As I mentioned in my post about Blue Apron, I also tried out HelloFresh. I actually plan on trying a couple other delicious looking meal kit options, just to see what sort of variances are available, but in the end, I only really need one (if that).
My first impression of the HelloFresh recipes was that they were blander than the Blue Apron ones. I rescinded that impression with the second set of recipes; it must have just been the particular recipes I picked.
There are many similarities between the two meal kit services. You log in and pick from a variety of menu options for a given week. The typical box has ingredients for three recipes. In the Blue Apron box, most of the fresh produce is separate from the “knick knacks” bag for each recipe, and any meat is packaged separately; you store the produce as appropriate and refrigerate the knick knacks and meat. The HelloFresh box splits out the meat from everything else; all of the other ingredients for a given recipe are in a brown paper bag (labeled “this bag is greener than a salad”). An interesting difference between the two is that HelloFresh will send you two peeled cloves of garlic in the bag, whereas Blue Apron will send you an entire bulb even if you only need two cloves. We’re three Blue Apron boxes in… we’re never running out of fresh garlic.
The meals in both cases are tasty, and the recipes are easy to follow. In fact, there’s a real pleasure as a parent of being able to hand over a single sheet and pile of ingredients while I run off and do other chores.
There are minor differences in the website that could sway you to one or another – the HelloFresh website lets you skip meals far ahead of their menu planning, whereas Blue Apron dates become available as the menus are posted. We’ve decided to stick with Blue Apron for the moment, more because it was the first of the two we tried… that and I like their Mediterranean recipes.
Coming sometime soon… our thoughts on Meal Village, where instead of a meal kit, somebody else does all the work and you just have to reheat the meal.