I ordered HelloFresh to see if it was a scam.

all right so at this point we are all well aware of the home kit meal delivery services as an option for home Cooks you know the blue aprons the hello freshes the green chefs there's dozens of these companies they actually make up a 10 billion dollar a year industry that's rapidly growing but my question is are they just heavily funded and have a ton of marketing money that they can acquire customers with or is there actual value for home Cooks like you to subscribe in one of these Services I honestly don't know so what I'm going to do today is buy one of these boxes try it out myself and put it up against just buying groceries online to see what the cost breakdown is and really weigh all of the pros and cons so this is either going to be one long ad for these companies or potentially the exact opposite stay tuned to find out all right so we have to order one of these meal kits I'm gonna go with a little fresh that seems to be the most relevant one right now whether that's because they have the most marketing money and they're just pumping it out right now or they're actually doing really well I don't know but they're everywhere so that's the winner today so first we gotta choose a plan I am just gonna do the old meat and veggies the omnivore I'm going with two people just me and my wife two recipes a week so this is the minimum this is the base so that comes to 61 which seems like a lot but I guess I won't know until I see what I get how big these meals are how good the ingredients are so it looks like it's pre-selected these meals we've got an Italian chicken over lemony spaghetti which sounds solid and then I guess if you scroll down here you can add other meals now these all look really good or I mean some of them at least definitely some good ideas here so what I'm gonna do is piggyback or basically steal these recipes or these ideas and take the same budget of 61 dollars buy groceries online so you still have the delivery fees and try to make a few of blue apron's actual meals and I think if we just click into this let me see if they give you the recipes probably not they don't give you the recipes but they do give you all of the ingredients which is great so I'm gonna pick two or three of these and see how many of the ingredients we can get on the 61 budget oh this looks good pork sausage rigatoni so we'll try to make this and hopefully I'll have some overlap with ingredients so there's not a lot of waste oh this one looks pretty good spice is nice turkey couscous Bowl there's some decent overlap there we can actually use the pork sausage for this as well instead of turkey there's zucchini in both so let's screenshot this bad boy and I'm guessing that's all I can afford ingredient wise if I do have any extra budget I'll just buy extra ingredients and try to make a meal with all of the leftover stuff so now we're in the system on hellofresh those meals should just come in a few days I'm gonna head over to FreshDirect another free ad this is a local delivery service in the New York area and now all I have to do is look at these ingredient cards and start punching in some ingredients and see what my final cost is all right so I have most of the stuff in my cart here and it's coming to 49 there's going to be a delivery fee as well 58 bucks so this is just a little bit cheaper now there are a few things that I couldn't get that would have just jacked the price up a lot so the things I'm missing for these two meals are zatar spice mix a Turkish spice blend sliced almonds I wasn't going to get a whole thing of almonds for like 10 bucks and chili flakes now I already have all of those in my pantry and I'll say adding those up in very small amounts to make these recipes work will equal out to an extra three dollars which will bring us up to an even price to the hello fresh all right order placed coming in in two days which is great because tomorrow will get that hello fresh box and I will cook up all of those meals and see what we get there all right so the big reveal let's see what we got in here oh crunching things already does it feel like 50 of ingredients it's a little light so this right here is all the meal one ingredients we've got some promotional stuff some deals on more hellofresh keeping you in the game ha then we have our meat we have a little packet of chicken and ground beef and I guess that is one nice element that you have these single servings some people maybe get overwhelmed by like a big old packet of chicken breasts or boards so they're able to obviously portion things off second meal ingredients what's this oh wow that's a super small little packet of beef stock what the hell is this oh sour cream that's cool garlic powder so that's where they have me beat in this case obviously being able to have individual portions of these ingredients and then finally we have some what looks like pretty easy ingredient and recipe breakdowns looks simple enough for a pro home cook so first up was the mashed potato meatloaf and Brussels sprouts which feels as American as you can get not necessarily a meal that I'm normally cooking so let's see what happens first I slice up the potatoes got them boiling and then I sliced half of the shallot and diced the other half half and then I cut my brussels sprouts in half and started working on the meatloaf which was basically just adding in a few packets of seasoning and the bread crumbs all right just a quick little I would say halfway update we've got our potatoes boiling for these mashed potatoes oven is preheating for the meatloaf and the Brussels sprouts Brussels cut meatloaf mixture all in there what I've learned so far is I am terrible at following instructions and recipes like it all makes sense why when I make an Ikea cabinet or something I end up up at least one element and then I gotta go back and do it again I just like the fine print really going line by line it is slowing me down