Our thoughts on HelloFresh after a week of meals | Review

I don’t know about you, but HelloFresh is always advertising itself to me. It’s on my Youtube and Facebook ads, telling me how much easier my life would be if I just purchase the meals. Our friend Becky always has HelloFresh meals, and sometimes gets codes to share with her friends, which gives the new signup a 5 day trail, where you can get dinner for two people, for each day. In our household, we cook a lot. All of our meals are homemade, and we don’t actually eat freezer food – it’s either homemade or eating out, really. I am always unsure of what to make of these sorts of at-home meal kits, but I do find the concept interesting, especially when it comes to trying new foods.

So, excited, Dann and I took on HelloFresh for a week, to see what the meals are like, what we thought of them, and how they would be. Thanks to Becky, we got the trail to try out, and we sort of mini-reviewed them on Twitter, but this post is my full thoughts. When you sign up to HelloFresh, they automatically select five meals for you, but there is a menu which showcases more options. Some are included in your membership, but others will jack the price up, as they are more premium items. For this trail, we stuck to only the items in the membership.

Halloumi Tacos

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Tacos are always a safe bet. Dann and I both love Mexican food, but really never eat halloumi, so we were excited at the start of our week! Halloumi tacos were really easy to make – the seasoning was simple, the chipolte mayo went really well in the tacos, and the corn and pepper mix was very filling for the taco itself. It’s a simple meal that is really great, and it’s the perfect amount for two people. There aren’t any sides, and this is when I realized there actually isn’t any sides in any of these meals, really. In my family, sides came with every meal, so I find it weird to be eating all one flavor, if that makes sense. I like dipping into my side dish and changing around with the flavor that I am eating. Despite that, I found the halloumi tacos to be really yummy and I wasn’t craving anymore food afterwards, so it was a very good start. We actually still make these at our home now, and the kids love them!

Porky Pappardelle

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When I had initially put this item on the menu for the week, I had planned on having it a bit later in the week, as all of the items in this meal are pantry items (apart from the meat and spinach) so I figured it would hold well in the case that more fresh items didn’t hold up. But then, I was craving some pasta, so we made it on day two! This pappardelle was made in little time – just about 20 minutes – but the sauce tasted as if it had been cooking for ages. I think this was due to the reductions that were used in the sauce, which added so much flavor to them! It’s a really hardy dish, which once again, was super filling – I actually felt stuffed after eating my half of the meal. It’s a great recipe if you like Italian food.

Beef Toastadas

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Back at Mexican food, we had some beef toastadas the next day, which we sort of ate as tacos as it’s really hard to actually eat toastadas. This meal felt very meat heavy, due to the amount of beans in the toastada, and wasn’t as fresh as the halloumi tacos, but it felt really filling, hardy, and like a really good dinner. This size was perfect for us both – and we found it really easy to make up the toastadas and eat them – though I secretly do wish there was a bit of avocado on there – which may be just my obsession with avocados.

Herby Chicken

The herby chicken was my least favorite dish of the entire week. It was a big sized chicken breast, with some kale and potatoes to go along with it. I felt like the chicken itself wasn’t very flavorful – it actually had quite a big taste of coriander, which I didn’t enjoy. One of the chicken breasts had barely any skin – which is the most exciting part. The sauce that went along on the potatoes and kale was lacking in flavor as well, and it just was a strange dish for us. I felt like it wasn’t up to scale with the other foods that I had during the week and probably isn’t something I’d order again.

Pork and Kale Stew

Lastly, we had the peri peri pork and kale stew, which came with a side dish – chorizo bread. This stew was the longest cook time – as the rest took around 20 minutes. This stew had kale in it, which came out bitter, but overall the recipe was very flavorful and good. I really enjoyed the chorizo bread, we don’t often eat much bread but it went really well with the stew dipped onto it. The stew was rick in flavor, though it wasn’t exactly spicy like you’d think with peri peri pork.

Overall, I feel that HelloFresh is a really easy way to do your dinner planning. I found that each meal did really fill us up and was very simple to create. The instructions are clear – and the meals feel balance, which make for a great dinner for those who aren’t sure how to cook or have trouble deciding. The negatives I found with HelloFresh are firstly the packaging. There is a lot of packaging, which is a bit tough. These meals are only for dinner, really, and are much too big for lunch – which means that HelloFresh doesn’t replace going to the store all the time. You will still need to get lunch, and what not, from a supermarket. We did find that one of the recipe cards was missing – so we had to check online for the recipe cards, which isn’t a big problem but is worth noting. There was also some confusion when it came to the ingredients themselves, as you get a weeks worth all at once, and often the fonts are small or hard to read.

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