Hello Fresh Vegetarian Subscription Box Review + Coupon – March 2016

Hello Fresh is a meal kit subscription box with complete recipes and ingredients to make 3 meals every week, with each meal feeding either two or four people, depending on the plan you choose.  Though it is a subscription, you can pause your deliveries when needed — whether you are out of town, have other dinner plans, or just aren’t in love with that week’s selections.  The standard subscription provides high-quality meats (free-range chicken, anti-biotic meats, etc.) to use in the recipes.  Though we do eat meat, we cook vegetarian three times a week.  Thankfully, Hello Fresh has a vegetarian subscription for both casual and dedicated vegetarians.  This review covers the vegetarian box, which featured a recipe by Jamie Oliver! 

The boxes used by Hello Fresh keep all the ingredients for the recipes in order, and they stack nicely in the fridge.   Within each box, everything but the largest vegetables is separately packaged.  Condiments and canned goods are provided in high-end, commercial packaging.  Hello Fresh usually provides spices in their own, pre-measured branded packaging.

Hello Fresh has great instructions, and they are easy to follow even if you are an inexperienced cook.  Each recipe includes several pictures so you maintain a sense of how the dish should look as you go along.

There is also information provided on everything you need to know about the dish — nutrition info, prep time, and even which recipes are best to make first.  Note that the recipes created for Hello Fresh by Jaime Oliver, an English celebrity chef and healthier food advocate, are written slightly differently than the normal Hello Fresh recipes.

Jamie’s Oozy Zucchini Risotto with Mozzarella & Fresh Basil. 40 mins, level 3, 593 cal.

Green, it’s the color of St. Patrick’s Day and with that in mind Hello Fresh kept the green going with the recipes this week.  Jamie used basil, celery and zucchini, a wonderful combination of flavors with a crunch.  I like that Jamie gave you a choice, white wine, to add to the risotto.  I used it, adds just a touch of flavor.  We also used the whole chili, wow what a nice punch of heat (for us mild people, anyway).

The recipe card describes this dish as oozy, cheesy, scrumptious risotto.  The oozy came from the rice/stock combination,  and cheesy – oh man, we loved the mozzarella’s chewy, stretchy, creaminess.  Scrumptious, why yes, yes it was, we commented and ummmmed through out the meal.

This rates 10’s across the board:  taste, texture, smell and looks, yummy.  Jamie, you didn’t let me down.

Spring Tortellini Gratin with Asparagus and Parmesan Breadcrumbs. 30mins, level 1, 592 cal.

Jamie Oliver, you have some real competition in the chef that put together tonight’s dish.  WOW, it was so good, we ate all of it, no leftovers for tomorrow’s lunch.  I even used a spatula to get the last drops.

And talk about easy, a little bit of chopping, cook, and cook a little more, mix and broil.  I think the tortellini is the key…wait a minute, there was pesto.  I love pesto, I even grow my own basil to make pesto, a Weight Watcher’s version.  So it was probably the tortellini and the pesto.  But wait again, the asparagus was delicious and the breadcrumb mixture, well, I ate some of that before it went on top.  What the heck, it was all the ingredients put together in an absolutely divine way.

Look at how delicious it is close up! This rated a definite 10.

Roasted Pepper Fajitas with Smoky Refried Beans and Citrus Sour Cream. 30 mins, level 1, 533 cal.

Hello Fresh outdid themselves this week.  Three new recipes with three ratings of 10 by us!  Whoop whoop, what a delicious week it was.  Maybe it was because they were so zeroed in on making things green for St. Patrick’s Day…well, I just don’t know and don’t care.  It was so good.

So easy and so tasty with the smidge of lime flavor at the end!  These fajitas were packed with power, flavor, filling, and nutrition.

My husband and I are convinced that a lot of the flavor is due to the fresh ingredients.  No bottled lime or lemon juice and mostly fresh spices and herbs.  My husband has enjoyed it so much, he’s planted a garden with basil, cilantro, chives and so on.  He normally only plants tomatoes.  Gosh oh mighty, it’s taken us years to figure this out!  What a waste of all those years of eating semi bland food.  Thank you Hello Fresh, emphasis on the Fresh!

This recipe was a grand slam 10.

Visit Hello Fresh to select your box for next week!  Take $40 off your first box with coupon code 7UT7K8.