HelloFresh (Not Even Sponsored)

Aweh, guys!

I have made it known in a previous post about meal kits that we have been stuck in a meal rut… and we are sick of it. HelloFresh is a brand we had heard of before, even in South Africa, thanks to the power of YouTube. I’m sure you’ve seen the ads shoehorned into a video by your favourite personality, so we decided to give the original box a go. We also received a discount of €15 off for each of our first three boxes so we didn’t really have anything to lose. Certainly not weight.

Hello HelloFresh

On Monday at the start of this week, the box arrived with much fanfare by me. I was honestly excited! This isn’t a secret, but I love food and I have a pretty good food knowledge based on the thousands of hours of cooking competitions I’ve consumed (mainly Top Chef) but I don’t cook that often because that is Hubby’s domain. He really has a way around the kitchen, taking my pretty good dishes and making them amazing. But since I am home, I though this would also be a pretty good outlet to direct my insanity towards.

At first glance

The spread

The recipe cards

I opened the box to find an envelope with our recipe sheets, two huge stalks of leeks and five individual bags of ingredients corresponding to each recipe. We also got a free non-alcoholic beer. What is cool is that you can choose from around 13 different recipes so you can suit it to your taste. The bags aren’t labelled but it’s easy enough to see what each bag is for. Honestly the biggest challenge was tetrising the bags into our tiny fridge. The aforementioned leeks took up a shelf on their own!

Now it was time to start cooking.

Day 1: Fennel Orzo Risotto with Perch

So, our first dish selection was an orzo risotto with a perch fillet. The recipe card said it would take 35 minutes, but I had my doubts as there was a lot of prep slicing up the veggies, but we weren’t yet starving. I chopped up the veggies including the bulb of fennel and fried up the bacon bits. That’s when I hit a roadblock. It mentioned bouillon at the start of the recipe but there wasn’t any included, so I gave Hubby the recipe card asking him if I missed something. It turns out that they expect you to have basics on hand and luckily, I had some chicken stock in the pantry. They actually have a table specifying how much of an ingredient you would need for the amount of people you are cooking for, in this case 400mls of bouillon for 2. This is great because that means I can replicate the dish in the future.

It definitely didn’t take 35 minutes… it was closer to 50 but I really didn’t mind as the end result was spectacular. I was concerned that the amount of fennel would cause it to be more like drop (Dutch liquorice) but it lent a delicious sweetness that complimented the fish perfectly and the cooking time recommended was spot on for the fish to be flaking and still glistening. It was a restaurant quality dish and it looked even better than the photo on the recipe card! THIS DISH WAS LIFE!

Rating: 9/10

Day 2: Meatloaf, Mash and Braised Leeks

Today was the day of meatloaf and cranberry chutney. The recipe card said it would take 40 minutes, but I scoffed certain it would be longer. If all the ingredients were prepped maybe, but where is the fun in that? This was also one of the more labour intensive dishes (which was noted on the recipe card). I had to braise leeks after cleaning them, make the meatloaf and make mashed potatoes so my dishwasher turned into my saviour. I also didn’t have enough mustard on hand for the mashed potatoes. Whoops. The meatloaf seemed a little pallid, so I hit the thermofan function on the convection oven in the last five minutes of cooking… and let me tell you…

It was pretty good! The meatloaf had a nice, crispy crust and was totally cooked through, the mash was nice and creamy (the mustard wasn’t missed) and the cranberry chutney provided a nice sweet and sour tartness to the dish. The leeks were… oniony, I guess. I like onions so I wasn’t mad. The only downside here is that it would be difficult to replicate this dish. The meat came preseasoned. It would have been nice to take it that step further and do it myself. But it was really tasty even if it took closer to an hour to from start to finish.

