hello fresh

[herbwhite59]

Has anyone tried hello fresh meal service? What were the results? I am a single old man and would like to eat at home but don`t want to plan or cook a meal. Whadda you think?

[Frank]

You must have looked at their web site:

I heard about it on the radio and sounds good but I would expect it to be pricey and you still have to prepare and cook what they send you.

[Bob]

Get an Anova Nano sous vide cooking setup.

Sign up with Whirlpool Corp's Yummly.com website.  They have a bazillion recipes that can easily be adapted to sous vide.

Cooking doesn't get any easier or more delicious than sous vide.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Tried it a couple of times. The quality of the food is good. Aside from a few basics like salt and pepper and cooking oil, its included.

typical prep time is about a half hour. The planning part and shopping part is eliminated, but you still have to do some cooking. You still have cleanup of prep dishes, cooking utensils.

Before you sign up at the website, some supermarkets carry the meal kits. It would be an easy way to check it out. Another advantage, if you are in a rut eating the same meals over and over, it introduces variety.

There are plenty of frozen microwave meals, but they tend to be loaded with chemicals and tons of salt. Not a good daily diet.

[rbowman]

I don't know about the delicious part but that introduces several layers of complexity to my usual throw it in a cast iron pan method.

[micky]

". To cook sous vide, food is placed in a sealable bag and cooked in a water bath. "

I don't see how you can get a broiled steak, broiled hamburger, broiled chicken, fried fish when something is in a bag in a water bath.

My mother used to boil hotdogs until I talked her into pan-frying them (no oil needed) and they were a lot better.

Is yummy and anova the same thing?

There *are* things meant to be made in the oven that I microwave. Doesn't come out the same but I consider it an alternate recipe.

Microwaved fish doesn't have the broiled exterior but the fish is the same afaict and good. I can't think of other examples now.

I don't think my micorwave is broken but I have to cook things less than the low end of the suggested cooking time to get what I want.

[micky]

Don't they let you try it for a week? I went to the page but didn't understand it, seemed to require at least 4 people for 3 meals. Maybe it's my browswer but I couldnt' enter anything.

Is this shipped from nearby?

My mother, who would be 110 now, planned for being old by trying very hard to live in walking distance of a supermarket. (She also didn't want to live below ground level or on the third floor so it left limited choices) She didn't really succeed and by the time she stopped driving at 85, she couldn't walk even as far as it was. Even if she could have it was as far as mine is**. She had to hire someone to take her to the doctor and shopping, or maybe do the grocery shopping. She died at 88, just prior to moving to assisted living, her own small apartment with a dining room not far away.

This was just before supermarkets started delivering food. She would have liked that.

I'm single and planning for that stage too.

**I'm only 2 minutes by car from the supermarket, but even when I was young that was too far to walk with bags of food. I could use a NYC shopping cart, but I woudln't want to spend 20 minutes each way.

I tell people that I don't cook, I apply heat. If it has more than 3 ingredients, counting salt, I probably won't make it.

If you want warm food you're going to have to heat it, and it's easy enough to broil a steak or chicken. Unless getting up to turn it over is already a problem, which can be.

I went though a very thin spaghetti phase for years, but it seems to have ended. I bought ragu spahetti sauce and heated it by putting it on the hot spaghetti. Sometimes I'd cut up hotdogs and put them in with the spaghetti.

I went through a salad stage for years, iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, green or red peppers, mushrooms, cheese slices, supermarket dressing like Wishbone or Marie's.

I go through a scrambled eggs etc. stage periodically and I really should do it again. I like to stand there and stir frequently and if standing is hard that could be a problem. I add one or two of mushrooms, green peppers, hotdog pieces (one or two hotdogs), bits of ground beef, bits of tomato, whatever I have. My mother told me that if it's 10 cents or less between one size egg and the next bigger, the next bigger is the better deal. That was 50 years ago and the differences are even more now, so I always buy jumbo. I use 4 or 3 eggs for scrambled eggs and it's a full meal.

My meals are balanced but sometimes only over time. That is vegetables at one meal, meat at another.

Added salt in prepared food would be a problem for some people. I'm lucky, I use loads of salt (a box of it a year plus whatever is in the food already) and my blood pressure stays low or once in a while 120/80.

As far as chemicals not being healthy, I figure at 71 I"m already too old for it to have much effect. It won't bother me until I'm 96.

Now I'm hungry. I have to go have lunch....

[Wayne Boatwright]

On Sat 22 Sep 2018 10:47:30a, micky told us...

Some sous vide users absolutely rave about it. I have no experience with it.

I don't see how either, but I've been told by some that once the meat is cooked by sous vide, it is then brownede/broiled/fried after the fact. I can't see that happening to fried fish. I once cnsidered buying sous vide equipment, but knowing how I prefer to cook, figured I would use it once or twice and then shelve it.

