Dinner time!  Planning a meal, healthy or just filling, every night takes time and energy.  Especially, when you want to be frugal and healthy or even if you just want an easy meal that is tasty without breaking the bank.  With so many folks cooped up at home many of us either had to learn to cook or at least break out of our normal routine.  Well that was me, I was getting very tired of my normal routine and yet, it was hard to look at recipes, shop for all these items and then spend an hour learning to make it.   Sooooo…. I decided to try Hello Fresh!  This post is about sharing my experience with this food service.  (full disclaimer – this is truly all based upon my experiences.)

Let me preface this review with one of my life philosophies:  Cook once and eat twice!  If you are going to cook and have to do the dishes, try to make enough to have another meal or two (or at least lunch the next day).  During COVID, shopping was also a bit trying so I was already looking at some of the various services to try.   Christmas came around and I was ordering some flowers as a gift and they provided me a coupon for Hello Fresh which made it very affordable to try. 

I signed up for the 3 meals for two people per week.  It’s a very easy service to use – their website will show you the pictures of the meals and tell you the descriptions.  Based upon your choices, of regular type meals (meat/potatoes or pastas) or vegetarian or gluten-free, you will be given a selection for the week.  It’s easy to change and save for that week as long as you do it before cut-off date/time.  The boxes arrive on the day you select in a box with ice packs.  Meats under the veggies/other items.   It doesn’t take much time to unpack – it’s good to put the instruction sheets in a specific place for reference.   

Here is what I learned:

• Unpack and prioritize the meals based upon the veggies to be used (so you use the most perishable first).
• Review the instructions to also look at how long it takes and if you need to pre-heat the oven – many of the meals call for roasting the veggies in the oven.  This makes them tasty but means you will need to allow a bit more time.
• It saves time in cooking if you read all of the instructions and prep the food per the instructions.
• If you are a (slightly) picky eater, this meal prep allows you to add as little or as much spices per your taste.
• It is really nice that the plan comes with tiny little bottles of the vinegars or comes with little sour creams, or stock or jelly.  Especially, as a single person, this not only helps you have the ingredients, it saves money and waste.
• Also, if you have concerns with salt, this is good as you can control the salt or fat in your diet.

Tips:

• When roasting potatoes, if you have other veggies in the house, e.g. like carrots, prep them and toss them on the pan.  It will add additional health benefits and help reduce your veggie waste and I like more veggies.
• Try to reuse some of the pans – often, the recipe will call for browning and then moving the meat to a baking sheet.  If you can brown in an oven safe pan, you get to keep the pan juices which adds more flavor and reduces cleaning.
• I found that for most of the meals, I portioned out two dinners and often had enough left over for a small lunch to take to work.
• Look at your work/social schedule and energy level, skip the week or reduce the number of meals if you are getting behind in cooking.
• Also, if you are getting the three, or more, meal plan, freeze the meat for the meals that will be cooked later in the week.  This way if you get busy or end up eating out, the meat will keep in the freezer.

So, how hard it is to cook these meals?  I consider myself to be a decent cook who can make some delicious things but I have never had any formal training.  Also, as I was a single mother for quite a while, often my main cooking goal was getting a hot meal, that a picky kid would eat, on the table in 30 minutes!!  With that said, I found that this helped me expand my repertoire and I learned that I can make “pan” sauces and they are pretty easy.  Also, on the website, the meals will identify if they are easy, quick or more advanced.  One of the great things, is you can do the “add-on” for chopped salad kits and pre-cooked individually wrapped chicken breasts.  These are a huge win for saving time for dinner or lunch!

An unexpected benefit is while, it may appear to be expensive for the service, in reality it can be frugal.  Spending an estimated $65-$70 dollars per week sounded expensive, however, it helped me stay on budget.  I also found shopping was easier as I knew for me, I had 5-6 dinners and lunch several times a week accounted for.  Especially, if I had an “MJ” salad too. When I took the leftovers, I saved ‘lunch money’ too as I was not buying lunch in the work cafeteria.  Granted if I cook other meals on my own, I often bring leftovers to work for lunch too.

This service has its perks and makes it easier to cook meals at home since they provide all the ingredients and you just have to have the basics.  The basics are oil, salt, pepper, and butter.  It does still require prepping some of the veggies and washing dishes and after 6 months or so I did get a little bored with some of the meals.  Now, that we can get out more, I am taking a break from the service and planning to cut back to two meals for two for the summer.  

One of the downsides, is the extra boxes and the ice packs to be disposed.  All in all, if you are interested in improving your cooking and your diet, Hello Fresh, or one of the other services, may just push you out of your comfort zone. And this can be a more comforting and delicious place in the long run.