Rating: 8/10

Day 3: Pearl Couscous Shakshuka

Shakshuka. The dish I was least looking forward to… but it had to be prepared in 3 days so here we are. Hubby actually selected this one and it’s definitely not something in the realm of what I’ve cooked or really eaten. I’m not the biggest fan of eggs but I like them scrambled with cheese, so this would be a little out of my comfort zone. One obstacle is that I couldn’t find instructions on how to cook the pearl couscous, so I had to eyeball it… thankfully it cooked correctly. Another issue is that I didn’t have a lid for my frying pan, so I had to improvise with foil… and then comes the fail.

(Forgot the bag of pearl couscous)

I overcooked the eggs. I was aiming for a runny yolk, but they were definitely hard all the way through and I am entirely to blame. The heat was too high, and the foil cover created a nice circulation of steam… that said, it wasn’t bad. The tomato sauce was flavourful, the pearl couscous added a nice bite and the buffalo mozzarella became a beautiful stringy mess. It did take about 45 minutes to make mainly due to my own uncertainty… better luck next time!

Rating: 6.5/10 (if I hadn’t overcooked the eggs, it would have been a 7)

Day 4: Broccoli Pesto with Balsamic Roasted Tomatoes

I was waiting for it. The dish that would wreck my kitchen… and it was this. We don’t have a blender, so I have no idea why we chose a pesto based dish (apart from the fact that pesto is delicious), so that meant processing everything by hand. I grated a whole broccoli for Pete’s sake and dirtied a pan to roast the smallest handful of cashews before painstakingly chopping up the rest of the ingredients to the minutest possible size. We also didn’t have olive oil, so we settled for our olive oil based spread (forgive me father, for I have sinned). By the end of this, I had to do two loads of dishes in our dishwasher (she is small).

That said, again, it wasn’t disappointing. The olive oil spread was definitely not the right stuff as it made the unmilled, mixed together pesto pool with water but that didn’t stop the base flavours from shining through. It was herbaceous, acidic from the lemon, salty and the cashews added a nice textural contrast. Also, those roasted tomatoes were Italian kiss perfection. I don’t think I will be making this again until we have a blender as it added untold minutes to the process and until we have a decent bottle of olive oil.

Rating: 6/10 (I think it would be exponentially better blended with proper oil; possibly an 8)

Day 5: Japanese Chicken Stirfry

So, today was actually Hubby and my six year wedding anniversary and 11 years to the day we met, and while this didn’t scream fine dining, I was so happy to be given a dish with an ease of preparation. All the veggies were already chopped and all I needed to do was put together a sauce, stirfry the veggies and chicken separately and then bring it all together. I was also happy that the spices for the prespiced chicken were listed so I could recreate this dish in the future. This was also a calorie conscious option.

And, once again, it was really good. The chubby udon noodles were very satisfying to slurp up and the ginger and garlic based sauce was fragrant and there was an added sweetness from the additional honey. It was also the quickest dish I put together which was really appreciated at the end of the week. Hubby even commented that it was really filling which is great for something that’s “calorie conscious”. The only thing I would add in future is maybe some chilli to take the flavours up to max.

Rating: 7/10

Conclusion

I was actually really impressed with HelloFresh. The separation of the ingredients per dish really made things easy and the end results were delicious. Since we had a discount, it was definitely an affordable option for a full weekday of high quality dishes that created generous portions. What is great is the flexibility. You can choose how many meals you would like and which meals you would like from the menu. I also really enjoyed the surprise element as most of these dishes were things I’ve never really prepared before and it was also a learning experience.

In terms of cons, I felt that their preparation times did not factor in the actual prep of the dish but more the cooking time, so you do spend longer in the kitchen than anticipated. They also expect you to have certain ingredients and equipment on hand, which can lead to using olive oil spread in place of real olive oil or having to hand chop all your pesto ingredients since we didn’t have a blender. Admittedly, we chose the dish, so the onus was on us to be prepared.

But when all is said and done, it was a creative outlet that fed us very well for the week. We still have two more weeks of HelloFresh coming, and I’m quite excited about it!