May 2017 Hello Fresh Subscription Box Review + Coupon

Hello Fresh is a weekly meal kit subscription box with complete recipes and high-quality ingredients to make your own fresh, healthy, gourmet meals at home.

They offer three different subscription options — Classic (choose 3, 4, or 5 meals for 2 people or 3 meals for 4 people from 6 weekly options), Vegetarian (receive 3 HF-selected meals for 2 or 4 people), and Family (receive 3 HF-selected meals for 2 kids and 2 adults). You can always pause the subscription to skip a week if you need to – this is super handy for vacations!

This review covers the Vegetarian subscription!

The nutrition information for each recipe is now a separate sheet (before it was a big sticker on the outside of the shipping box. The sheet contains a list of all ingredients and their country of origin.

DEAL: Currently, you can save $40 off your first box with coupon code 7UT7K8.

Each Hello Fresh recipe has its own lovely card with a picture of the plated dish, prep time and total time to table, calorie count, and a visual inventory of the included ingredients.

The instructions are easy to follow, regardless of your skill level. Usually you start by washing and prepping all the ingredients before cooking. Within the detailed, step-by-step instructions, ingredients are set in bold type for ease of recognition. Info panes in the sidebar list anything you’ll need from home (pans, cooking oil, etc), as well as the quantity of each provided ingredient needed for 2 and 4 person versions of the recipe.

The ingredients for each meal are packed in separate bags within a padded, insulated cooler bag. Several ice packs keep everything cold, with the individual paper bags protecting the ingredients from touching the ice directly.

The brown bags used by Hello Fresh keep all the ingredients for the recipes in order. Everything but the largest vegetables is separately packaged within the bags. Condiments and canned goods are provided in high-end, commercial packaging. Hello Fresh usually provides pre-measured spices in their own branded packaging. Big props to Hello Fresh for cutting down the box size and using green bags. Thanks for being environmentally conscious. Don’t forget to recycle the big boxes along with the freezer bag inside. I’ve found a place in my town that will use both to deliver meals to others. Recycling is the way to go!

Grilled Cheese And Veggie Jumble With Cilantro Chimichurri. 35 minutes, level 1, 580 calories per serving.
I was expecting a grilled cheese sandwich and was so disappointed when I realized there was no sandwich involved. Instead you literally grill cheese, now just who ever heard of that? It will be a gooey sticky mess in my pan but I followed directions and this was sensational. My new favorite food of the week.

Now the problem will be to see if I can find “grilling cheese” in this area. We’re not exactly a metropolis with a lot of fancy delis or anything like that. We’re talking “LA” which here means Lower Alabama. Boiled peanuts, okra, seasoned greens and almost everything in sight fried. This woman will be on a new hunt to find this cheese!

I can honestly say the rest of this meal had tons of flavor and the chimichurri… fabulous. So many great flavors all mixed together. You could pour that stuff over mud and it’d be delicious. Gritty, but delicious.

Toasted Brown Rice Bowl With Green Beans, Carrots, And Cashews. 30 minutes, level 1, 570 calories per serving.

Personally, I would have named this “Toasted Brown Rice Stir Fry.” My husband and I like a lot of stir fries, for us it’s a way to clean out the veggie drawer in the refrigerator. We liked all the veggies and the toasted cashews. How about if we rename this Stir Fry Bowl?

Let me tell you about the cashews, if you look at the pictures, you’ll see the cashews are super dark. The directions say to bake them about 5 minutes, whoa Nelly, that’s too long. I baked them 2 minutes, stirred them, baked them another 2 and about died because they were so dark at 4 minutes. Good thing I didn’t automatically throw them out, they tasted really good. So the moral of this short story is, check the cashews frequently!

This meal was mildly flavored with ginger, I could have used a bunch more as I really like the flavor. I have to laugh at myself because I used to use the powdered ginger and that has hardly any flavor and now I want lots of ginger flavor, the fresh kind!

Thanks Hello Fresh for teaching me about fresh ingredients and how awesome they are.

Baby Portobello And Orecchiette Primavera With Asparagus, Bell Peppers, And Chives. 35 minutes, level 2, 550 calories per serving.

It was a dark and stormy night… it really was as I was cooking and there’s nothing better for dinner on dark and stormy nights than a good hot/warm dinner. This fit the scene wonderfully well, very appetizing, hearty meal with just a little kick from the chili flakes. My plate of food had more than a kick because I sprinkled extra chili flakes on to make the pictures look pretty.

Now if you’re going to try to look for chili flakes in my pictures, you won’t find them. During the storm I took pictures of the prepared food and after eating and clean up went to download them and they were no where on my phone! I know I took the pictures so don’t even think I didn’t. Fortunately, I have leftovers and I forgot to add the chili flakes. Yes, that really is my story and I’m sticking with it.

Back to the dinner, love, love, love the sauce of sour cream and Parmesan cheese. With all the vegetables, chives and garlic, this was indeed a tasty meal. And the mushrooms, cooked until they turned a few shades darker added such an earthy flavor, pure delight.