What's for dinner? HelloFresh vs BlueApron vs Fresh20

“What do you want to eat?”
“I dunno.”

That’s a typical conversation at our house. We’re not formal dinner folks and generally just graze and assemble our evening meals like a pair of raccoons (“trash pandas”).

We’ve tried HelloFresh and Blue Apron, two services that ship you food recently and want to share our impressions. There’s more about our initial experience with HelloFresh here.

What do you you get and what does it cost?

Both companies offer similar deals. Set your order for a family of four or a couple of two. Pick three out of six meals offered on their site. On a chosen day, a medium size, impressively insulated box shows up at your house. Pray it stays cold. Unpack it directly into your fridge. Pay somewhere between $8-10 per serving. Cook it yourself using recipe cards included in the box. Both offer a week or two free as an intro.

Both are a good alternative to eating out, offer healthy meals, and are a fun activity for trash pandas and young trash pandas.

Blue Apron

Pros

• Nice protein, particularly fish (our sister-in-law, who’s forgotten more about seafood than we’ll ever know, swears you can’t find anything as good locally)
• Recycling. When you’ve accumulated a few weeks of detritus, they’ll send you a shipping label to ship it back to them.
• Everything is included, even flour. Even, tiny adorable little pats of butter in plastic ketchup containers. Wait, is this really a pro?

Cons

• Smaller portions, especially when they feature a protein, it’s going to feel like you and your loved one are on a diet. Even more with if you have two or three kids who like to eat the proteins.
• Mis-sized filler. Often the salads were for a family of 8 while the protein was for a family of 1.
• Recipes often include “exotics” that you aren’t going to be able to find if you want to remake a recipe. I’d love if they suggested alternatives in their recipes.
• Recipes that aren’t clear, are often rambley, confusingly written and designed. A particular irritation was the soup recipes where you’d add 4 cups of water and then “cook for 3 minutes or until the liquid is slightly reduced in volume”. Soups don’t “reduce” in 3 minutes, folks.
• When picking recipes you can only pick certain combinations. Each selection knocks others out. (Why? Cost? Shipping?)

The Recipes

Here are the recipes (with exotic ingredients in parentheses) followed by a grade (followed by more passive-aggressive comments in parentheses).

• Chicken and Udon Noodle Soup (dried lime): B (it’s a soup, you’ll never get more than a B for a soup)
• Seared Cod and Date Vinaigrette (medjool dates, sherry vinegar, watermelon radish): C (a rough cooking technique for the cod, another of their damned shallot vinaigrettes!, diced dates in quinoa was great and salad was outstanding)
• Italian Meatball Soup (farro, lacinato kale): B (A hearty meatball soup is still a soup, see above)
• Spiced Roast Chicken and Collard Greens: A (delicious, short on protein but great sauce, needed more greens and less onion)
• Salmon and Lemon Bucatini: C (lemon flavoring was fun, not enough Brussels sprouts, far too much pasta)
• Spiced Pork Chops w Charred Poblano Salsa and Sweet Potato Mash: A
• Shrimp Banh Mi with Pickled Veg and Beet Salad: B (many of their recipes have bread which doesn’t transport well, bad news for a Banh Mi which is all about the roll)
• Chicken Tortilla Soup with Rainbow Chart, Avocado and Cilantro: C (a meh soup, tortillas were poor, plus we burned them)
• Juicy Lucy Burgers: C (decent burger with sadly mismatched quantities of onion and salad)
• Buffalo Chicken Sandwich (white endive): C (chicken thighs are too fatty in this, we abandoned the salad)

The verdict

2 As, 3 Bs, 5 Cs. Are you feeling lucky, punk?

HelloFresh

We ordered HelloFresh for 4 people rather than the 2 person servings we got for Blue Apron. Each HelloFresh meal (for 2) is packed in a tidy white box with the recipe name on the side. HelloFresh recipes were about half the words of Blue Apron and often included an interesting cooking technique.

Pros

• 4 person boxes generally went for 6 meals.
• Very nice protein and fish
• Boxes in boxes make seeing what’s available easy. Does take up more room in your fridge.

Cons

• Packaging (boxes in boxes). We accumulated more freezer packs than we know what to do with.

The Recipes

Again, each recipe has a grade and “exotic” ingredients are in parentheses. There isn’t nearly the quantity of passive-aggressive sniping required for these meals.

• Shrimp and Chorizo Paella: A
• Cherry-Lime Rickey Chicken (ground juniper berries): B
• Charred Corn and Salmon Salad: A+ (we’ve remade this several times and it’s healthy and great).
• Seared Steak and Charred Nectarine Salad: B (very similar to charred salmon salad which we loved, just made us miss the better one)
• Port and Chinese Eggplant Stir-Fry (chinese eggplant): B
• Zucchini Noodle Lasagna: A
• Reuben Steak with Tangy Braised Cabbage and Russian Dressing Pan Sauce: B (too much cabbage)
• Chipotle-Glazed Pork Chops with Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Roasted Broccoli: A
• Lemongrass Chicken Skewers with Coconut Rice and Cuke-Carrot Slaw (lemongrass stalks): A
• Sweet and Sour Pork Stir Fry: B
• Parmesan Crusted Chicken w Balsamic Potato Salad and Garlic Roasted Tomatos: A

The Verdict

6 As, 5 Bs. A solid performance.

What’s next?

We’re trying Fresh20. They give you a list and you have to buy it. But they tell you what to cook and a year of their service costs as much as a nice meal out. Stand by.

And in the meantime, here’s some food porn for your viewing pleasure.