A while ago I entered a competition to win a few weeks of Hello Fresh deliveries. Hello Fresh sends you a box of ingredients and the recipes to make dinners with the ingredients provided.
I didn't win, but I did receive a phone call offering me an introductory family box containing 4 meals for 4 people at $79.95, which is a significant discount over the normal cost of $139.95. I took up the offer and on Monday evening our first box was delivered.
Unfortunately the eggs did not enjoy the trip and my first job was to clean egg off everything else in the box. I let them know and they credited my account for the eggs.
Besides the egg incident, the box was well insulated with cold packs to keep the ingredients fresh.
With four recipes and four family members I decided everyone could give this a go, and told each person to pick a recipe card and a night. The recipes went up on the fridge and we were ready to get started.
I consider myself to have average cooking skills and can usually follow a recipe to produce an edible meal.
I started at 4:50pm. My first job was to locate all of the ingredients. I had separated out as much as I could into containers by meal when I unpacked the box, but some things such as the herbs come combined in a single packet for the entire week.
Allow five minutes of googling to figure out which is the parsley and which is the coriander if you don't know your herbs. At least eliminating the mint was easy.
I forgot one of the carrots at first. It would be good if the recipe card showed the quantities on the front as that is what I used when I was looking for the ingredients and it showed a picture of one carrot. It wasn't until I got to the back that I found that I needed 2.
I put the rice on to start cooking and then started chopping.
By 5:17 I had finished chopping everything. It may not have helped that I hate cooking with chicken thighs as I detest chicken fat, and it takes me ages to chop out the fat on thighs.
At this point I looked back over at the stove only to realise that I had forgotten to turn the rice down to simmer as instructed, so it was rice rescue time. Thankfully it had not burned and was not smooshy.
There was a LOT of rice.
At 5:27 I started cooking the chicken, and from there things were fairly smooth sailing, except for the part where I had to spend five minutes digging lemon seeds out of the pan (amongst rice) because they fell through my fingers when I was squeezing lemon juice into it. Note to self: next time squeeze lemon juice into a cup first!
By 5:45 I had finished cooking and spent five minutes cleaning up, so we were eating by 5:50.
Overall it took one hour (as opposed to 30 minutes).
Here is the finished product:
We thought this meal was delicious and all agreed that the fresh coriander (at least I hope it was coriander) was perfect on top of it.
It also made far more than we needed for one night. Here is what was left in the pot after I served up:
Looks like we have plenty for lunch tomorrow.
5:31pm The potatoes are peeled and chopped. Perhaps I should have had a snack.
6:02pm Phone call from someone at work who is doing a deployment. I think the chicken is almost ready to cook.
6:25pm It smells good. Staaaarving.
6:56pm Really starving. Megan came down to ask if we forgot to call her for dinner.
7:02pm We are eating!!
Dallas had hoped that the potatoes would go more crispy and felt that there was not enough coating for the chicken, so he compensated with extra olive oil.
It was another delicious dinner. I enjoyed the flavours on the chicken as well as the combination of the onion and olives.
Tomorrow Megan will be cooking meatballs for us. Perhaps I should have her start as soon as she gets home from school!
Friday was Reid's turn. Reid is 12 years old. He started at 4:30pm.
Gathering the ingredients was easy tonight and thankfully I had not used any of his ingredients by mistake. The parsley was starting to look a little sad by now.
I was a little nervous watching him cut the bacon but he was fine. He cooked it without any trouble. He tends to take things literally so I had to explain that cooking something for 5-6 minutes doesn't just mean putting it in the pan and setting the microwave timer.
Things may have moved a little faster if he wasn't watching funny videos on YouTube at the same time, but if that helped him to enjoy the experience then I wasn't going to stop him. He also had to make sure that each pizza had an equal number of pieces of bacon and pineapple and that takes time.
We also discovered that if you are planning on grating cheese you should leave it in the fridge right up until you are ready to grate it. Especially in Queensland in the summer.
