I've never subscribed to a meal service but my super did give me a delivery that was meant for another tenant who left town during the quarantine, they couldn't cancel in time. It was Hello Fresh and I was really impressed! There were three different meals. Each was meant for two people but I got three servings from each. The three meals were: Cherry Balsamic Pork Chops with Green Beans & Thyme Roasted Potatoes, Beef Bulgogi Bowls with Carrots, Pickled Cucumber and Sriracha Crema, and Chicken Sausage Cavatappi Bolognese with Zucchini & Parmesan. They were all delicious and so easy and fast to prepare. I highly recommend. I've kept the recipe cards so I can duplicate these meals myself.

Not used one, yet. But make certain that you select one that gives you all of the ingredients as some only provide part of them. One that I looked at the site last year did not include easily perishable ingredients for a salad nor liquid ingredients for the dressing. The site had in small print that since tastes varied so much they were only making vinegar and oil suggestions.

I have only tried Hello Fresh. The meals were delicious! But....I felt like it had way too much packaging and the veggies and herbs weren't so fresh. They were limp, but still usable. The portion size was good, but there were no leftovers. If you want leftovers, you need to order extra meals. (It's probably the same no matter which service you use.)

I liked my menu service, even though I had to provide the ingredients. But you know, I have to go to the store anyway, and I liked being able to buy the brands I liked or from the stores I likedl

My DD is a vegetarian and is now doing Green Chef. She is happy with it. I saw a few meals and wasn’t sure if it was actually enough food but....

I think you need to review the various contenders, what they offer and what you have to sign up for.

I think many have good reviews.

Bpath, what is menus service?

My niece used Blue Apron and I've had several of their meals. The selection is varied; lots of options as far as protein choices, different ethnicities and interesting spices. I'm not a fan of their packaging (wasteful) but great flavors. I would give Blue Apron an A.

I’ve been doing Blue Apron for four or five years and we love it. Before we moved, I did the two person meals and now that we live next door to the kids we do the four person, two meals per week. At times, the prepping is a bit much, but the results are worth the effort and now you do have different choices for your meals. We really like the variety and I have expanded my cooking repertoire even on nights we don’t do Blue Apron. The app is really easy to use to tailor your menus or skip a week or two.

My SIL gets Hello Fresh. She gave me several meals that were going to go bad due to family illness. I thought they were good, and would be good for someone with little cooking experience. We thought they were bland, and I seasoned them to our taste. The portions were small, and there was a lot of wasteful packaging. Also, I thought it was pretty expensive, after I saw what she gets.

As someone who cooks and has time to shop, i wouldn't do it. If i was short on time, and wanted some new variety, i might try them.

We try to stray away from recipes that are too elaborate or time consuming but trying new things is fun.

Try starting with a "weekday meals" type of recipe book. Or look at the Serious Eats site (one of my favorites, with Kenji Lopez-Alt formerly of Cooks Illustrated), it has a "Quick Dinners" section too. It's easy to find new ideas that aren't too laborious and use standard ingredients.

I used to use Sunbasket and really enjoyed it. Everything was delicious and I rarely had issues with freshness.

I liked Hello Fresh and Blue Apron when I used them. I quit getting them because it was hard for me to make them by the end of the week sometimes with just me here. I still make some of the meals that I got, as they come with recipe cards and I really liked them.

My daughter gets Blue Apron and I have to tell you that the amount of non recyclable and wasteful packaging is enormous! And the amount of fossil fuel needed to package it cold and transport it is also a very big footprint in the environment.

First, there is a very big cardboard box. Then comes the huge foil insulated bags, and inside are numerous other little similar packages and little bottles of stuff.

It has frozen bags of some kind of liquid....coldpacks. The say that they are recyclable, but first you have to empty the thawed liquid from each of the bags, Then, you have an empty bag with slimy stuff still in it, so how could you possibly recycles something like that?

I will empty dozens of these bags when I am at her house. I cut them open and pour the contents out in a place out in the back of the yard, Then I rinse the bags and hang them to dry. That is the only way that these bags become anything close to recyclable.

