Hello Fresh – First Time Trying a Meal Kit
Exposure to Meal Kits
There are several meal kit options out there, and I think Blue Apron was the first I’ve heard. Several friends/acquaintances mentioned these meal kits were fun and delicious, notably the hello fresh meal kits. There are a lot of advertisements, such as $70 off or X amount of free meals. It sounds so good to be true, and it kind of is because you don’t get the full $70 discount at once and you don’t get the X amount of free meals at once. It’s the value of those meals from several weeks of meals that total the X amount of free meals ($90), and the $70 off is spread throughout several weeks. In other words, you’ll end up paying something for your first Hello Fresh meal kit.
Our Pricing
I haven’t been interested in these meal kits before because they are rather expensive at face value. The husband gotten a piece of advertisement mail address to him from Hello Fresh stating he can try 12 free meals. That interested him, so he signed up. The catch was he was not able to see and select which meals until after he put in his information. The meal plan he chose was 3 meals, 2 servings a meal. The pricing was not free. It’s still rather expensive after the discount!
Our First Box
The first Hello Fresh meal kit box we receive cost close to $24 after the discount and free shipping ($8.99) for the first box. It included the ingredients to make the following –
- Cheesy Smothered Mushroom Chicken with Mashed Potatoes & Roasted Carrots
- Sesame Beef Tacos
- Italian Pepper Steak Sandos with Melty Mozzarella & Roasted Potato Wedges
Hello Fresh auto-picked the 3 meals by default for the week, but gives a list of options to replace any of the 3. There are gourmet options where you can pay $8.99 or $6.99 or how much more extra PER SERVING. The steak recipes or surf and turf, or anything with fancy stuff in there contain some kind of up-charge. We did not go for any of those.
Hello Fresh Meal Kit Packaging
It’s similar to the above package, but not as neat and vibrant looking. The package arrives in a cardboard box with insulation inside to keep the ingredients cold. There are separate bags containing ingredients for each meal, with the meats and such packaged outside of the bags. It includes recipe cards for each of the meals and those were made very nicely. The bags contain what you need for the meals and the exact amount (if it calls for 4 tbsp sour cream, it’ll give you 4 tbsp sour cream). There are items they require you to have in your pantry, such as salt, butter, pepper, etc. Make sure you have those before starting on the recipe!
First Recipe We Tried
We tried the cheesy chicken recipe first. I love how Hello Fresh posts their recipes on their site so that you can shop and get ingredients on your own and make them. The above image shows the ingredients that it includes with and the ingredients they expect you to have. The time to complete everything took a bit longer than estimated, but the overall product was alright. We followed the instructions exactly to the timing and we wished we did not cook the carrots as long as they listed for because parts were burnt.
Thoughts on the First Recipe
I took a photo of our first Hello Fresh meal, and there it is. This is one serving. It seems small, doesn’t it? There’s the chicken, mashed potatoes, carrots, and mushrooms. The mushrooms were the best part, and it gave flavor to everything else. The chicken had cheese on top that helped with flavor. The chicken itself and the mashed potatoes were bland without anything on them. I was still hungry after eating my serving, so one serving is just not enough for one person here.
Second Recipe We Tried
The second Hello Fresh recipe we tried was their Sesame Beef Tacos. Above are the ingredients for them as well as the nutritional facts per serving. The difficulty for this recipe is listed as “easy” and it was similar to making our own tacos by heating up ingredients and assembling the tacos ourselves.
Thoughts on the Second Recipe
The tacos were pretty good, and I would make these again with some modifications. The pickled radishes had good flavor and I liked what those brought to the tacos. The downside to these was there were only 3 tacos per serving, and that is just not enough! I like to overload my tacos with toppings, and it wouldn’t be fair if I used 1/4 to 1/2 of all the stuff on one of my tacos, so the ratio to tortilla and stuff was off for me. Also, 820 Calories per serving? I just can’t believe it!
Third Recipe We Tried
The final recipe we tried for the week was their Italian Pepper Steak Sandos with Melty Mozzarella & Roasted Potato Wedges. Above are the ingredients it needs, breaking it down by what it comes with and what we need. 1050 Calories per serving? Holy moly! This one did seem a bit bigger than the cheesy chicken and the sesame beef tacos, but a lot of it was in the potatoes.
Thoughts on the Third Recipe
The combination of this is good, but I didn’t like it too much because it was rather bland despite how many Calories it contained compared to the other 2 recipes. I had to put quite a bit of hot sauce on the beef and ketchup hot sauce mix with the potato wedges. The TJ’s sausage with peppers and onions we make tastes better than this in my opinion. The husband enjoyed his serving more than I did, perhaps because instructions called for putting garlic on the bread (mild garlic bread). I’m rather sensitive toward garlic, so I didn’t eat much of the bread part. Additionally, I’m rather picky on breads too. It’s tough to eat “generic” breads after working at a French bakery many years ago.
Final Thoughts / Worth It?
It’s been an interesting week so far with Hello Fresh, but overall it is not worth it for us. We think it’s extremely pricey for what it is, and we do not get full off one serving from the recipes. It isn’t worth it for us, but it seems very fun and worth it for other people. Am I telling you not to try Hello Fresh? No, not at all… try if you’re curious, even for just one week because that’s the best pricing with the discounts. Again, Hello Fresh is generous with sharing their recipes on their site, so those may be worth checking out to get an idea of what to expect. Sure, it can save time with grocery shopping, and Hello Fresh marks recipes of it being vegetarian, carb smart, one pan, and so forth. That’s pretty nice too, but we’ll be sticking to going grocery shopping. I need my TJ’s fixes!
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