Gourmet (?) Meal Delivery

Has anybody had experience with these folks:

https://www.plated.com/?

I took advantage of a promo offer and was sorely disappointed.

I'm also curious to know who's out there doing this type of thing well.

...

we're not totally convinced that this is the model for us, but we've used this 3 or 4 times and thought the quality was good:
https://madisonandrayne.com

I am interested if anyone else have tried meal deliveries. I have found several online. I consider myself a decent cook. Problem is that after a long day at work, I tend to get lazy. The process of cooking I like. Meal planning and shopping are a pain. Consequently, I go out to eat too much. I was hoping that a service that delivers all the ingredients for a few meals a week would prompt me to cook more and eat out less. It would also save a fair amount of cash. So here is a list I have found so far and was wondering if anyone else has tried any of these services or have other they would recommend.

Factor 75 www.factor75.com/
Blue apron www.blueapron.com/
Hello fresh www.hellofresh.com/tasty/
Madison & Rayne www.madisonandrayne.com/howitworks/
Plated www.plated.com/
Kitchfix www.kitchfix.com/how-it-works

There are a bunch of comparisons of these services that were done by various sites, you may want to view - google for "meal delivery comparison"

The ones I've read seem to like Peach Dish the best, but YMMV.

I use Home Chef pretty regularly. I like that they are located in Chicago, and I love that they have a wide selection of meals each week, including a breakfast and a smoothie option. I don't get home until 7 at the earliest, so knowing that I have the ingredients for a quick, decent meal at home stops me from running through the drive-thru on my way home. As a single person, I also like that the ingredients are proportioned to just what I need for a recipe, so I don't end up throwing out a lot of raw ingredients that go bad before I can use them up.

Some of these places buy spices from my company, The Spice House. They have given me promo codes to try their meal plans to see what I think of them. I was very impressed with Home Chef, and one of the biggest selling points for me was that you have many options to choose from every week, they did not just select meals for you as do some of the other companies. I cook virtually every day so I really did not see the point in this. However, it did have me trying some new recipes, and as stated above, there is something nice about coming home and knowing that you don't have to make any decisions, you just cook. What I can not reconcile with, however, is the amount of waste produced with all the packaging. Just a handful of people doing this in my condo building would fill up our dumpster for the entire week. I do also have some promo codes for $35 off on your first order with Hello Fresh, if anyone wants one just email me at owner@thespicehouse.com.

I came across this write up of six Blue Apron meals and thought it gave a good idea of what to expect.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/commen ... my_review/

A friend of mine at the office sent me an offer for a free week's delivery from Blue Apron. I was a little skeptical. I'm a pretty fair home cook and the whole concept seemed like cheating, or giving up, or something. I mean, it's still cooking, but everything's spoon fed to you. But I signed up and I gotta say, having received three weeks of deliveries, I like it.

I'm single. So a lot of times, if I'm shopping for a specific recipe, I'm buying things in quantities I simply won't use before they go bad and spending money I shouldn't spend. Blue Apron is $60 a week for three meals for two people. For me, that's six meals plus some extra, so let's say $8-$9 a meal. I don't waste anything. And at least 80% of the recipes have been pretty damn good.

Over time, I could see myself getting a bit bored by the offerings - I've only been doing this for three weeks and a few of the recipes have had a similar flavor profile (I augment from my spice cabinet frequently). But having someone do your shopping and meal planning for you, at least for a few days, turns out to be more attractive than I'd have thought.

A friend of mine has been doing Meez Meals (which I was pronouncing MEEEEEz Meals, but she thinks is "Me Easy"). She likes the convenience and not having to buy different things she might not use up before they went bad. She does cook, but was finding herself in a rut and getting takeout far too often.

Let me know via PM if you want her referral code, it gets you $50 off your first order and gets her $25 for each person that make an order. I'm pretty sure I get nothing out of this deal no matter what you do

Dusting off this thread...a friend sent me a code to get 3 meals from Blue Apron. We have done 2 them so far. It is definitely convenient. I thought some of the containers were adorable like the little plastic bottles that each held 2 tablespoons of a required liquid. I'm saving one to use for salad dressing to take to work.

The first was chicken meatballs and fregola sarda with kale and Sicilian tomato sauce. I would have liked more sauce because things were a little dry. The flavors were good though. More successful was the Katsu-style catfish with black garlic mayonnaise and jasmine rice. We still have a pork dish to go.