And, that thawed liquid in the bags is strange stuff. It will stay there is a big slimy glop for a long time, days, weeks until it gets washed away in the rain and into the soil.

If you leave the defrost bags to sit in a box, for instance, what will happen is that they all get really wet on the outside of the bags and become a big slimy mess. It is not just condesation, it seems taht the slimy semifluid inside of the bag somehow migrates out. You can't just store them somewhere to refreeze and use later. These things are just awful!

The very large foil bags are not recyclable, either. And, each box has at least one very big one and often several little ones.

I bring them home and try to free cycle them as they are perfectly usable for many more uses.

She said the the company will pick up the debris, but what do you think they do with it? What they do is put it right into the garbage. You are, basically, shipping them back the garbage to throw away. The truth is that there is very little redemption to this massive excess packaging and they just offer that service to make you think that they are taking care of it. The reality is that there are no venues for recycling this kind of stuff.

So, that is enough, right there, to not recommend them.

I don't understand why my daughter insist on these things. She often doesn't use all of the stuff and it ends up cluttering her kitchen and fridge with excess little bottles and even packages of the meats that they send. I try to tell her but she wants to believe otherwise.

And, aside from the fact that it has an enormous environmental footprint there is one more thing that is a big negative about these meals. That is the fact that they don't prepare anything for you! They will send you cloves of garlic in little plastic bags and you still have to peel and mash the garlic! What? They can't sent you garlic that is ready to use?

The same for any type of garnish or herb. You still have to do all of that little tedious prep work for everything! You would think a reasonable expectation for some prep to be done for you, right? But, no.

With the enormous waste with these meals and the fact that there is no prep done for you, I could never recommend them to anyone.

As for the meals.....they are Ok, but not anywhere worth the cost or the price.

Even though I consider myself an excellent cook my wife signed us up for Blue Apron a few years ago, because I had complained that I was tired of making the things I usually made.

I'd agree with most of what others here have said. There is a lot of packaging, that ultimately was a major factor in eventually cancelling the service.

They do include everything you need in the box except for salt, pepper and olive oil. Some of the meals they included were only OK, others were quite good, but too labor intensive for me to consider making on my own, and some have become a part of my regular rotation of cooking or ingredients or techniques I learned are now a part of my repertoire.

Besides the packaging issue, I would laugh at how at nearly every step of every recipe, they specified to add salt.

I think it is worth a go if in a recipe/meal prepping rut. So many options now. Should be a fit for any diet need. Epicurious lists and rates a bit over 20 services. NYTimes as well. Most do have a good discount for a trial box. I would just make sure cancelling is easy. Some offer every other week delivery and most weekly . Many are customizable. Some are more advanced in prep and palate and some just for basic learning cooks but new flavors and kitchen experiences not unlike a cooking class.

Carbon footprint can be argued on many levels. Your distance to shopping in person, how many stops needed, etc. Often more packaging in a bag of groceries from a local market. Every stocked shelf item comes in boxes. Shipped from the field to a processor to a central distributor to the grocery back room to the shelf. Lots of processing, trucking and travel hidden in the back room.

If you garden, have fruit trees, raise chickens for eggs and fryers, goats for milk and cheese, etc... process for the winter by canning, freezing, fermenting...you've got a good argument about package waste.

A couple tomato/veg clam shells, protein on foam trays, plastic bags of basics like onions and potatoes....a plastic bottle of dish soap. I know nothing about plastic manufacturing so I'm just making this up, 😂, but it seems like some single use products could make 30-40 small thin plastic bags....or more. If you purchase pasta in plastic, is goes in your pantry and used later. Empty a single grocery bag of its packaging and it will be equally abundant in wasteful packaging.

Far from perfect, raise both hands, but this covid mess has solved so many of my issues using local grass fed meat share including fresh pasture eggs, straight to the freezer, no re-packaging, no clam shells, veg raw in box, no bags, Dry beans in burlap, no cans. Laundry and dish wash and washer soap in cardboard concentrates.

