Recently I tried the food subscription service: HelloFresh. It’s a meal kit delivery service that sends weekly shipments of complete meals to cook at home. It’s your job to cook and prepare the meal.
So Why HelloFresh?
HelloFresh is a great way to avoid “meal planning” as well as grocery shopping. They send you everything you need to prepare the meal and the ingredients are fresh! Plus, there are plenty of dietary options if you follow a specific diet.
It is reasonably priced and maybe a good fit for many households. However, it may not be the best fit for those with special dietary needs.
Each week, HelloFresh ships a box of ingredients as well as the recipes. Each box has the proportion ingredients you need, including the special seasonings, garnish, and sauces. You might need a pinch of salt here and there, but everything else is covered.
All of the recipes from HelloFresh have clear nutritional information, so you’re able to see exactly what you are putting into your body. Plus, they are all farm-to-table ingredients.
Subscription Model:
If you are like me, you might be wary of a subscription food plan because you want to cancel or skip a week. Who wants to feel locked into anything? HelloFresh allows you to cancel or skip whenever you would like.
What Makes HelloFresh Different?
- Choose from various options for different diet types and preferences like vegetarian, low-carb, low-calorie, and more.
- Easy to skip a week or cancel
- Easy to follow recipes and instructions with photos.
So what do each of the meal plans with HelloFresh mean?
- Meat & Veggies: The basic meaty and vegetable dinner.
- Veggie: plant-based meals that are vegetarian but not always vegan.
- Family Friendly: Quick and easy foods that kids will recognize.
- Calorie Smart: Each meal has roughly 650 calories or less per serving
- Quick and Easy: These meals can be cooked in less than half an hour.
- Pescatarian: These meals feature seafood, but no other animal
Even if you select one of these specialty meal plans from Hellofresh, you can easily adjust which meals you would receive during the week. You haven’t committed a single recipe and can choose one out of the 20 you would like.
Pricing:
HelloFresh averages out to be about $8-11 per meal. The more servings you order per week, the cheaper it is. Shipping is also $7.99 per week.
HelloFresh Ingredients:
According to its website, HelloFresh focuses on sourcing its ingredients. This means they include fresh produce, hormone-free chicken, sustainable, and even ocean-friendly seafood. They don’t just go the cheapest route.
| Pros: | Cons: |
| Delivered recipes straight to your door. | Recipes are usually time-consuming to cook and take anywhere between 25-45 minutes. |
| Variety of options | No gluten- or allergen-free meal options |
| Specialized meal plans are available, including vegetarian, family-friendly, and pescatarian. | If you’re following an extremely strict diet like Keto, you won’t find that. |
| Portions and prices are competitively priced to other models. | $7.99 shipping fee |
| Delivers groceries and recipes directly to your door |
My Experience with HelloFresh:
I ordered a 3 meal plan to try including curried chickpea fritters, one-pan portobello, and poblano fajitas, zucchini, and mushroom bibimbap bowls. None of them were recipes I would attempt to cook by myself, but each tasted great.
Zucchini and mushroom bibimbap bowls:
This was my favorite of the three HelloFresh meals. Truthfully I had no idea what bibimbap even was. It was the easiest to cook, and I followed the directions and even turned out to make the best sticky rice I’ve ever made.
One Pan Portobello and Poblano Fajitas:
We eat many tacos and fajitas in our house, but I would have never thought about adding mushrooms. My only complaint with this Hellofresh recipe was it wasn’t filling enough. Even though it had cheese and flour tortillas, I felt as though I needed a side. We ended up cooking more rice with it so it would be filling. I liked this recipe a lot due to the lack of dishes it used.
Curried Chickpea Fritters:
I saved this HelloFresh recipe for last because, honestly, it intimidated me! I’ve never cooked or really deep-fried anything, and making a curried chickpea fritter sounded intimidating. While this HelloFresh was much more time-consuming, I followed the directions, and it was easy to make. It was the messiest and I found myself needing the entire dishwasher for a meal for two.
HelloFresh Conclusion:
I do like HelloFresh once every few weeks to keep meals interesting and fun. For us, it’s still an expensive meal service to do every week, plus it’s time-consuming. Some days, we don’t have or want an extra 45 minutes to cook a fancy dinner. If you are someone who is bored with your current meals, HelloFresh could be a good idea.
In all, the food is good, the meals are fun and unique, and the cost isn’t “crazy.” I’m enjoying having a week of HelloFresh meals per month. It forces me out of my comfort zone and to cook fun and new things.
Other subscription meals I’ve tried:
You can try HelloFresh for yourself here.
Questions for you:
Have you tried HelloFresh?
Have you tried any meal delivery service?
We used this service for about 6 weeks. 2 meals per week and shipping was running $60 per week. Normally had enough leftovers for 1 lunch per meal. Two CONs were the excessive packaging (not all accepted for recycling in Norfolk) and the fact that in my area, our weekly delivery came after 7pm on Wednesday so we were kind of pressed to eat both by Sunday. PRO: I did find the meal prep an adventure that got us out of our comfort zone recipe wise and some of the meals you can do on your own later if you save the card (there is a vegetable and honey flatbread that is really good). As you found out there are some meals that take 4+ pans and a couple of bowls and blow up the kitchen like thanksgiving dinner. Toward the end I started ordering meals with minimal pans and prep time. Like Netflx or HBO max, I’m waiting for Hello Fresh to beg me to restart with some sort of free shipping deal before we start up again.
Ha! That’s funny you say that Gene because I was just thinking that I could use a good discount from them. I hate yet to find a meal delivery that I can really justify the price although I do keep trying.