At 5:45 we were ready to eat! The pizzas looked awesome and tasted delicious. I did enjoy the addition of the fresh parsley on mine. I have learned this week that fresh herbs really do make a difference to the flavours.
She started at around 4:20pm. I lost track of the exact finish time because we were having the entire family over for a pot luck, but I believe she had them going into the pot at around 5:20pm.
Our family seems to have a problem with needing to watch something on a tablet while cooking. I may have contributed to that and may have been watching "Call the Midwife" during my turn....
The finished product.
We all agreed this was not our favourite recipe of the week, although most of it disappeared at the pot luck dinner. We found the meatballs a little dry and the sauce quite strong. Previously when we have had meatballs they have been mixed with egg and other ingredients but these were just the meat with the feta pushed into the middle.
I enjoyed our trial of Hello Fresh. For the most part the recipes were easy to follow and I liked that it made it easy to get the kids involved in cooking dinner. They seemed to enjoy the challenge as well. I liked that we tried some new flavours and learned how important fresh herbs are to the taste of the final dish. Another benefit was that there was very little waste. Usually if I want to cook something with spring onions, I have to buy a whole bunch, and then the remainder will go to waste if I don't remember to find something else to cook with it as well.
Despite the benefits I don't see us doing this every week. Our weekly schedule is too varied to support it and at $140 a box I find it a bit expensive. For the money we would definitely have better dinners than I usually cook but at a higher cost. I might do it once every couple of months, perhaps during the school holidays to give the kids something to do.
I didn't win, but I did receive a phone call offering me an introductory family box containing 4 meals for 4 people at $79.95, which is a significant discount over the normal cost of $139.95. I took up the offer and on Monday evening our first box was delivered.
Unfortunately the eggs did not enjoy the trip and my first job was to clean egg off everything else in the box. I let them know and they credited my account for the eggs.
Besides the egg incident, the box was well insulated with cold packs to keep the ingredients fresh.
With four recipes and four family members I decided everyone could give this a go, and told each person to pick a recipe card and a night. The recipes went up on the fridge and we were ready to get started.
Night 1: Nasi Goreng with Chicken & Fried Egg
Chef: Me
The recipe card said preparation should take 10 minutes and cooking 20 minutes, for a total of 30 minutes.I consider myself to have average cooking skills and can usually follow a recipe to produce an edible meal.
I started at 4:50pm. My first job was to locate all of the ingredients. I had separated out as much as I could into containers by meal when I unpacked the box, but some things such as the herbs come combined in a single packet for the entire week.
Allow five minutes of googling to figure out which is the parsley and which is the coriander if you don't know your herbs. At least eliminating the mint was easy.
I forgot one of the carrots at first. It would be good if the recipe card showed the quantities on the front as that is what I used when I was looking for the ingredients and it showed a picture of one carrot. It wasn't until I got to the back that I found that I needed 2.
I put the rice on to start cooking and then started chopping.
By 5:17 I had finished chopping everything. It may not have helped that I hate cooking with chicken thighs as I detest chicken fat, and it takes me ages to chop out the fat on thighs.
At this point I looked back over at the stove only to realise that I had forgotten to turn the rice down to simmer as instructed, so it was rice rescue time. Thankfully it had not burned and was not smooshy.
There was a LOT of rice.
At 5:27 I started cooking the chicken, and from there things were fairly smooth sailing, except for the part where I had to spend five minutes digging lemon seeds out of the pan (amongst rice) because they fell through my fingers when I was squeezing lemon juice into it. Note to self: next time squeeze lemon juice into a cup first!
By 5:45 I had finished cooking and spent five minutes cleaning up, so we were eating by 5:50.
Overall it took one hour (as opposed to 30 minutes).
Here is the finished product:
We thought this meal was delicious and all agreed that the fresh coriander (at least I hope it was coriander) was perfect on top of it.
It also made far more than we needed for one night. Here is what was left in the pot after I served up:
Looks like we have plenty for lunch tomorrow.
