If you peeked at our dinner meals lately, there’s a high chance you’d be disappointed with our limited variety and less than healthy choices.
During the past semester, where my husband wasn’t home to cook dinner (he’s really the cook in the family) and me tackling four kids who like to stick up their noses at anything I cook other than pizza (everyone likes pizza in this house), I wasn’t really in the mood to get creative, experiment, or figure out how to eat healthier. I just want us to all eat. Period.
So, we rotated through the same handful of dinners – breakfast, tacos, pasta, pizza – by and large.
I’m not proud of the fact that I don’t really know how to cook, or that I really don’t like to. As a wife, homemaker, and home educator, it kinda sucks that my desire to change this fact about myself is low (so don’t bother throwing recipe ideas at me: I probably won’t try them).
Of course, I desire to be healthier, to eat healthier, and to feed my children the proper nutrition and introduce them to new foods, and teach them how to cook, something my mother never really did for me.
But, sometimes you pick and choose your battles in life, and right now, in this season of life, I’m just happy to have a dinner to eat every night, no matter what it is. I like avoiding dinner battles.
If I could hire a personal chef, I most certainly would. I love great food. I managed as an adult to overcome many of my picky eating habits as well, and will (for the most part) eat anything offered to me (or at least take one bite).
When a friend of mine recently posted on Facebook that she had five free Hello Fresh meals to give out, I jumped on her offer.
I read about Hello Fresh a few months ago as I was doing research for a different article on my blog, and thought it sounded pretty great. I definitely thought FREE would be a great way to try it out.
The free offer covered a two meal package for a family of four. We’re a family of six, but the baby is 18 months, and the other children don’t exactly eat heaping mounds of new foods.
FYI: They also don’t offer a plan bigger than a family of four (how anti-large family of them, right?).
Hello Fresh offers a variety of meal plans – Classic Plan, Veggie, and Family – for 2-5 meals a week, serving 2 to 4 adults, or 2 adults and 2 children.
We were able to choose two of the three options for the week before our delivery arrived, and picked our first delivery day.
Hello Fresh Review
Our shipment arrived a day later than I expected due to the New Years Holiday. It came in a giant brown branded box:
And inside the box were instruction books, free offers, more information about how Hello Fresh works, and the food itself. The food was wrapped up in a big giant insulated silver bubble bag. On top were the boxes of fresh ingredients like vegetables and seasoning (they provide everything you’ll need other than salt, pepper, butter, and oil). Under those boxes was a cardboard divider, then the large frozen pack (which I had no idea what I was supposed to do with that), and then the meat for the meals – chicken and steak.
Here’s a closer look inside each of the boxes. I threw the meats in there too so you could see what each meal required:
If you notice, my zucchini was damaged in the chicken dinner box. I called customer service and they offered me $15 credit as that is not up to their Hello Fresh standards. So, a major win for their customer service! I ended up buying some cucumbers (because I thought they were cucumbers and didn’t read the recipe before shopping. Oops!).
Okay, well, let’s get to what really matters when it comes to Hello Fresh: Was it any good? Was it easy to follow the recipe and cook?
First Hello Fresh Family Meal Review – Seared Sirloin Steak
The first Hello Fresh meal I made from the box as the Seared Sirloin Steak with Caprese Pasta Salad. We don’t normally eat a lot of steak (really only when we eat out), so this was a real treat. However, I have never cooked a super delicious steak from my own kitchen, so I was a tad nervous.
Here’s what the instructions page in the booklet looked like: Easy, clear instructions with pictures!
The estimated prep and cook times were 10 minutes and 30 minutes. I ended up being fairly close to this, though prep took me a tad longer as I’m not a pro in the kitchen or with cutting vegetables, and I also have four kids running around. But, maybe another 10 minutes, so nothing terrible. I will say I did NOT use a big enough pan for the chessy orzo pasta. At all.
The quality was really good. My husband said it was a great steak. And my kids even liked it! Well, some of them. I thought it was delicious! I never eat orzo, but it was great! This meal was definitely a winner.
I mean, look at it! Delish!
Second Hello Fresh Meal Review – Honey Glazed Chicken Dinner
The second meal they sent them was the honey mustard-glazed chicken with baked veggies. I accidentally bought cucumbers instead of zucchinis to replace the broken ones they sent me, so the veggies were slightly off. Again, the instructions were easy to follow with pictures and step-by-step directions (the instructions were on the next page).
