Back a while ago I tried HelloFresh, now I’ve tried GoodFood and I wanted to share my thoughts with you.
*this article was in no way sponsored by or in partnership with GoodFood. All products were purchases on my own.
We’ve all seen it, there seem to be new mealkit services popping up everywhere. They all claim to be cheaper, faster, less wasteful and even sometimes healthier than our home-cooking and takeout, but what are they really like? I’ve often found myself wondering and tempted by their mouth-watering advertisements.
After trying HelloFresh a few months ago, when I saw a promotion for GoodFood I had to know if it was any good. You can read my review of HelloFresh here. So during the chaos of our recent move, my husband and I decided to try it out. I am going to share with you my thoughts on 3 of the 6 meals we tried and my overall thoughts on the service.
Here are the three meals we chose:
Ground Pork Stuffed Mushrooms with Black Garlic Aioli
I’ll spoil it right now, this was our absolute favourite meal of the 6 we ordered. It was different and interesting, packed with flavour, and fun to make. It was on the slightly more complicated side for mealkit recipes but fully worth the time and energy. I will definitely hang on to the recipe card for this one and try my own version.
Herbed Chicken Thighs & Roasted Potatoes
A good staple recipe, nothing ground breaking but reliable and tasty. It was really easy to prepare. I especially enjoyed the fresh cucumber salad. I could definitely see making the salad again especially in the hot summer months as it was lovely and refreshing.
Ground Beef Shepherd’s Pie with Leafy Greens & Peas
Not pretty looking, but pretty delicious. This was a fun recipe and a much faster way of making Shepherd’s pie. Although I have always loved Shepherd’s pie, I don’t often make it as it is a bit of a lengthy and complicated process. But with the ingredients mostly prepped in the mealkit, it was much quicker and fun to make. We thoroughly enjoyed this one and has leftovers for lunch the next day.
The other meals we ordered included an apricot glazed chicken recipe with bulger and spinach side dish, a creamy ground pork fresh pasta recipe, and a variation on pork chops (which I forgot to take a photo of – oops!).
Overall, my husband and I enjoyed GoodFood much more than HelloFresh. And here’s why:
- The portion sizes were larger, we often had leftovers despite only ordering the 2 person mealkits.
- The recipes were more interesting and different. I don’t want my mealkit service to offer me what I can already easily make, I want something that is interesting and pushes me a bit out of my regular cooking rut.
- The produce was fresher and there was a lot more of it. The produce was really nice quality and you definitely got more of it, so much so I often has leftovers that I used for other meals or salads.
- I like that GoodFood is Canadian. This is a bit biased of course because I am Canadian but nonetheless it is nice to have a mealkit option that is Canadian.
- This might vary box to box but I noticed that the expiry dates were less close to the date I received the box. This meant that I could play around with when I wanted to make each meal more than with our box of HelloFresh.
But what do I think of mealkit services overall? Honestly, I’m not convinced that mealkit services are better than just buying and cooking your own homecooked meals. I don’t find it saves money as I can often get bulk ingredients at the store to make a lot more food and freeze it for meal planning than I can for the same prices with a mealkit service. For cost-saving alone I wouldn’t recommend it for regular use.
I don’t want to comment on the environmental impact of mealkit services, but my gut tells me that I can’t imagine driving around all of these boxes not to mention the packaging of all the items is good for the environment. I think there are probably better ways to fix the environmental impact of our food supply system than mealkits.
But, what I did enjoy was the convenience of everything easily put together, no need to think through an ingredients list, and in a busy time in our life while we were moving houses, it definitely saved me stress and time. I think mealkit services are great for times in life when you are really stressed and busy and don’t want to be always ordering takeout. If you are recovering from an injury, just had a baby, or are moving houses would all be some examples of when I think mealkits make sense.
I hope you enjoyed my review of GoodFood, have you tried it yet? What did you think? Comment below!
Write soon,
Hannah B.L.
HBLogs 