Food delivery companies seem to be the most genius invention of a service ever. It is wonderful to have recipes and all the fresh ingredients delivered to your door once a week without having to make grocery lists or scour the internet for yummy recipes. We recently did a test run of two food delivery companies that are available in our area to see which we like more and which to keep. If you live in a place like New York, L.A., or San Francisco, you have so many more options, it is ridiculous. But, if you live in a nice, suburban town like me, the options are quite a bit more limited.
There are two food delivery companies that work in our area, Hello Fresh and blue Apron. Both deliver three meals a week with all ingredients for three selected recipes. Both also have the option between meat and vegetarian dishes. But, that is where the similarities end. For use, there was an easy winner, and, it was not the one either of us expected. Since P+K is all about simple ways to be healthier and having healthy food delivered to your door seems like the simplest way, I thought you just might want to know my findings as well. Here goes...
Hello Fresh
Hello Fresh meals average about $11 for meat options and $9 for vegetarian. The meals were pretty good, but most of the vegetarian options were pastas. Since I am not a massive pasta fan, these meals were definitely not my favorite. Although the actual Hello Fresh company is great with extreme transparency on where they get their food, a very simple and easy to understand website, and great customer service, the food and recipe were not exactly what we expected.
There were multiple times that the food in the recipe and the food sent to us were not the same (ex. wheat pasta vs. non-wheat pasta) and the directions for recipes left very much to the imagination. Ha, I can think of quite a few times that both the hubs and I would debate on what the recipe was asking us to do next only to find we definitely did it wrong when we went to eat it. Things did not taste right.
Ingredients were also pre-packaged in those mini to-go type containers and had to be measured before-hand. Usually, measuring would not bother me, but cutting open 10-packets of soy sauce to get the pre-measured amount is where I draw the line. Yes, this food is a bit healthier than Blue Apron. And yes, Hello Fresh does have a better deal for vegetarians. But, we are paying a premium to have meals sent to us; for that, I think we should be spoiled a bit. Having to double check measurements and decipher directions is not my cup of tea.
Here are a few of their recipes :)
Blue Apron
I feel a little bad for Hello Fresh just because of how much the odds were stacked against them. Everything that Hello Fresh did wrong, Blue Apron did right, and then some. The only complaint I had about Blue Apron was that you could only choose meat or vegetarian, and as of last week that was changed. Now, you can opt for chicken, beef, pork, vegetarian, and fish when choosing your weekly meals. This is wonderful for us pescetarians out there who do not fit into that either/or category or for those who do not eat pork, shellfish, or beef.
All meals are about $10 per person no matter what protein you choose. If you are a vegetarian, you will love Blue Apron. Meals mix up where vegetarians are getting their protein from and very few of them have pasta at all.
There are two things that make me want to get everyone I know Blue Apron meals; the first is the packaging and the second is the food. All ingredients come pre-packaged in the exact measurement needed, taking so much of the hassle out of cooking. Ingredients are also neatly labeled and smaller ingredients for each meal are kept together in labeled "knick-knack" bags. This is wonderful for anyone out there who is not a chef but wants to create meals like one. The directions are super easy to understand and nearly impossible to mess up.
So far, we have made Moroccan dishes, Italian dishes with ingredients only available once a year, sushi, and Vietnamese dishes. All of these are things I would never think to make for a simple weekday meal since the ingredients can be so hard to come by. And, all of these would have been waaayy more than $10 per person because of all the random spices that we would only need once but cost an arm and a leg.
Each food order also comes with a description of all the meals and reasons why they were chosen. I have seriously learned so much about food since registering with Blue Apron and also got to eat one of the worlds stinkiest cheeses. It was delicious, albeit, smelly.
For all of these reasons, we decided to go with Blue Apron. Here is their entire cookbook to peruse what meals you might enjoy :) Hehe, can you tell that we like the sushi a bit? It was the first time making sushi that the end result actually tasted like food, let alone, good sushi! Poor Chuu though, he is use to sushi have tuna. Beggar.