by so much I just don't think I'm built for recipes which makes sense why I'm always pushing no recipes on Chrome Cooks but outside of my own personal issues the recipe is solid they're using certain ingredients in different elements of the dish which I think is beneficial and very creative so far so good I oiled up my pan form two meatloafs and added the Brussels sprouts to the other side and I appreciate the efficiency of this recipe with two things on one pan roasting at the same time then I picked some thyme leaves chop that all up got that sauteing with some shallot add it in a little bit of water with this beef concentrate packet and then just cook that down a little bit so this was a pretty interesting recipe for mashed potatoes now I'm going in with one of these sour creams and that's pretty much my base right there so really nice recipe to flavor bomb these mashed potatoes [Music] you know what's so funny quick little update I thought I was making a base to a mashed potato which was this little sauce right here turns out that is the sauce for the meatloaf I'm an idiot but that makes sense sauce I'm gonna flavor up these mashed potatoes with the rest of the sour cream and the rest of the garlic powder wait a minute look how much extra time I have they didn't mention this but I'm gonna throw a little bit of this thyme in the mashed potatoes because I mean why not could use it to bring the mashed potatoes together I added the sour cream packet a little knob of butter the garlic powder packet and a little bit of that extra Thyme and then just mash them up and season them all right these are done roasting one thing that they don't tell you to do that I'm definitely doing is adding this extra beef fat to the potatoes that came off meatloaf a recipe is not gonna always tell you these things that's for sure I'm gonna learn that on the job all right potatoes going on oops awesome meatloaf routes and finally meatloaf sauce wow that's a well portioned meal right there so far so good they definitely have the portions Down Like You Can Tell those are refined I'm a pretty average sized dude if I'm sitting down and I'm hungry that's definitely doing the trick all right up next we've got Italian chicken over lemony spaghetti looks simple enough chicken breast right here and then in here all right we've got some noodles that are from Italy these look pretty solid we've got our zucchini one lemon a little package of parm oregano chili flakes and then it's basically a super reduced stock super easy to just pour in and then another sour cream that's it and instead of showing you a whole nother round of cooking I gotta say another great dish right here incredible flavor still took a little longer not as long as the last one I basically boiled the noodles while sauteing the zucchini then you take the zucchini out fry the chicken that's coated in oregano and then once that's done what I really liked was throwing in some lemon zest garlic and chili flake in some olive oil which created such a flavor Blast for this pasta I'm just gonna plate it all in one big white bowl here's the chicken perfectly cooked I will say wow hellofresh delivers again so I'll be bringing this home for dinner that's why I'm not sampling it right now but I've been tasting the noodles and again it tastes great honestly a little outside of what I would make I will say I'm a bit inspired whatever team is developing these recipes at hellofresh give them a raise they're doing a good job really good layer building a flavor and good utilization of ingredients in different forms throughout the recipe good there and before we move on to the grocery haul I want to mention that anything you see in this video this bowl right here by Hanselman this beautiful non-stick pot by Smeg and all of these knives right here which are various brands that I love can all be found at prohomecooks.com we teamed up with my absolute favorite brands in the kitchen game to give you a curated experience to find everything you need to become a true Pro home cook so check out chromecooks.com for your next kitchen purchase anything you buy there of course supports the channel and we will get into this grocery haul all right so here is my 58 grocery haul feeling I would say a little bit more substantial than the hellofresh box now yeah like we've got a big old package this is all I could get of carrots same thing just two zucchinis whole pack of Scallywags couscous rated car noodles they forced me to get two cloves of garlic oops I doubt I'll be able to use that all up a little jug of chicken broth I don't think hella fresh has any organic ingredients which is a great way to save costs everything was quality but in this case you know I got some organic pork because I wanted to organic local carrots just a few upgrades I don't think it's a huge cost difference lemons and some sour cream there we go all right so the first hello fresh recipe that I'm gonna copy without a recipe is the pork sausage rigatoni Rosa I'm gonna be using sour cream instead of cream cheese which they have here and the only ingredient I don't have chili flakes which is like a few cents so here you go oh look at that spicy sausage zucchini rigatoni plate that up real quick now this right away is feeling more like three meals than two two portions maybe two and a half close there and making it was pretty simple I first fried up half the packet of pork and then I started working on the veggie prep and I figured I'd throw a carrot in there because I had a whole bag so I chopped up the carrot chopped up a few cloves of garlic chopped up that zucchini and when the pork was all broken up and nice and crispy I dumped that out added the carrot in cooked that for a few minutes till it was soft added in the zucchini started cooking that and then at this point I got the pasta going which took around 11 minutes while the pasta was going it was time to work on the sauce so I dumped the veggies out