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Over the past several years, I’ve signed up for both HelloFresh and its sister company, EveryPlate, multiple times. I always sign up for the same reason: I get bored of the food that I’m cooking. I don’t want to have to buy ingredients to cook and then eat the same exact thing for five days straight. I just want a little bit more variety and a little bit of encouragement to do more actual cooking. I really like cooking, and since I just got my new cookware, I certainly don’t want to just keep eating stuff out of the microwave! I’m really excited that I just signed up for EveryPlate again, and I wanted to share why.
First of all, HelloFresh and EveryPlate are both from the same company. HelloFresh has really interesting and exciting recipes. It is a little bit more expensive, although they do offer promotions and sometimes offers for free items. While I really enjoy HelloFresh, I’m not a very advanced cook. I don’t find that the HelloFresh recipes are necessarily difficult, but the EveryPlate recipes are a little bit less complicated.
The Perks of Meal Kits
The EveryPlate boxes don’t include quite as many staple ingredients, so you do sometimes have to provide your own sugar, flour, and things like that. HelloFresh tends to come with every single thing, except for maybe butter, cooking oil, salt, and pepper. However, EveryPlate really provides the things I need that are hard to buy in small quantities. For example, getting two carrots instead of an entire two-pound bag, getting two hamburger buns to make burgers or sandwiches instead of having to buy a pack of eight, or getting sauces and other things in small, single-use containers instead of having to buy an entire bottle of soy sauce for one recipe.
I also save the recipe cards, so I have an entire binder of the recipes that I’ve already done with HelloFresh and EveryPlate. I actually have gone back on a couple of occasions to recreate some of my favorites! However, I will say that doing that still takes a lot of planning, shopping, meal prepping, deciding on recipes, buying every single piece, seeing what you have, and getting more ingredients that you don’t. That is where it gets difficult.
What these meal kits do for me is take the planning and shopping part out of the equation, especially being able to get the ingredients in the quantities I need without having a lot of leftovers. It just gives me more variety in food than I would get cooking for myself. I get more fruits and vegetables, which are the types of perishables that are difficult to keep around when you live independently or are in a small family or couple; produce can go bad very quickly. Also, the meat comes in exactly the portions you need. Yes, it’s nice to have extra meat in the freezer sometimes, but it’s also great when you only need a half a pound of meat and that’s exactly all you’re getting.
I really like that I can get three different meats—sometimes I’ll do a chicken, a pork, and a beef dish all in one week. I like that there are potatoes, rice, and different side dishes. Most of the vegetables are pretty approachable, like green beans, carrots, and zucchini.
HelloFresh vs. EveryPlate: The Packaging Difference
Another difference between HelloFresh and EveryPlate is how they package everything. HelloFresh packages the ingredients for each meal in its own individual paper bag. On the other hand, EveryPlate puts all the meat together in the bottom with the cold packs, and then they put all the other ingredients together in one large paper bag, requiring you to break them out and sort them.
I actually kind of like this better because I take a couple of different plastic containers to keep everything organized in my fridge. I put all the meat into one container, the sauce packets into a small container, and then I typically divide the other ingredients and produce. You do have to go through the items for each recipe, but they have the ingredient list printed right on the card. You just grab what you need for that specific meal and keep the others in your containers until it’s time for them. This is just a personal preference thing, and it contributes to the lower cost of EveryPlate versus the slightly higher cost of HelloFresh. Neither is better than the other; it really just depends on what you prefer.
Flexibility and My At-Home Routine
Every time I’ve canceled in the past, it was mostly just because I was busy and had to skip the boxes a lot. You can skip a week with no problem if you’re out of town, trying to save a little bit of money, or if you know you’re not going to be able to cook that week. I usually order a box maybe every week or every other week—it just depends. I tend to look at my weekly schedule and see if I have three nights to cook. For me, getting three meals a week from EveryPlate gives me six servings as an individual. Some of the meals, like the pasta dishes, will actually give me three servings, but that’s just based on my personal preference.
I don’t mind leftovers, and now that I have my Souper Cubes, it’s much easier for me to go ahead and freeze extra components. Say a meal comes with a bunch of carrots and it’s too much; I can always freeze a serving or two of those carrots in one of my Souper Cubes to use in the future. I can save them for a week when I don’t have a box, when I don’t feel like cooking, or when a meal doesn’t come with a vegetable and I want to add them in.
I also use a food inventory app on my phone called InvenDo to keep track of my fridge, pantry, and freezer. This makes it really easy to know exactly what I have on hand, which helps me decide if I want a food box that week or if there’s an ingredient missing in a meal that I can add from my personal collection. I’m going to do an entire blog post on the InvenDo app and how I use it to inventory my kitchen, so more on that later!
Food Freedom, Personal Preferences, and a Disclaimer
I have some personal food preferences and needs: I don’t like seafood, I don’t like things like beans and mushrooms, and I’m also lactose intolerant, which means I can handle some dairy but not too much. Everybody has their own unique way that they need to eat for their body and their medical history. For example, I have IBS and prediabetes, however, I am on zero strict diets for those. I have worked with my own medical nutritional therapist.
If you are someone who struggles with any kind of food issue or has specific medical needs regarding your food consumption, please find a medical nutritional therapist or a registered dietitian. They can provide you with the most comprehensive view of your personal needs without falling into the trap of online food trends and other perhaps dangerous, unhealthy ways of eating and caring for your body.
But that’s not really what this post is about! I just wanted to put out this disclaimer because I will not be sharing any type of calorie counts or similar content on this blog, especially with these food boxes. All I want to talk about is whether it was easy to make, if it was delicious, and if I enjoyed the ingredients. I am all about food freedom, enjoying your food, and having a good relationship with food and your body.
These meal kits actually really help me with that because I’m able to get a lot more variety in my diet, have more options, and eat things that I enjoy. Because you’re cooking it yourself from base ingredients, it’s really easy for me to make modifications for my lactose intolerance, take out things I don’t like, or cook things in a different way that I already know I prefer.
What’s Next (And a Discount for You!)
One thing I noticed now that I’ve received a box again after several months is that just knowing that food is in my fridge ready to go—and having the recipes right there—makes me really excited about cooking and having dinner. It’s something that I think I always forget every time I end up needing to cancel because life gets too busy. I’m just excited because I know that there’s delicious food waiting and that I get to cook it. I can honestly say that in the several years I’ve been on and off with EveryPlate and HelloFresh, I’ve really never had a bad meal. Some of them I didn’t cook perfectly, but that was on me! Every recipe so far has been delicious, and I cannot wait for the first one.
Because I want to post some “cook-alongs” with me to show how I use the recipes, what modifications I make, what I liked, and what was difficult, I’m hoping to give you an idea of what to expect if you’re interested in trying one of these meal kits yourself.
For now, I’m just really excited to be getting a new EveryPlate box this week! I have three amazing recipes that I’m going to be starting with—one of which is brand new to me, and two that I think I may have done before. Keep an eye out for those posts and any future EveryPlate reviews!
If you are interested in trying EveryPlate yourself, anyone who has a subscription gets the opportunity to share a box with friends and family to give them a discount on their first subscription, which also gives us a discount back. If you would like to get a discount on a food box and also help me get a discount so I can keep cooking and sharing this information, please go ahead and click my link below! There is absolutely no obligation for you to do that, but if you are interested, I’d love to help you out—and it helps me out as well!
Click My Link to Try it for yourself! EveryPlate Discount BoxEveryPlate Discount Box
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