Cook at Home Meals

[Earthmaiden]

Have any of you tried Hello Fresh or any other of the many 'cook at home' schemes?

If you subscribe to Lakeland newsletters you may have seen this. A chef comes to your home and prepares any number of meals in your kitchen for the week ahead for you to serve.

It is not cheap. Would you ever be tempted?

https://www.meals.co.uk/plan-&-pricing

[scullion]

no, i wouldn't.
i rarely buy ready meal/prepared stuff to eat at home so it doesn't really appeal to me.
- and i would have to buy another fridge for that scheme!

[herbidacious]

I had Hello Fresh for a while while T was in Germany so I was mostly on my own. Taking into consideration I am a vegetarian and thus the offerings were more limited, here's why I stopped:
1. lots of unrecyclable packaging (tiny tiny pots of spices. Maybe this has improved since, but tiny amounts of plastic tend not to be recyclable I find.)
2. I generally already had many of the store cupboard ingredients.
3. monotonous and unimaginative - lots of recipes that were mainly rice or pasta based, with some veggie slop. The recipes might have improved - a colleague brought something in that he'd made from a Hello Fresh recipe - he didn't admit it but it was clear it was when he shared a scan of the recipe - and it smelled amazing. I suspect the vegetarian ones are mainly vegan but haven't checked.
4. I didn't want to cook from scratch that often (I prefer to make something that lasts three days) if it's just me. I didn't always want to cook on the days I needed to to use the fresh ingredients. (In those days I actually used to go out 2-3 evenings some weeks.)
5. I didn't always fancy what I was intended to cook.

They bombarded me with emails and phone calls for at least a year after I cancelled.

When I used it, it wasn't ready meals or prepared stuff, just ingredients in exactly the amounts required for the recipes.

I did it because I wanted to encourage myself to cook more while basically living alone, but didn't and it just became a chore.

[Stokey Sue]

I will buy things like stuffed pasta or prepped stir-fry veg if it suits me, and of course occasionally ready made things but I’ve not been tempted by Hello Fresh, Cook! etc, one of the advantages is up is supposed to be having small amounts of things like herbs and spices you are unlikely to have, but I’ve built up a pretty good collection, as I expect many of us have.

If you subscribe to Lakeland newsletters you may have seen this. A chef comes to your home and prepares any number of meals in your kitchen for the week ahead for you to serve.

It is not cheap. Would you ever be tempted?

I see that the picture of the person “enjoying” the meal is eating it airline style out of the box (yuk) and judging by the hands is quite elderly. If you can afford it, I can see it as a good short term thing after something like a hip replacement, more interesting than, say, Wiltshire Farm Foods.
I don’t know if it still happens but years ago the people (mainly fairly young women who had done a course at Leith’s or Cordon Bleu) who would cook for a dinner party etc would fill your freezer with “bespoke” ready made dishes, a boon to one non-cooking widower I knew. This takes it a stage further, possibly a stage too far.

[Suffs]

Niece used Hello Fresh while at uni. Apparently students get offered some very good deals and if you’re clever you can never have to pay full whack. As she was studying all day and working most evenings until the wee small hours she wasn’t around to share a lot of meals with housemates so she said it worked for her and the economics worked too because she rarely had time to shop and she said that when she did shop she found it hard to get quantities right just one person and had a lot of wastage. She said the meals were fine and actually broadened her palate.
Not for me tho.

[Smitch]

We’ve used Gousto a few times when they’ve had significant discounts. They’re tasty, nothing mind blowing but convenient. Good veggie choices too. We’ve also ordered them when we’ve had a weekend away in a cottage as then we don’t need to worry about ingredients.

Wouldn’t use them all the time though

[Pepper Pig]

Cook isn’t the same as the others Sue. No cooking prep involved. It’s the same as Charlie Bigham but frozen and different portion sizes.

[Earthmaiden]

I see that the picture of the person “enjoying” the meal is eating it airline style out of the box (yuk) and judging by the hands is quite elderly. If you can afford it, I can see it as a good short term thing after something like a hip replacement, more interesting than, say, Wiltshire Farm Foods.
I don’t know if it still happens but years ago the people (mainly fairly young women who had done a course at Leith’s or Cordon Bleu) who would cook for a dinner party etc would fill your freezer with “bespoke” ready made dishes, a boon to one non-cooking widower I knew. This takes it a stage further, possibly a stage too far.

