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/$9.99 per serving for the basic plan, $11.50 per meal for unlimited meal choice), Vegetarian (receive 3 HF-selected meals for 2 or 4 people/$9.99 per serving ), and Family (receive 3 HF-selected meals for 2 kids and 2 adults/$8.74 per serving). You can always pause the subscription to skip a week if you need to – this is super handy for vacations!
This is a review of the Hello Fresh Classic Box!
The ingredients for each meal are packed in a separate bag within a larger, insulated box. The rigid inserts both insulate and protect the food from any damage to the external box. Several ice packs keep everything cold, and the food bags are separated from the icepacks by a divider. Meat is packed at the bottom, sandwiched amongst the ice.
Included in the box is a bright envelope welcoming you to the best deals. Inside are a couple promotions for other subscriptions. The color is a good visual representation of the freshness inside the box — let’s see what’s in store this week!
DEAL: Save $40 off your first two boxes – no coupon code required, just use this link for the deal!
There are two third-party promotions included in this box.
The flip side shows discount codes. I like that they send the offers in a separate envelope (I’m not a fan of third-party literature in boxes), so you can easily set it aside to look at later. The offers are usually pretty good, so they are very useful if you need the products advertised.
Another surprise that you will find in this box is this $45 off on your first subscription of Hello Fresh Wine (same deal with this link!) This subscription is run by Hello Fresh, and the wines are selected to pair well with the meal selections for the week. This cool aspect removes the biggest hurdle in enjoying wine with a meal — picking the right one for your menu. This is definitely worth checking out.
Each Hello Fresh recipe has its own lovely card with a picture of the plated dish, prep time and total time to the 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. They even use a red font to point out spicy ingredients, so you can adjust accordingly. I really like that they call out when they’ve sent more of an ingredient that is used in the recipe — when they don’t mention it (which is most of the time), the items are pre-portioned and can be tossed right in without measuring. 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.
Every recipe comes with a wine pairing suggestion — they used to suggest specific wines that were available through Hello Fresh Wines, but they now list a wine category (such as “easy,” or “bold”) corresponding to Hello Fresh Wines designations. This gives more flexibility by broadening matches within HF Wines, but it makes it less useful for pairing your own wines.
The bottom portion of the card indicates the prepping, cooking time and the calorie intake for each meal.
Hello Fresh now features a Dinner2Lunch recipe, available only in premium selection. This means that the ingredients for dinner recipe can be reprocessed to another recipe for lunch. Tonight’s dinner extras will be transformed into tomorrow’s lunch!
They provided some tips on how you can transform your dinner’s excess to be a perfect tasting lunch.
The box also comes with complete nutrition information for each recipe, including a list of all ingredients, their country of origin, and a “best used by” timeframe.
The ingredients for each meal are packed separately in a paper bag!
Everything in my box!
Sausage Pasta Dinner With A Shallot Zucchini Risotto For Lunch – 45 minutes, Level 1, 840 calories per serving
This sausage and mushroom pasta was a hit, even with the kids. It’s so creamy and the combination of lemon and tarragon made it even more delightful. It was super simple to prepare, and we used part of the fry up for the Dinner2Lunch feature.
What makes this meal really amazing is that the leftovers from last night’s dinner can be today’s lunch. Shallot Zucchini Risotto will take more or less 5 minutes to prepare. The creaminess and taste were still intact. Since the dish includes rice, it easily filled and satisfied our tummies – and there was a lot of it. This is worth the $10 upgrade if you’re not on the choose anything plan.
Italian Pork Sausage Pizza with Pickled Jalapeño, Shallot, and a Side Salad – 20 minutes, Level 1, 940 calories per serving
You can never go wrong with pizza. This Italian Pork Sausage pizza is so saucy and very meaty. The flatbread crust gets layers of tomato, mozzarella, and Italian pork sausage. It even has jalapeno for a spicy kick. The fresh salad side dish was light and yummy. It was super simple to assemble and the fresh mozzarella really made this dish!
Cuban-Spiced Steak with Poblano Peppers, Rice, and Garlic Lime Crema – 30 minutes, Level 1, 760 calories per serving
Smoky and slightly spicy, this Cuban-inspired steak is coated with aromatic seasonings. It was rubbed with earthy cumin and herbaceous oregano that resulted in a bold and flavorful meal. Since it was paired with flavored rice, the meal was so filling. I also loved the caramelized onion, poblano pepper, and a zesty lime sour cream that rounded out the whole dish.
This week’s Hello Fresh meals are Italian-inspired and Cuban-inspired! I love that this subscription allows us to explore various tastes and cuisines with their offerings, as well as the fact that they provide fresh ingredients and easy-to-follow recipes. The Dinner2Lunch meal is also lovely, it helps me to save a lot of time in preparing and cooking. Hello Fresh is indeed a great meal kit subscription for anyone who loves cooking!
Have you tried Hello Fresh?
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