right into the pork Bowl got a little bit of oil in there and then throw in some lemon zest garlic and chili flake which was actually inspired by the last pasta from hellofresh so thank you for that lemon zest tip I cooked that down for about a minute added in some tomato paste and cook that out a bit which took another two minutes and then I started pouring in and emulsifying in some chicken stock to really get a nice sauce once the noodles were done I added the noodles with some pasta water added in some sour cream folded that through and then added in my parmesan cheese and they needed just a little bit more pasta water to thin it out a bit all right so that was delicious and that ended up being actually three meals for me I filled up three of these 32 ounce containers so the yield I would say was slightly more than the hellofresh pasta but we're moving on to the second meal and a lot of these ingredients cross over which is great the only thing I need for this spice's nice turkey couscous bowl that I didn't order is a little bit of soy sauce boom boom a Turkish spice blend which actually is exactly what this is because my parents were in turkey and they got this for me some sliced almonds I've got some whole almonds I'll just take a handful of these and slice them up so I'll make this dish and see what leftover food we have after that boom Another One Bites the Dust look at that so I realized that the description of these meals on hellofresh are so detailed that you're not gonna get the exact same recipe but you can get enough information by just reading and that's exactly what I did so the first thing I did was just chop up some garlic for this couscous I got that frying off in some oil dumped in the couscous a little bit of chicken stock a little bit of water and just let that cook on the back burner until it was Fluffy they mentioned an oven roasted sitar spice carrot and zucchini so that's exactly what I did I pulled out a few carrots gave them a peel diced them up into chunks and then diced the zucchini into bite-sized pieces coated them in some oil and a little bit of salt yes look what I found this has been sitting in my pantry since I moved into the studio for about a year now now that's your zitar spiced veggies I threw those in the oven for about 20 minutes at 450 degrees Fahrenheit and this was quick cooking couscous so it was already done so I just turned the heat off and let that warm until everything else was finished and then I started working on what they're calling a Savory soy sauce and Tunisian spiced turkey in this case I'm using the pork if I started frying that up in some oil until it started to Brown and then I added that Turkish spice blend with a little bit of soy sauce and just cooked that down for a few minutes until this pork was looking beautiful and they mentioned a creamy garlic lemon sauce which I can pretty much guarantee gets mixed up in a bowl but I figured I would just take advantage of this flavor in the pan so what I did was I added a little bit of oil some garlic and instead of doing fresh almonds on top like it suggested I just threw up some sliced almonds right in the pan to toast up and brown and then I hit it with some sour cream a little bit of lemon juice and seasoned it up and cooked it for about a minute until I had a perfect little creamy zesty garlicky sauce all right let's plate it up couscous roasted zitar veggies got our spiced pork wow I love this dish in our sour cream lemon almond garlic sauce wow finally some scallions holy hell thank you for the inspiration hellofresh we are now equal with hellofresh four meals first four meals but we have a lot of extra ingredients I don't know why I'm saying we half bag of couscous all of this goodness in here there is definitely a meal that I can make two meals hopefully maybe three who knows so what I ended up doing was just taking all these leftovers and cooking them on the live stream and I made this super delicious couscous by caramelizing some carrots some green onions adding some tomato paste a little bit of chicken stock to make a super delicious couscous which pretty much got rid of all the rest of the couscous I actually took a sweet potato that I had in the pantry which pretty much equaled out the pricing for both the hello fresh and the grocery haul and I chopped it up coated it in some spices threw it in the air fryer roasted that off and then the real star of the show where I got super creative was taking the rest of that parmesan cheese that I had adding some Turkish ice to it and letting those bake in the oven to create these spiced Parmesan crisps and someone actually had a question on how to use up yogurt which inspired me to make this yogurt sauce with the rest of the sour cream and some lemon and some garlic and this dish came together so good the parmesan crisp really elevated the sweet potato so it could hold up as a vegetarian dish on its own bringing this up to a grand total of six meals for the grocery haul to four meals from hellofresh for pretty much the exact same price so if you are a beginner or you're busy and you don't want to think about anything these boxes can clearly be a great option in the kitchen but if you are feeling the desire to start breaking free of recipes and really coming up with things on your own I created this ultimate veggie PDF right here to help you on that Journey just as a little Aid so click this it's a free download and I will see you in the next video

Channel: Pro Home Cooks

Views: 3,241,777

Keywords: hello fresh, blue apron, fresh direct, meal delivery, mike g, mike greenfield, pro home cooks, green chef, purple carrot, dinnerly, home chef, hungryroot, plated, every plate, cook unity, budget meals, pro home cooks live, food cost breakdown, recipes, hello fresh review, meal kits, meal delivery review, is hello fresh worth it?

Id: Xz07nEBT7FQ

Length: 17min 45sec (1065 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 15 2023