Moving in with my fiancé last year meant sharing meals with a new person in my life: my future husband! This also meant that not only did I have to start thinking about what someone besides myself might want to eat for dinner, but that if I wanted to be the one who was continuing to plan the meals, then I had some work to do.
During lockdown in March, April, and May of 2020, my mom and I bought a subscription to the meal prep service, Hello Fresh. It gave us peace of mind knowing that meals would be delivered with complete, healthy (Except when we chose the cheeseburger meals) in a box every week without the need to go to the grocery store.
The 2 person, 3 meal package lasted us the entire week, with just the one off occasion where we would need to buy a meal to supplement the box from one of our favorite local spots. We always had leftovers from the meals that I would eat for breakfast or bring to lunch at work the following day. It was the best system! I also felt like I learned a lot about cooking by making the meals: what spices to use, how to properly season meats, and how long to cook things for.
Based off my positive experience with hellofresh the first time around, I decided to re-order it when I was looking for a meal subscription option for my fiancé and I. We also picked the three-meal a week plan and would vary up our choices based on what looked best each week.
After about 6 months of this, supply chain issues reached the hellofresh company, and we started having issues getting our meals delivered on the day they were promised. After two weeks of not getting our items, I decided to see the delay as an opportunity to try out a new service, and that was when Home Chef entered the mix.
If I’m being honest, I will tell you that the only reason I even considered ordering Home Chef was because of all the influencers I had seen ordering it. I felt like there had to be something good about it if that many people were willing to give it a shot!
Now that I’ve tried both for at least 1 month each, I wanted to give my honest opinion about the two choices (among many!) for anyone else out there who is trying to decide between these two popular services.
Hello Fresh
Pros:
I love the freshness that hello fresh offers, lol, no pun intended. But seriously, every meal I’ve ever made with Hello Fresh tastes just that- fresh! They also offer meals with variety that also taste delicious! Now, I will admit that we didn’t always choose the most healthy options, so I can’t vouch for the nutrition, but all of the meals were sooo good! Honestly, it was rare that we would have a Hello Fresh meal that we didn’t like. Between the two years that my mom and I used them and my finance and I ordered it, there were probably only 5 meals that we truly didn’t like. The recurring theme with the choices we didn’t love was usually that they involved some sort of bread or pizza crust item. I think something must happen with the bread during transport to make it stale, who knows, but the one item I would not recommend is anything that has a bread base.
Cons:
Some of the meals seem to take foreverrrrr to make. Maybe I chose then items that had extra prep time, but so many of the meals took me close to an hour to concoct. Between he dicing and peeling and prepping, I was lucky if dinner was ready in an hour from starting. By the end of my time with the service, I found myself skipping steps to save on time. Who really needs the peel of a lemon in an entree anyway?
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Also, as mentioned above, the entire reason we stopped using them was due to shipping issues they were having. Given the pandemic, I normally wouldn’t even mention this, but it happened 3 weeks in a row, and each week HelloFresh would promise us that it wouldn’t happen again. Even though we were refunded and given discounts on future orders, the headache and lack of consistent planning that resulted because of the issues was enough to encourage us to make the change to Home Chef.
Home Chef
Pros
We started using Home Chef about a month ago, and the one thing I was so excited about when we signed up was the convenience that I had heard came with their ‘oven ready’ meals. I’d see influencers talk about and show these meals and looked exactly like what they were called. They came in a tin container with all of the items pre-cut and ready to be thrown into the oven! All I would have to do was pre-heat it. The first week of ordering, I attempted to steer my fiancé toward these meals over the other ones (I’m the one doing the cooking since he gets home so late) and we ended up with one of our two meals being of the oven-ready variety.
Cons
I hate to say this, but the taste quality of the meals just aren’t as good. They lack the freshness of Hello Fresh and the flavor. I really wanted to like Home Chef better, trust me. I heard they were easier to make and faster to finish, but what I found was that even the ‘oven-ready meals’ require some prep work, whether it is chopping, measuring or dicing, it’s still prep and something that I hadn’t anticipated having to do.
It’s only been one month with Home Chef and I already know of 4 meals that I don’t want to order again. It took me years to get that same number with Hello Fresh. That being said, I’m going to keep trying with Home Chef and continue to hope that maybe we just chose the wrong items. Maybe if we explore the non oven-ready meals a little more we will find the same high quality flavors and tastes that we know and love with Hello Fresh.
I love a good meal plan subscription and won’t give up on finding the best option that is both fast and delicious.
If you’re in the market for a meal service, or know of one that is delicious, share your finds with me in the comments below!
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