One problem with our last house was that the kitchen was a little small, but with our new kitchen we really have no excuse to not cook at home. To start us off on the right foot I started a Hello Fresh subscription.
Subscribers get to select from 8 meals on the weekly menu and can get two or four portions of each meal and 3, 4 or 5 meals per box. We get 4 meals and the cost of the box is $10 / portion / meal – so $80. Each menu also features one premium meal for an extra $5 / portion.
For our first box I’m sharing step by step with two meals here because I don’t think just showing one gives a fair overview of the box. Each box comes with the meat individually packaged, the ingredients per meal all in one brown bag and a recipe card that shows pictures, lists out materials needed and provides step by step instructions. It seems like all the meals involve six steps.
The first meal we made was a fish dish.
The first step was to roast the potatoes with oil in the oven.
Next was to chop up the parsley and garlic for topping the fish
sauté the greenbeans
Cook the fish on the stovetop
And plate everything
I had a few issues with this one – everything after the potatoes took way less time to prepare than the potatoes needed to cook. The instructions didn’t have any good tips for flipping the fist to keep the filets whole and overall we found this meal to be very bland. We were not off to a good start.
Later than week we had a cherry glazed pork chop with lemon couscous.
All of the materials unbagged
All the veggies washed and chopped
Dried cherries in boiling water
Couscous in soaking in boiling water
Porkchops grilled stovetop
Cherry reduction
Couscous salad complete
The final product plated.
Overall the timing on this meal was much better and maybe I’m just more familiar with cooking pork chops but I felt like the instructions and pictures were more helpful. I had never made a reduction before and thought it came out really good. Once I got this one plated we were very impressed that it was something that had been made at home in 1/2 an hour and it was pretty tasty to boot. What I loved about this meal is that it’s something I probably wouldn’t have ordered in a restaurant – so new dish to discover, and I learned a new technique.
Other subsequent meals have gone more like the pork chop experiences and we’ve stayed away from fish moving forward. I really enjoy the convenience and think this service makes cooking fun. My biggest complaint is that changes need to be made 5 days in advance a- I feel like a big selling feature of this service is convenience and as a bust professional sometimes I don’t know 5 days ahead of this that I won’t be home until late or not at all to refrigerate my delivery and it’s very frustration to not be able to change the delivery date or address on something that has yet to ship. Overall I do recommend this service. If you are interested in trying you can receive $40 off your first box using my referral link.