Hi, friends! How was your Valentine’s Day? We had a lovely dinner out and came home early to relax on the couch with a couple of beers. It was simple, but wonderful.
I’ve been absent from the blog since last week because, honestly, I haven’t been doing a whole lot of cooking. Not from scratch, anyway. I’ve been feeling pretty burnt out lately between commitments at work and at home, so I decided to give Hello Fresh a try. The meal service delivers ingredients for three meals to your door in a refrigerated box. Hello Fresh offers classic, vegetarian and family boxes. The classic and vegetarian meals serve two and come with step-by-step instructions on how to prepare them. As much as I love cooking, it’s nice not to have to think about what to cook sometimes. I figured it was worth trying at least once.
Because I love to cook, my expectations were pretty high. And, I was pleasantly surprised by Hello Fresh. We had the sugar-sweet pork chops, steak with creamed kale and peppercorn sauce and Dukkah chicken in our box. James about every single dish. Here’s what I thought of the service.
Pros
- No shopping list. Because the meals are planned out for you, you don’t have to worry about going to the grocery store for anything other than basics for breakfast and lunch. This makes life so much easier.
- Hearty portions. I ordered the box that serves two people per meal, but the portions were so large that we often had at least a small amount of leftovers.
- Balanced meals. This is such a big plus to me, because it can be hard to get a well-rounded meal on the table during hectic weeks. Each meal features a main dish (meat or fish if you get the classic box), a healthy grain or starch as a side, as well as a large serving of veggies.
- Variety. This is another huge selling point for me. When I’m low on energy, I tend to cook the same few meals over and over again. I love that Hello Fresh got us to try new meals.
- Recipe cards. I kept the recipe cards for every meal we tried because I would happily make them all again. The recipes were easy to follow and all came together within about 30 minutes.
- Little food waste. It seems every week I’m throwing some veggies away, which I feel so much guilt over. It’s just hard to get through everything between just the two of us each week. Hello Fresh eliminated that problem because the box we ordered was designed for two people.
Cons
- Cost. I used a promo code to get $20 off my first box, but a shipment is usually closer to $60. While that’s less than we spend on groceries, it’s also less food than we would normally buy to get through the week. Once we bought food for breakfast and lunch, the cost was similar to what we would spend for groceries on a normal week. It wasn’t more expensive, but we didn’t save any money.
- Small number of servings. When I cook meals for the two of us, we often have enough leftovers to take for lunches all week. You can order the family box to get more servings, which is something I might consider in the future.
- Hard to find ingredients. While it’s great to be exposed to new flavors, I’ve already had problems finding at least one of the spices used in the box we received when I went to recreate a recipe.
Overall I was really pleased with Hello Fresh and definitely plan on ordering another box. It’s not something I will do every week, but I can see us ordering from the service once every other month or so. It’s a great way to get out of a cooking rut, and I think it’s perfect for people who don’t have much experience in the kitchen.
Have you tried any meal delivery services before? What did you think?