as the main convenience, though.
I do know exactly what they're for and how they're intended to be used, but that's not how they're being presented here...

TheVoice said:
I wasn't particularly imaginative when it came to cooking, I'd make the same few things myself from scratch or buy stuff I could do in the oven, microwave rice etc.
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Is there anything wrong with that? So long as it's healthy, you're getting the exact quantities of all the nutrients you require, and are watching your calorie in-out ratio, does it really matter?
Many people live like that, especially those with specific fitness, sporting or body conditioning goals. Bonus points if you actually like the food.
There's also the Huel™ lot, but they're just weird.

TheVoice said:
Hello Fresh has forced me out of that habit, taught me a bit about methods, ingredients etc and broken my habits of buying and eating the same stuff a lot of the time.
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I'm glad for you. Can't say the same myself.
But again, this thread is about how easy and convenient these things are compared to normal shopping, versus the prices paid and limitations resulting.

It's like having a load of overpriced LEGO™, but only making the one thing in the instructions...
 
Raikiri said:
I actually signed up for a week of Hello Fresh
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You didn't report back ? you survived - braver than me

This reminded me of the thread -
A customer was taken aback to discover a Coke bottle full of urine with his Hello Fresh box.

Boxing writer Oliver McManus was expecting the usual set of meal ingredients and recipe cards.

But to his surprise, along with the hoisin beef and yoghurt spiced chicken, there was also ‘someone’s bottled up ****’.
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I love Gousto, get it every week. It's not nearly expensive enough for the cost to outweigh the benefits of convenience, variety and ease of use.
 
I tried hellofresh for a while like a month and tbh the recipes were far better than what I thought they would be.

We have however decided now just to steal their recipes and buy the stuff ourselves.

You don't need to be an active member to see what they have and how to make it.

I gave a few free boxes away to mates and they actually kept it going after the free box because they really enjoyed the meals.

I'd say that the actual quality is much better than what most people could normally cook themselves and a lot better than just randomly Googled recipes.

I follow chefs on YouTube but they focus on specific cuisines.

I'd say that if you buy these meal kits delivered to your door your probably getting far better dinners than the majority of folk are. That to me is a good thing.

Some people don't care about the cost. They aren't that great at cooking or prepping so this works for them.

It works for some and doesn't work for others. I personally don't find any issues with them.

It's not cheap but the quality is pretty much what you would get in a decent restaurant. So it's much cheaper than eating out in said restaurant 4 times a week.
 
Been using gousto for a few years now, get it nearly every week.

Sure it's a little more expensive than buying from a supermarket - but having to sit down and try plan meals each week was taking me ages. Prefer getting a choice from gousto and picking from there.

We just get 4 meals a week.

The packaging has got loads better recently.
 
dLockers said:
I should probably get off this 'crack' though and just do a normal shop. But the easiness of it is totally undeniable in a really busy house.

Thoughts?
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Did you ever get off the recipe box crack? Did you end up trying any of the 'click to add ingredients' services from supermarkets?
 
I like Gousto, the recipes are a lot more interesting than Hello Fresh and you get more variety per week.

HF was also getting really bad for missing/poor quality/damaged ingredients. I didn't pay full price for a box for months because they kept crediting me for all the issues but eventually I had enough, the entire point is you get everything you need.
 
Gousto is also great as everything is recyclable. HF you end up loads of unrecyclable insulation waste. There are only so many plant pots that need insulating (their guidance to re-use it).
 
I'd like to give Gousto another go, I remember their recipes being much more varied and really nice.

Hellofresh email me all the time with that 40% off first 2 boxes etc, and even rang me up the other day.

Are Gousto not a pro-active in deals like HF?
 
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