There are a lot of different meal kits out there. Choosing the right one for you can be a struggle. Big names like Blue Apron, Sun Basket, HomeChef, and HelloFresh lead the charge with freshly delivered ingredients and there are a lot of different factors to sort through. We went ahead and ordered a week’s worth of meals from HelloFresh to do all of the delicious research for you.
Below, you’ll find everything you need to know about HelloFresh, from price to how the meals taste and more.
The Basics
Price: It will cost between $7 and $10 per meal depending on which plan you choose. On average, however, a standard two-person plan for three meals in a week will cost about $60.
Shipping: $7 per box.
Frequency: Weekly (with the option of up to four meals per week on the classic plan), though you can amend the schedule, skip weeks, or pause your membership at any time.
Number of available meals: 16 weekly options to choose from on the classic plan.
Freebies and bonuses: HelloFresh offers a wide variety of seasonal promotions, but the most consistent ones are for students. If you are currently a student in the U.S. you can get up to 15 percent off every box. The meal kit service will often offer pretty substantial discounts for your first box as well, even if you aren’t a student.
Fun fact: Beyond the meal kits, HelloFresh also has an ongoing blog filled with recipes, videos, tips, and more. Even if you don’t want to order the kit, you can still make some of the meals at home by following detailed instructions from the blog.
HelloFresh Review
To get started with HelloFresh, we needed to select which plan we wanted. The Classic plan comes with a wide variety of meat, fish, poultry, and seasonal produce. This plan offers the largest variety of rotating meals. Additionally, there is a Veggie plan and a Family plan available for any vegetarians or folks with additional household members, respectively. Despite only making food for two people, we decided to go with the Family plan so we would have leftovers for lunch the next day. Once you select your plan, you will choose the number of people each meal will serve as well as how many recipes you want to receive.
After all of the logistics are out of the way, the fun part begins: choosing which meals you want to try that week. Due to the increased serving size associated with the Family plan, there were only nine weekly recipe options available to us, compared to the 16 options you get with the Classic. Everything looked absolutely delicious in the images, so we had some issues deciding, but we finally narrowed it down to three meals: honey-glazed pork tenderloin, lemon peppercorn chicken, and pork carnitas tacos.
- 1. 1. Honey-glazed pork tenderloin with sweet potatoes and green beans.
- 2. 2. Lemon peppercorn chicken with potato wedges and green beans.
We knew we weren’t going to be around for the delivery during the day and we were initially concerned with the refrigeration of the ingredients. Upon opening the box hours after it arrived, however, those worries were laid to rest. All three meals came in a single box with the red meat and poultry hidden under a thick layer of ice packs at the bottom of the box. Ingredients for each meal were neatly labeled in separate bags and already portioned out perfectly for us. Everything was neat, recyclable, and well organized.
All of the recipes were included on large, sturdy cards. These cards offered step-by-step instructions (with pictures) to help guide us as we began this meal kit adventure. The steps were simple to follow and the meals themselves only took about 35 minutes to make. While the end results weren’t exactly culinary masterpieces, but the food was surprisingly delicious. Though each recipe was using simple, everyday ingredients, the instructions offered some great tips and tricks for novices.
All in all, the meals get an 8 out of 10. HelloFresh offers simple and delicious recipes you’ll want to hold on to.
As far as flavor goes, the pork carnitas tacos were our favorite. So much so, in fact, that we’ve actually made them multiple times on our own after our meal kit trial was over. Despite using simple ingredients, such as ground pork and red onion, the overall flavor combination of this meal is what made it worthwhile. Pickled onions, seasoned pork, and lime-infused sour cream made this the tastiest recipe of the bunch (though the honey glaze on that pork tenderloin was certainly nothing to sneeze at).
All in all, we decided to give the meals an 8 out of 10. HelloFresh offers simple and delicious recipe’s you’ll want to hold on to. The price point is fairly low per serving, and the detailed step-by-step instructions are a great way to learn cooking from scratch. This meal kit service is a solid option for anyone trying to get started with healthier eating or cooking in general
The best part of HelloFresh is that it can teach anyone how to turn simple ingredients into a delicious meal. While there are certainly fancier meal kit services out there, this is one of the more practical options we’ve seen. Even after trying it just once, we learned some quick, yet effective strategies to add to our culinary repertoire.
