My Experience Cooking With Hello Fresh & What I Thought!
* Please note this is not a paid sponsored post. I was gifted with a Hello Fresh Meal Box and all opinions, thoughts and experiences are my own. This post does include affiliate links with Hello Fresh. Thank you for supporting companies that help me continue to run The Whimsical Wife website*
Hey, guys, I am here to tell you today about my experience using Hello Fresh meal boxes. I've been busting to tell you how I went with trialling one since I have never experienced anything like this before. I had the pleasure of trialling a family box last week with four meal plans included in the box. Each meal came with a recipe card, the exact amount of ingredients and herbs that you will require for each recipe. When I first opened up the Hello Fresh Box I was pleasantly surprised to see everything packed in recyclable packaging and the ice packs that came with the food can even be used for future esky trips to the beach. You can never have enough ice packs for kids either. Ha.
Trialing this box could not have come at a better time as both hubby and I was in the throes of an awful flu plus sinus infection so cooking a decent meal was not high on my agenda. We were living off leftovers before the Hello Fresh box arrived by courier. It took me a little while to figure out that each brown paper bag came packed with each specific recipe ingredients. You will see in my video below that I soon realised that each recipe card is colour coded to the sticker on the brown paper bag to specify which ingredients go with which recipe. Let's just say I blame the flu on my slow brain. I am glad I did figure it out before proceeding to empty the entire contents of each bag and put it all away. Head slap moment.
We had four great meal options in the box starting with Crumbed Chicken & Sweet Potato Mash, Cheesy Baked Mexican Pie, Sweet & Soy Pork Noodles and last but not least Sweet Mustard Chicken & Baked Rice. To be honest I was not sure what to expect as I have never tried and Fresh Food Delivery Box before by Hello Fresh or any other company. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that the meal options were really quite quick and easy to make, not fussy in the preparation of each dish, healthy and balanced and most of all pretty darn tasty. I hate to fuss in the kitchen at dinner time because for us it is the most stressful time of the day with it being witching hour for the baby and the other two need to be wrangled into the bath before dinner. I found I had a little extra time each afternoon after prepping the day's dinner to go outside and spend it in the garden before hauling everyone inside for baths. I am usually hopping in the kitchen trying to get dinner ready in time that I found this so refreshing.
We got the Family Box delivered to us to trial which includes kid-friendly recipes i.e not overly spicy etc. I'd love to say each meal was met with raving reviews from the kids but you know how fickle kids are with food so I will say some were eaten begrudgingly while others were gobbled down. They particularly liked the Crumbed Chicken and the Cheesy Baked Mexican Pie. Hubby's favourite was the Cheesy Baked Mexican Pie while mine was the Sweet Soy Pork Noodles. However, we really enjoyed all the meals. Hubby said he found the meals from Hello Fresh to have excellent variety, to be simple yet tasty and that contained quality ingredients. I was really impressed with the quality of the meat in each recipe as well as the freshness of vegetables and salad items in the box. I was most impressed with the quality of the mince in the Cheesy Baked Mexican Pie. I could see you could cut corners by sending a lower quality mince but the mince was on par with the good stuff we buy from our local butchers. Not loads of fat nor filled with excess water. It was plain old fashioned good quality mince. The chicken was also free range and the pork that was used in the Sweet & Soy Pork Noodles were really generously thick steaks, trimmed of excess fat and finger licking good.
So while I can rave how much we enjoyed it I will talk to you about some things I did find I had to change/edit to the recipes. I found some recipes were just not big enough for a family of 5 who love to eat leftovers for lunch the next day. That being said these meals were not made for leftovers. All I did was bulk up some of the recipes with extra veggies or salad so that Hubby could enjoy the leftovers for lunch the next day. Also, I have food allergies where I am intolerant to dairy and avoid gluten for digestive issues. However, that didn't cause too many issues with eating these recipes. You will see in the video below that I simply tweaked the recipe to suit my eating style without too much fuss.
So you ask would I recommend this? I found this service to be a great option for families/couples/individuals who are time poor in the kitchen but are still wanting healthy meals on the table. Yes, It is a premium service which may or may not fit into everyone's budget but I thought if you are wanting to splurge on something to help ease family life this may be one of them. If you couldn't afford a Hello Fresh box as a weekly subscription other ways you could utilize this service for times such as:
- Holidays or Family Vacations - when you couldn't be bothered thinking about cooking. Get Hello Fresh to do the hard work for you.
- Gifting this service to a new mum and dad instead of bringing meals. (This would have been great during the newborn stage with our 3 kids)
- While you are sick (like we were) and don't feel well enough to shop for food for the week.
I hope you check out my video below on my experience using Hello Fresh. If you are interested in giving Hello Fresh a trial they are offering $35 off your first meal box. Your cooking experience might be blown out of the water like mine was.