I knew women such as those you describe who'd come in and do dinner parties. To pick someone you know, or who's been recommended seems different to having a stranger in your kitchen (you'd have to tidy up first ). I can see a benefit for someone as you describe having a bit of company for a while but wonder if it works out like that. I was surprised at some of the dishes on offer. Some with very fresh, raw ingredients would be best eaten immediately and not left in a fridge for several days. There must be a niche and someone must have decided it was worthwhile.

[Suffs]

Cooking for other folks’ dinner parties in their own homes is something my business partner and I used to do when I lived in Suffolk 35+ years ago.

We would also do ‘freezer dishes’ … casseroles, pies etc.

[Stokey Sue]

Cook isn’t the same as the others Sue. No cooking prep involved. It’s the same as Charlie Bigham but frozen and different portion sizes.

Cook! (with an exclamation mark) used to have a stall on Waterloo station selling meal kits, but that was a while back, so punctuation-free Cook must be different (Google can't find Cook!, so presumably no more). It was the first time I'd encountered the meal kits like that and I was quite intrigued.

[Seatallan]

If you subscribe to Lakeland newsletters you may have seen this. A chef comes to your home and prepares any number of meals in your kitchen for the week ahead for you to serve.

It is not cheap. Would you ever be tempted?

https://www.meals.co.uk/plan-&-pricing

That would be my worst nightmare! I'd be cringing with embarrassment.

Quite a lot of people (generally the younger ones with families) around here use Gousto and Hello Fresh because I see the empty boxes out on recycling day when I run past but I've never been tempted. We did a few of the 'finish at home' posh meals during the various lockdowns for birthdays, our anniversary, etc (a few from our local gastropub and one from Simon Rogan's restaurant) but that's my only excursion into that world.

[Ameew]

A friend of mine swears by them for her and her partner .

Might be a sweeping generalisation, but I think people who are really into cooking probably aren’t their target audience . I like tweaking with recipes and also enjoy food shopping too . Plus I rarely meal plan and stick to it for the entire week , so would be worried about wasting food or having to eat something I’d pre ordered but not really fancy three days later

[Earthmaiden]

That would be one if my problems (though the worst is arranging to be in for delivery!).

Like Seatallen, I wouldn't really want a chef in my kitchen but can see it working for some.

[Suffs]

Cook isn’t the same as the others Sue. No cooking prep involved. It’s the same as Charlie Bigham but frozen and different portion sizes.

DS says he’s started using Cook some of the time as it works out more economically than shopping for one all the time, especially as he only has a small kitchen cupboard and fridge. He says the food is quite acceptable so far, and he is used to the best!

[Uschi]

... because she rarely had time to shop and she said that when she did shop she found it hard to get quantities right just one person and had a lot of wastage. She said the meals were fine and actually broadened her palate.
Not for me tho.

One of the things I found cooking for two with just a tiny freezer department is that it is indeed difficult to get that right. I have started using empty jars to help out. Once one is peeling and chopping it doesn't take up much more time to simply finish, say, a pack of soup greens (a chunk of celeriac, leeks, carrots and parsley over here) or even two and then line up the jars and lids, pour in boiling water, cook the soup greens, tip out the jars, ladle the lightly spiced veg and soup into the jars and seal them. If you use just veg, it is perfectly safe and you have the makings of a soup or whatever for another time. It also helps make the most of a bargain. When you look at how much time it takes to get all the tools out and place them into the dishwasher, clean the worktop and so on, this really does save a lot of time.
It works for most veg and fruit and you can add starchy ingredients, meat and so on later (these things aren't safe to conserve in this way).
I have soup greens, pasta sauce and various fruit compotes standing about at the moment.

[scullion]

you do have to make sure you use those quite quickly though, uschi, unless you bottle (can = americanism) them properly. if the acid or sugar level isn't high enough or they haven't had the right heat treatment, they can incubate things like botulism.

[Uschi]

I do not keep them for months, but try to use them up within a fortnight or so. I add the food straight from the hob and turn the jars over for five minutes. So far, so good.