Hello Fresh

Got a coupon from them for their delivery meal service. I'd heard good things about their meals and the price was right so my friend who's staying with me and I split three meals. The bummer is that all meals are servings of two so we each got one for ourselves and one to split. I got Spicy Hoisin shrimp with green beans and ginger rice, he got crispy parm chicken with broccoli and lemon carrots and we will split a spicy burrito bowl with Poblano, Crema, Salsa & Cilantro Lime Rice. For just over thirty bucks, seems cool to try.

It would have been nice to get three apiece, but oh well. There's a nice selection, but it's not too extensive in the meat and veggies aisle but there are other aisles, fish, veggie, etc. The bummer about that is you have to choose a type before you pay for it so you are stuck in that category, although I may have missed a way to switch categories at the end.

It'll be next week before the first box arrives so I'll let you know what the deal is after that.

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

We did the Hello Fresh thing for a while, mainly to have some dinners on hand for after work without shopping. The quality of the ingredients was pretty great (surprisingly), but the instructions they have completely BLOW! (So, watch out for this).

The instructions would leave things out completely or include them as an afterthought when it was too late to do anything about it, kind of like..."Oh by the way, you needed to add this ingredient between steps 2 and 3."... (when you were already on step 14).

They may have improved by now, but when we were doing it probably 70% of the instructions were wrong, or missing steps.

The other thing to know about Hello Fresh is the prep time for the meals is not quick. Some of the menus take a fair amount of time to prep and cook, so it's not something you can quickly slam together and eat. And, the way they ship stuff there's a lot of prep (cutting, chopping, grating, mincing, etc.).

The meals once prepared (correctly) were actually pretty tasty which was nice, and the portion size was decent also. Just the preparation and cooking instructions left a lot to be desired. Fortunately, my wife was pretty sharp at spotting some of the omissions and errors before they became a problem, but not even she could catch all of them.

Just FYI. Hope this helps.

Ooh saucy !! Hello to you t.. wait..

I have no idea what Hello Fresh is, but instantly this played in my mind



A good full belly, or a good belly laff, both are fulfilling to me

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

Nice!

One of the absolute BEST tasting Steaks Ive ever had in my life came from a meat delivery service.
Omaha Steaks.
There hasn't been anything delivered to my door that made me think, "Well that could had been better."
Everything so far is great.

I've thought about trying it a bit, but if what you're saying is true about the directions then it probably wouldn't be great. Husband has a way of missing things on recipes even when the instructions are in order and it's right there.

As for mail order food, most food delivery services that have managed to be around for a while will tend to do a pretty good job because it's how they make things happen. If they didn't deliver at least a decent product, you wouldn't see them last very long.

I was disappointed with every single meal that was delivered. But I have crazy high standards.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Even if the directions were in order and clear, if I have to do a lot of prep...
Seems the only good thing is having a meal plan delivered instead of shopping....you just have everything in one shipment.

It would be a great thing if you lived in an area that did not have a lot of good grocers and good eateries.

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

The Hello Fresh thing doesn't really have a "meal plan" per-se, you basically select the meals you want to eat and then they send them to you on a weekly basis. When we did it, the meals were assembled in groups, so you basically said you wanted Group A, B or C, etc. Each of the groups had a different selection of meals. You didn't actually pick out individual meals for each day (again, when we did it). The groups changed, on a monthly basis as I recall. So, for example, you'd get an order form which said for the coming week you could order Group A, B or C, and this would go on for the month. Then, the groups would change so the next month you might have the option of ordering Group B, L and X. and the next month you'd have the option of Group H, F or Q for the week. Each group was for one week, and I think a 'week' was 4-5 days (not 7). Some repeated and some were new. I suspect they do this to keep their waste down (and their profits up).

We did the Hello Fresh thing about 3 years ago, so things may have changed some since then, especially with so many other sellers in the market now. Back then there were only about 2-3, now there's about 40-50 doing it.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

It works best if you are in a rural local. It would be a treasure box in the last house house I was in up in them hills but living in Manhattan it was a bore.

a reply to: TheAlleghenyGentleman

Yeah.
Pretty much what I was thinking.

Displacements there is no such thing as one day delivery on Amazon. Or even two day lolol

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Thanks. Having screwed up recipes in the past where I didn't read them all the way through I tend to be a bit anal these days. Crikey, all it takes is five minutes to read and think out a recipe. I don't imagine it being too hard, both of us have spent many years in commercial kitchens.

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

Well there you go - you've spent time in commercial kitchens and have experience. Husband and I are self-taught. He's coming from a lab background and cooking is the hobby to make up for no longer being able to be in the lab. So where he will do his due diligence on this or that technique like he would running a piece of equipment, he doesn't always get the sequence of a recipe down.

For people who don't do a lot of cooking or who have little training or practice at it, weak directions would potentially be a deal breaker especially with stuff they aren't familiar with.

Ok, here's the scoop.

It ain't bad. Some of the portions are a little off, like the tiny cloves of garlic but the recipes are well laid out with nice pics. You do need some kitchen tools, like a zester even though I have all kinds of graters, which I don't have so missed that part of the recipe. Even with a well laid out recipe I'm always doctoring stuff, a little garlic here, some red pepper flakes there, just have to do something to kick it up a notch.

Overall, the ingredients are really good, fresh, it comes in a totally recyclable package, even the cooling pads. The recipes are kinda wild and weird, the panko breaded chicken was really cool and the hoisin shrimp was also nice.

Got another pack of three because I didn't cancel it fast enough but what the heck. Had spaghetti bolognese tonight, wasn't bad but not the way I would have made it. They have different visions of what I would think the dish should be but that's not a bad thing. I like different. You never know what you might get and sometimes it's really good.

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

Our zester got lost before we did the HK thing. The wife said she needed her zester and couldn't find it, so I offered up my belt sander as a sub.

We have a zester now.

Hey, it woulda' worked great!!

"Hold onto that orange tight, hon. I'm gonna' zest the S# outta' that bad boy!!!!"