One quibble. A two-sided recipe card is provided for each meal. The front page lists out the ingredients with quantity needed; step-by-step instructions are on the back. I didn't read the ingredient list all that well. When the instructions tell me to peel and finely chop the garlic, I did so with the entire head of about 8-10 cloves. That was far more than the 2 cloves needed. Oops. Fortunately I caught the mistake before it was too late, but it was still garlic heavy. The head of garlic was to be used for two of the three recipes we received. Noting the number of cloves to chop in the step-by-step would have helped me. (I've had poor reading comprehension with recipes other times so I can't totally blame them. )

I'll likely keep the membership and do this on occasion as it was convenient and was something different. After reading through this thread, we may even try some of the other services to compare.

I have recently signed up for HelloFresh after researching a few of the other options like Plated and Blue Apron. After 3 weeks I can say we have been very happy with the quality, convenience, packaging and most of all taste of the meals.

Hello fresh packages each meal within in its own box, and each protein individually wrapped (and placed on/near the ice). So for a weekly box with 3 meals, the delivered box will contain 3 small boxes inside, and 3 proteins. If multiple recipes require the same produce, spice, vinegar, milk, etc. there will be a separate one packaged in each individual meal box. Unlike Blue Apron, where you have to be aware if more than one recipe calls for the same item, HelloFresh removes this issue. Salt, Pepper and Oil are the only ingredients you need to provide yourself. All other spices, vinegars, soup bases, milk, cream, etc are included in the kits.

For anyone with slightly above novice kitchen skills, the recipes are broken down pretty well and written with easily followed instructions. Always good to read the whole recipe thru first, so all components complete at the same time and you are not waiting for the potatoes to finish while your chicken entree gets cold. A true novice may struggle a little at first with amount ambiguities in the recipes, like "season with salt and pepper", or add a drizzle of oil to the pan, etc. Also, pot/pan sizes can make a difference if you are un-aware that a larger pan will mean a sauce will reduce quicker. For example, instructions for Jasmine Rice called for 1 cup of water to cook the quantity of rice provided, but because of larger pot size, or higher heat, the water was absorbed/evaporated well before the rice was done/tender. Easily resolved by adding a little more water until it was done, but following the recipe card to the letter of the law would have yielded undercooked, crunchy or burned rice. Each recipe on average takes 15-30 minutes from start to finish.

The quality of the ingredients has been high. The only issue encountered so far in all the kits was an avocado that was too hard to make the guacamole that the recipe included. If I had opened the box a day or so earlier and checked, it would have been fine. Each week there is a choice of meals. Options include at least one beef, chicken, fish/seafood, pork and vegetarian dish to choose from. It's easy to chose your meals for each week, and you can see the menu and pick about a month in advance. You can skip weeks whenever you want and cancel at any time.

Overall I give very high marks to HelloFresh. It's super convenient, reasonably priced, tasty and most of all allows me to cook fresh, portion controlled meals during the week without having to worry about shopping, etc.

How America Lost Dinner, People want to cook and eat together. Modern life has other plans.

Right now, a box of food from a meal-kit company is probably moldering in my apartment building’s mail room. I haven’t been down there in a few days, so maybe there isn’t one at this very moment. But more than two years of living in this building has taught me there’s basically always at least one box, forgotten and slightly stinky. When I visit friends, I often walk past a similar scene next to their elevators: cartons from Blue Apron or HelloFresh, waiting to find out if they’ll ever become the dinners they were meant to be.

Forgetting you mail-ordered a bespoke set of ingredients for a selection of restaurant-style recipes is a luxurious predicament to be in, but the frequency with which those those meal kits seem to be abandoned points to the very same problem they were invented to fix: Consumer surveys have found that most people who buy meal kits do so in hopes of saving time. As it turns out, it takes time to unpack, cook, and clean up after a meal-kit dinner, too.
...

Will mention this as an option- albeit more for special occasions than everyday, but I'm involved w/a cyber chef website called "Take A Chef. After you decide on menus and pricepoint submitted to you by your choice of chefs, I/they come to your home and cook for you. More like catering I suppose but can be as interactive as the client wants. I usually do it all but I've also taught them how and included them in prep and plating when they requested... About the price of a decent restaurant ($80-200 per depending) but brought to you in your home. Best for parties I suppose. Been getting a lot of work from them.