Hello Fresh Subscription Box Review + Coupon – March 2016

This week’s Hello Fresh revived some simple favorites by giving them a flavorful overhaul.  Hello Fresh is a meal kit subscription box where you’ll get the recipes and ingredients to make 3 meals for two (or 4) every week. If needed, you can pause your deliveries and choose alternate meals (at least for the Classic box). There’s also a vegetarian box available. This is a solid meal subscription box with easy and accessible recipes.  We typically get a dinner for two, plus a bit for lunches the next day (or the better part of a meal for our young kids, when the food is mild).   

Our 3 meals for 2 people.  Hello Fresh also offers a family box – 3 meals for 4 people — that at 8.75, is the lowest price per meal on the market.  If you don’t crave too much variety you can always get that box and cook things twice for two. Or, try out the 4 or 5 meal box.

As always, there is plenty of ice to keep everything cold — especially the meat, as it arrives buried in ice packs at the bottom.

Hello Fresh added something new this week, and will do the same in the upcoming weeks…

The back of the information card will now feature a chart that will guide you around the kitchen. This week, it’s all about measurements and conversions!

Hello Fresh‘s menu cards have detailed instructions are super easy to follow.  It has nice illustrations, is clearly written, and even lets you know nutrition info, prep time, and which recipes are best to make first to optimize freshness of perishables.  They’ve recently been featuring meal options created by Chef Jamie Oliver.

This is an example of a typical HF recipe.  You first set up your mis-en-place by washing and chopping your vegetables — only the Jamie Oliver recipes depart slightly from this format, as they follow his methodology and perform the prep as the dish is being assembled.  I like the boldface on specific ingredients — it makes it easier to grab everything you need at each step.  Hello Fresh sends all the spices, sauces, bouillon and such in Hello Fresh branded individual serving packets or in off-the-shelf brand name packaging, so there are no repackaged items to leak or pop open in transit.

Here are all the ingredients inside this week’s box.  Apart from the meat, all the ingredients for a recipe are packed together in a single box which stacks easily in the refrigerator.

Jamie’s Tasty Grilled Chicken With Warm Green Bean Salad. 45 mins, level 1, 395 cal.

As has been the case with all of the Jamie Oliver recipes, this dish was relatively light, but loaded with flavor.  A ton of fresh rosemary, brightened with a splash of lemon juice, gave the chicken a heavy infusion of flavor, even with just a quick marinade.  A warm mustard dressing was paired with roasted tomatoes and fresh green beans, creating a lighter and more flavorful substitute for a warm potato salad.  This dish was easy to put together, so long as you are comfortable butterflying a chicken breast.

Juicy Lucy Burger With Tomato-Onion Jam and Baby Gem Lettuce Salad. 40 mins, level 2, 825 cal.

Though a stuffed burger sounds difficult, it was a breeze to put together.  The jam and dressing were actually the most time-consuming portions of this recipe, but they added big flavor.  I liked the barebones approach to seasoning the hamburger (salt and pepper only), as leaving out chunky items allowed for a much better seal to retain all the cheese (so much so that you can’t even see it in the pic!).  I did stray from the recipe a bit:  I didn’t feel like heating my oven to roast the two cloves of garlic, so I sauteed them instead and toasted the buns in the toaster.

Gratuitous cheese close-up.

Dijon Pork Chops With Crispy Potato Cakes and Asparagus. 45 mins, level 2, 529 cal.

I’m a bit of an aggressive trimmer with asparagus, so the post-roasting veggies were a little sparse.  The potato cakes were really good, especially given the simplicity of the composition.  The pan sauce was really tasty, and making it fit in well with the timing of the overall dish — I loved that I could use one pan to cook the potato, meat, and sauce, adding each in turn to a single baking sheet, and serve everything at once.  This was a very well orchestrated recipe.  And whatever happened to tough porkchops?  These were incredibly tender and juicy.

I enjoyed this trio of dishes.  Each was packed with big flavor in its own way.  It was also a nicely balanced set of meals — the indulgent burger was paired with salad, and the richness of the pork dish was offset by a bright offering from Jamie Oliver.

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