You may have seen on my Instagram stories that for the last couple of weeks Jamie and I, as well as the children, have been trying out HelloFresh. This is a company I’ve always wanted to try, but just kind of needed a little nudge to do so. So when they contacted me asking to review their ‘Classic Box’ for two weeks, I was over the moon. We’d spoken to them at The Baby Show a couple of years ago as well as them knocking on our front door so I knew what they were all about and I was excited to see how we’d get on.
I chose to get the deliveries sent on a Monday, although there are a couple of other days during the week that you can choose, but I thought the beginning of the week would be easier as we could then meal plan around it. HelloFresh offer a service where they plan the meals for you, do all the grocery shopping for every ingredient you’ll need (minus seasoning, oil, water) and they deliver everything you to your door along with the recipe cards. The only thing you’ve got to do? Cook it.
The HelloFresh ‘Classic Box’ contained 3 meals per week and these would each serve 4 people, which was exceedingly generous! I loved that we would likely be trying new recipes as I love variety, convenience and healthy meals; we do usually cook all of our meals from scratch anyway but it was nice to not have to think about what I was going to be cooking that evening. There are other types of boxes available, and they even cater for vegetarians which is pretty awesome.
HelloFresh Classic Box Week 1
I was so surprised with how well packaged everything was when it first arrived. All the cold things such as meat and milk were kept separately in a nice cool bag, and all the fresh ingredients were to the side. All the vegetables were super fresh and were even local which I was so happy about!
Our three recipes for this week were ‘Moroccan Meatball Potato Bake’, Pan Friend Chicken with New Potatoes and Tarragon Sauce’ and ‘Orange Glazed Duck Breast with Kohlrabi and Lentils’.
I was super happy to see the chicken dish in there as Jamie is all about the protein and we love our own tarragon chicken dish so I knew this would be familiar and it was SO tasty. In fact, it was so good I only remembered to take a picture of it half way through eating it as I couldn’t wait to get it in my belly. It was a little different to ours as it had some Dijon mustard in, and it was definitely a tasty addition.
The Moroccan Meatball Potato Bake was absolutely beautiful and it’s likely to become a new favourite. Oh, and it’s flippin’ lovely eaten cold for lunch the next day. Yum, yum! The only thing I’d say is that even though this was meant for 4, it would’ve meant only 3 meatballs each and Jamie and I like a bit more meat so we split it between two of us. I’d definitely say more meatballs are required!
The last of the week was the Orange Duck recipe. I loved this because it included a new vegetable that neither of us had tried before (Kohlrabi) and also the fact that it had a”luxury” meat because duck can work out pretty expensive. I thought there were probably too many lentils for me and that it maybe needed some more veg, or more kohlrabi but it was a blinding meal nonetheless. One we’ll be making as a treat!
HelloFresh Classic Box Week 2
The second week we were sent another 3 recipes and 2 of them are definitely my new favourites. Our recipes this week were ‘Poppy Seed Crusted Chicken with Creamy Rigatoni’, ‘Bacon Wrapped Pork Medallion with Peppercorn Sauce’ and ‘Chermoula Spiced Lamb with Minted Courgette Salad’.
The Poppy Seed Chicken was probably my favourite as I absolutely adore pasta. There was definitely more pasta than we needed and actually it could’ve probably served six of us if we’d had a couple more chicken breasts. The crust on the chicken was divine and it’s one I’ll be making again. This is also really nice heated up the next day!
The Bacon Wrapped Pork was just gorgeous. The peppercorn sauce was absolutely out of this world and I had no idea how easy it was to make. We ate the whole lot between two of us, never mind a third and fourth person. Whoops!
The Chermoula Spiced Lamb was lovely but it was basically a stuffed aubergine with a bit of salad on the side and didn’t really fill us up. It’s probably not one I’d make again, unless it was as a little side dish. Having said that this would be really lovely on the barbecue.
Other HelloFresh Thoughts
There are two things I think that could definitely be improved. One is that all the recipes seem to take up 3-5 different pans at a time, so you either need to read ahead and see how you can keep the washing up down, or you’ve got to be ready to wash up a lot of pans!
And the other thing is that I’d like to see on the recipe cards whether the meal is able to be frozen; just in case you have the time to cook ahead or in case you have leftovers. I love that they already tell you how many of your ‘5 a day’ you’re getting and how long they should roughly take to cook. I think the timings they’ve given are very generous and the food portions are usually more than enough.
HelloFresh are a subscription service, but they do allow you to cancel or skip at any time which is perfect if you fancy a break, or are going on holiday and no longer need the delivery. Typically a ‘Classic Box’ with the servings I had would cost £59 a week and while it may seem initially expensive, that’s four of you fed for 3 nights with absolutely no waste. I find that when I go shopping I’ll buy loads of vegetables and then around 1/3 of it will go out of date before I get to use it, or it won’t get used in any of our meals at all so I dread to think what we’re wasting by not meal planning. Now I don’t need to because HelloFresh do most of it for me.
I would happily recommend them to anyone who wanted to give them a go and it’s definitely something we’ll be subscribing to once our routine has settled down, probably at the beginning of next year. Well done HelloFresh, you came to the rescue when I needed it the most and gave me some awesome recipe ideas.
*I was sent the products in return for this review. All views and opinions are my own.
ooo this looks fab