The cook time was an estimated 10 minutes prep and 45 minutes cook time. Honestly, that’s a long time for me to be in the kitchen to make a dinner when I have a family of young kids running around. I didn’t love that. It did take about that long to make, though not longer.
The quality of the chicken was great. It was delicious and moist, though my husband said not as flavorful as he wanted. The veggies were not as glamorous. But we really aren’t baked veggie people. Okay, we really aren’t veggie people much outside of a good salad. My kids were far less impressed with this meal than the first. As was I. I don’t love veggies either, though I thought the chicken was pretty good!
I mean, look at that chicken! Yum!
Overall, I was happy with their food, especially since I got two free, yummy tasting, dinners with all the ingredients needed delivered right to my door! Total win since I really don’t like grocery shopping! The instructions were clear and easy to follow too.
Hello Fresh Discount Code
I decided to sign up as an affiliate for them, in part so I could offer you a great discount code to you, my loyal readers! I, unfortunately, do not have free codes to offer, but right now you can save $50 on your first two boxes, $25 off each box, with free shipping! The discount code should apply automatically when you click on these links or the banner below! Otherwise, try code FRESH50HELLO at checkout.
The discount makes the 2 meal Family Box (like I received) only $44.92 for your first two deliveries (instead of $69.92 each!). That’s $22.46 for each dinner or $5.62 per person. For fresh, healthy ingredients, complete with easy recipes to follow, and it being shipped to you, is quite a great offer!
Don’t miss out on it! This offer will end March 31, 2017! Get your first Hello Fresh box today!
Keep in mind that their service is a weekly subscription service. You have to make sure to cancel or pause your future deliveries like five days before they are scheduled to deliver if you do not wish for them to continue. It can all be done online, so it’s not hard to do. You also pick out the meals you want online too before they come.
I thought I had another day to pause my next delivery, due to the fact that my shipment was a day later due to the holidays, so I called their customer service again, and they went ahead and canceled that order since they had just placed it. Another win for their customer service department!
If you try them out, I’d love to know what you think!
Patricia Oldfield says
HelloFresh is a dishonest and deceitful company. I cancelled my membership 4-5 months ago and out of nowhere they started charging my bank acct $60 and sending food I didn’t not want. Customer service is a waste of time, they won’t cancel the delivery or refund my money since the claim they don’t see where I cancelled my account. Don’t bother with this worthless company when there are others that are far far better….Try Blue Apron or Home Chef. If you put your acct on hold or cancel, it stays that way. The food is also MUCH better!
Sam Smithers says
I agree, hello fresh send me rotten vegetables on three different occasion and basically through a call they called me a LIAR! Even though a took VERY clear photos, they simply stated: ‘Visual proof points more to online creativity and photoshop”.
Sam Smithers says
I agree, hello fresh send me rotten vegetables on three different occasion and basically through a call they called me a LIAR! Even though a took VERY clear photos, they simply stated: ‘Visual proof points more to online creativity and photoshop”.
Barb Streett says
I tried hello fresh for several months and over the months was sent wilted herbs and not so fresh vegetables. The portions are tough if you have a family of more than four who want to eat healthy. The packaging was really wasteful as after a couple of months we had an overwhelming amount of recyclable materials. I really wanted to love it but just didn’t work for our family. It’s a great concept. Hope it works for you!
dave says
So this is an ad, not a review. You should make that clear at the top of the page rather than the bottom. Very dishonest in my opinion.
Katelyn Fagan says
It’s actually both. :p I received it for free from a friend and wrote about it. I sought to be an affiliate to pay for my time to take the photos and write about my honest opinions with their food and their service. They did not pay me to write the post, but if anyone does actually sign up, I might earn a commission. I’m sorry you felt it was dishonest. There is a disclosure at the very top of all posts that I use affiliate links.
Nancy J Cloak says
I’m sorry you got bashed in some of these Comments. I just started Hello Fresh. Made 3 meals and am quite happy with the result. Glad to hear your customer service experience was good. I have not yet needed to call them. The only downfall I see is you cannot increase servings to more than 4. Other than that, so far, so good!!