Pan frying or broiling hot digs are better methods than boiling, IMO. We bought a Johnsonville sausage cooker to quickly cook and brown sausages, and it works with hot dogs too. Removable cooking plates go right in the dishwasher. The sausages brown better than on the gas grill.

I use my microwave every day, but I never use it to cook meat, fish, or fowl. I just don't like the results compared to traditional cooking methods.

What is the wattage of your microwave? Ours is 1350Watts. When a recipew calls for "full power" I have to set mine to power level 8 instead of 10. Power level 1 will still allow some foods to simmer.

[Ed Pawlowski]

You bring it to an internal cooked temperature, then you sear the steak or whatever on the grill to sear the outside and not overcook or dry the inside.

[Ed Pawlowski]

It is shipped UPS overnight, packed in ice in an insulated box. Mine came from New Jersey.

You bought three meals at a time. I bought a meal for two people and the portions were good. I bought the Classic plan and for 2 people.

The OP did not want to cook so the Ready Made plan would be good for him. They have it portioned for either 2 or 4 people so if you are single, you get two meals out of the minimum.

[micky]

My mother probably learned from her mother, who probably learned from her mother around 1900 in eastern Europe. I think they were fairly well off but the gas broiler probably had not been invented yet. Of course pans had been invented, and fire too.

I think she liked it better that way too. I was imitating carnivals or some place I'd seen it done.

I like meat rare and sometimes I take the food out of the broiler before it's ready and I might finish cooking it in the mw. So the outside browning has already taken place.

The first mw I had, a Model 2, Amana Radarrange, I cooked beef in a few times and it was terrible. But with all the later mws, it was just mediocre. I wonder what the difference was.

Chicken too came out terrible with that first mw. Now it comes out fine except the skin is not crisp and that's the best part of a chicken.

I thought they only went up to 1100. But if yours is bigger mine might be too. I think the label is in the back so it will take a while to check.

I don't know the rating becuase i didn't buy it. I was at someoone's home and it was sitting on its side in the driveway. The wife had melted some plastic in it, and even though I guess she'd cleaned it and there was no sign of that anymore, she thought it was in the air vents, iirc, and was afraid to cook with it for the children because she thought the plastic would be bad for them. I didn't try to talk her out of that because it seemed hopeless, what do I know-she might be right, and they already had another one. She said I could have it.

I ran it for 10 minutes with a bowl of water in it and declared it repaired. Occasionally I would wonder if she was smarter than I was and I was going to die a painful death 10 years from then, but I got over that.

I have different power levels too. I should see if 1 makes anything simmer.

I always use 10 because I have no patience -- and I manage to plan and defrost in advance. If I haven't I eat something else.

[micky]

Fair enough. If they don't make him sign up for a lot, he can try it. I'm sure they don't make one start off with a lot or a) a lot of people wouldn't. b) those who did and didnt' like it and then had to eat it all would give them a bad reputation.

[rbowman]

Pan fried kielbasa doesn't sound that good to me. Most European sausages aren't the pre-cooked tubes of mechanically separated chicken that are hotdogs.

[Ed Pawlowski]

I like it on the grill.

[Jack]

Yah, I skip the Maillard reaction in the skillet.  Dump it straight from the Ziploc bag to the plate, sauce and all.

[Jack]

Personal preference I guess.

I usually put a cut of meat and some kind of sauce/marinade into the bag, cook for a few hours and it comes out delicious every time. Takes maybe 2 minutes to assemble the sauce and then 2-3 hours to cook though I usually let it cook a min of 5 hours.

For hot dogs, maybe try something as quick and simple as a pack of hotdogs slitted lengthwise and cooked in your favorite barbecue sauce.

[angelicapaganelli]

Fresh kielbasa or smoked? I often pan-fry smoked kielbasa to give it a nice browning.

Cindy Hamilton

[angelicapaganelli]

Definitely. Your philosophy is pretty much the exact opposite of mine. If there's no browning, meat isn't worth eating.

Cindy Hamilton

[Wayne Boatwright]

On Sat 22 Sep 2018 01:55:15p, micky told us...

When it comes to speed settings in a microwave, faster is not always better.

FWIW, I like my beef cooked medium, pork and fowl cooked completely but not dried out, and fish always fried and of course completely done.

As I said before, I never cook meat, fowl, or fish in the microwave, so discussiong it is a moot point.

I use my microwave to cook many things and the speed I use is always appropriate to whatever I'm cooking.

In recipes you cannot always rely on what microwave setting is advised since they vary considerably.

[Wayne Boatwright]

On Sat 22 Sep 2018 04:17:20p, Ed Pawlowski told us...

I like mine on the grill too but I've been very happy with the electric sausage grill I bought. It cooks and browns thoroughly and quickly, andno need to brave the weather if it's not good. :-)