Here is a link to a blogger that has a good review, HERE

So many available but just picked one random as NYTimes has a paywall.

I really enjoyed the Hello Fresh dinners I have made. My niece gets them every week, vegetarian meals and sometimes when she goes away she brings a few boxes over to me. Even if you don't order the kits you can go to the Hello Fresh website and get the recipe.

sleevendog, when you "shop the perimeter" of the grocery store where the real food is offered, the use of excess packaging is lessened.

I shop at the local farm in season and a co op where I shop all year long that has gone back to allowing bulk bins for dry things.

The most disturbing thing about the Blue Apron are the insulated foil bags and those cold packs that they use. There are many of them in each box. That is the main factor in the carbon footprint of those meals, IMHO. Everything we do has a hidden cost, true. Personally, I do make an effort to be aware of what I do as an individual and I don't consume some things simply because of the waste involved. There is so much over packaging of everything!!!!!

Also I just don't like the fact that there is no prep work done for you. For that price, I would want the chopping and peeling to be done and, maybe, the sauce to be made.

SonIL is a meat and potatoes kind of a guy and he begrudgingly goes along with what my daughter prepares. If he wants something else, let him get in the kitchen and cook it. Not going to happen! He is not that enlightened.

After cooking dinner for almost 50 years, I decided I'm done! My son splits his time between GF's house and mine, and I just have no interest in cooking for him anymore. So I do provide food when he comes - we get dinners from Freshly or Eatz. They send fully cooked meals that you just pop in the microwave. DS says they're pretty tasty, they show the calories content and you can get meals for different needs. He's a weight conscious, gym rat and the meals are fairly healthy for him.

This is a little off topic.

My sister sent me this link. After watching it I am willing to bet money that this came about by one of them saying "We need a fridge that the Blue Apron boxes fit in."

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJ9NhELe/

Wednesday, I'm well aware of the modern grocery store model. I don't use them but I'm fortunate to have my 4 groceries that only have a small side back wall of frozen foods. Lots of organic produce not in packaging.

I'm just answering the question asked. A service that gets a pandemic weary family out of a rut for a couple times a week or every other. Any age. A young family of four can get dad and son/daughter in the the kitchen together or a retired couple needs a deserved lift and help in the kitchen. A kitchen learning experience can far outway the packaging. Especially if some meals are often prepared pick-up fast food or frozen highly processed prepared foods.

Many more services available than BlueApron. SunBasket, link, HERE does use more eco friendly packaging. None of it really convinces me unless pet bedding and garden paths and weed barriers or chicken bedding for laying is needed, etc. Grocery stores themselves being the third or fourth down the chain are massively inefficient. Power hogs.

We need stress relief right now. And home deliveries. I'm all for it if it helps during restrictions. (imagine having three teenagers home right now and one or two parents working from home, oy).

Just my opinion but we need choices and variety right now. Thankfully most delivery choices were widely available way ahead of this pandemic.

Strongly agree with Sleevendog.

My daughter and son-in-law used Blue Apron for a while, pre-Covid. They liked the food and loved that it comes with all the ingredients. You don't have to buy a whole jar of an ingredient you may never use again. But it didn't save any time at all. Since time was what they needed, they stopped Blue Apron.

azine, that is pure genius. I will bet that who ever got that idea has a job in the commercial refrigeration business. And, why not incorporate this in to a private home?

On a slightly different note, I don't; understand why homes are not being built with built in pet toilets or dedicated small room for such.

I know that this has nothing to do with meals, but, as long as we are talking about really different things that get built in...........why not?

There are so many ways that our houses get built that are in need of a serious long over due reformation. This walk in fridge in a house is a great idea!

At my daughters house the Blue Apron boxes just build up in the back sunroom. Of course she has put away the food items into the fridge. All they are full of by that time is non recyclable junk.

I just simply cannot get past the waste to lend any recommendation to these delivered meals.

I took advantage of an offer a few years ago. The meals were delicious but, as others have mentioned, I couldn't get past the packaging waste....it was a LOT!!