Night 2: Oregano Chicken
Chef: Dallas
At 5pm I helped him get all of the ingredients out, only to find that he needed the other half of the lemon that I had used the night before. Oops! Lemon juice to the rescue.5:31pm The potatoes are peeled and chopped. Perhaps I should have had a snack.
6:02pm Phone call from someone at work who is doing a deployment. I think the chicken is almost ready to cook.
6:25pm It smells good. Staaaarving.
6:56pm Really starving. Megan came down to ask if we forgot to call her for dinner.
7:02pm We are eating!!
Dallas had hoped that the potatoes would go more crispy and felt that there was not enough coating for the chicken, so he compensated with extra olive oil.
Tomorrow Megan will be cooking meatballs for us. Perhaps I should have her start as soon as she gets home from school!
Night 3: Hawaiian Pizza on Wholemeal Bases
Chef: Reid
Megan had assignments to do so we ended up having left-over Nasi Goreng again on Thursday. I cooked fresh eggs to go with it and it still tasted good, although we did not have much of the coriander left to go on top.Friday was Reid's turn. Reid is 12 years old. He started at 4:30pm.
Gathering the ingredients was easy tonight and thankfully I had not used any of his ingredients by mistake. The parsley was starting to look a little sad by now.
I was a little nervous watching him cut the bacon but he was fine. He cooked it without any trouble. He tends to take things literally so I had to explain that cooking something for 5-6 minutes doesn't just mean putting it in the pan and setting the microwave timer.
Things may have moved a little faster if he wasn't watching funny videos on YouTube at the same time, but if that helped him to enjoy the experience then I wasn't going to stop him. He also had to make sure that each pizza had an equal number of pieces of bacon and pineapple and that takes time.
We also discovered that if you are planning on grating cheese you should leave it in the fridge right up until you are ready to grate it. Especially in Queensland in the summer.
Night 4: Lamb and Feta Meatballs with Risoni and Parsley
Chef: Megan
Megan is 15 and is fairly competent in the kitchen. She did the whole thing herself and as far as I could see followed the directions correctly.She started at around 4:20pm. I lost track of the exact finish time because we were having the entire family over for a pot luck, but I believe she had them going into the pot at around 5:20pm.
Our family seems to have a problem with needing to watch something on a tablet while cooking. I may have contributed to that and may have been watching "Call the Midwife" during my turn....
The finished product.
We all agreed this was not our favourite recipe of the week, although most of it disappeared at the pot luck dinner. We found the meatballs a little dry and the sauce quite strong. Previously when we have had meatballs they have been mixed with egg and other ingredients but these were just the meat with the feta pushed into the middle.
The Final Word
I enjoyed our trial of Hello Fresh. For the most part the recipes were easy to follow and I liked that it made it easy to get the kids involved in cooking dinner. They seemed to enjoy the challenge as well. I liked that we tried some new flavours and learned how important fresh herbs are to the taste of the final dish. Another benefit was that there was very little waste. Usually if I want to cook something with spring onions, I have to buy a whole bunch, and then the remainder will go to waste if I don't remember to find something else to cook with it as well.Despite the benefits I don't see us doing this every week. Our weekly schedule is too varied to support it and at $140 a box I find it a bit expensive. For the money we would definitely have better dinners than I usually cook but at a higher cost. I might do it once every couple of months, perhaps during the school holidays to give the kids something to do.
Hi Cassie this popped up on an old RSS feed and I am glad it did as I enjoyed reading it. Hope you're all well
ReplyDeleteHa ha, this is probably not my most interesting blog post ever but sometimes there is fun in the mundane. We are well - you can see the kids are growing fast. Good to hear from you.
ReplyDeleteIt was very interesting. I had looked into it when it first came out a couple of years ago but couldn't warrant the cost. I also marvel at the use of fresh herbs which I can pick out of my pots in the backyard. As with the case of spring onions, I cut up the bunch and freeze them and take out what I need as required, otherwise, like you mine grow mold before I can use them. I think I'm hooked on Buzzfeed for food ideas.
ReplyDelete