HelloFresh Home Cooking Delivery Review

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My regularly-scheduled-program has been a bit fuzzy since I (Cam) started working part-time at Stitch Fix in August 2017. You may have noticed the number of my blog posts isn’t stellar. I work 15-20 hours per week-hours that were previously spent doing a myriad of other things in my stay-at-home-mom life. Trying to find any spare minute of time to get “everything else” done is also part of my daily job and I’m sure it’s part of yours too. That’s where HelloFresh Home Cooking Delivery comes into play and it is amazing!

I decided to try this home cooking delivery service after receiving a coupon in a recent Kohl’s online order. I had a few extremely busy weeks in my future and remembered that coupon, logged on, scheduled my first delivery and waited for the meal kit box to show up. I’ve had a total of four boxes, all containing different recipes, and have loved everything about this service. Fresh ingredients, kid and adult friendly recipes, detailed instructions, short prep time and awesome customer service. They even have a “Feed Your Friends” referral service- give $40 to your friends for their first week, receive $20 for yourself to use on your next delivery after your friend signs up.

I want you to try HelloFresh Home Cooking Delivery for yourself. Read my review and head straight to their website to make your first order.

GETTING STARTED: Even though I’ve had four boxes, this is a review of my first box from start to finish. Signing up is online and really easy to figure out. Once you’ve created a login account, you’ll choose your plan. I decided on the Family Plan for 4 people with 3 meals sent for the week. I had looked through the various recipes from the Classic Plan, Family Plan and Veggie Plan and felt like my kids would enjoy the meals offered in the Family Plan best. Because my weeks are busy, I chose the 3 meal option so I could cook on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. They also have a 2 meal option if this is better for you. (The Classic Plan and Veggie Plan have some different options with 2-4 people choices with 3-4 meals per week.)

YOUR PLAN AND RECIPES: After deciding on your plan and the day you want delivery (I chose Mondays), you’ll schedule your recipes for the week(s) you’re using their delivery service. The My Menu section shows delicious pictures of five recipes available for the Family Plan for that week, which shows the date range at the top of the page. Below the pictures, you will see a button that says “Select Meals”- click on this button and then choose 2-3 meals by clicking once on the photo of each meal. Not sure what’s in the meal just by seeing the picture? Click on the bold meal title underneath the picture. This will take you to an information sheet that shows everything included for the recipe, what you’ll need at home (usually butter, oil, salt, pepper), utensils to use, the instructions for the recipe, preparation time and difficulty level. When you’re done choosing your meals, click “Save” and you’ll be taken back to your My Menu page for that week. (You have a few days before your delivery date to make any changes as well. With my deliveries coming on Mondays, I could make changes by Wednesday of the week before- basically 4 days.)

CALENDAR SCHEDULE: From here you can go forward to see what’s being offered in the next few weeks. You can also click on the calendar icon at the top right and skip weeks if you don’t want to receive meals every week. You can also mark recipes as Favorites so you can see them all in one spot on your account. Their interface is super easy to use and even with making changes, it has always saved how I’ve wanted it to.

DELIVERY: Now we’ll get to the fun stuff- the day your HelloFresh home cooking delivery arrives! You’ll already have received an email once your delivery ships and mine were delivered via UPS. The HelloFresh delivery window is from 8a-8p but my UPS delivers between 2-3:30p. The 3 meal box is pretty hefty, including all the ingredients and frozen ice packs, but I was still able to carry upstairs by myself. (The 2 meal box is smaller.)

OPENING YOUR BOX: When you open your box, you’ll find your recipe sheets, nutritional information for the recipes and a fun newsletter sitting atop an insulating liner. These pictures show their recycled cotton liner but I’ve also received their BPA-free shiny silver plastic/mylar insulating liner. Once you lift up the liner, you’ll see each of your recipe ingredients already organized into paper sacks that have the recipe name printed on top. Pull these out and below you’ll find the ice packs. Pull the ice packs out and there is your meat that is cold and fresh. I put all the bags in my refrigerator and throw the meats on top of the bags. There are instructions on the liners, ice packs and boxes on how to dispose of or recycle them, and you can use the paper sacks for cuttings and bag discards while cooking.

MAKING YOUR FIRST MEAL: The first 3 recipes I received were: Baked Chicken Parmesan, Pesto Turkey Burgers and Pork and Thai Basil Stir-Fry. With my box arriving on Monday afternoon, I decided to make the Baked Chicken Parmesan for dinner that night. This was one of their “Hall of Fame” recipes and said it would take 40 minutes to make with a Level 1 difficulty rating. The big-time bonus for me is HelloFresh’s detailed instructions. I feel like they organize the steps well and it also allows me time to wash dishes in between steps, which is a MAJOR PLUS to save time with after-dinner cleanup. This recipe required making noodles, fresh-from-scratch marinara sauce and preparing and baking the chicken.

I pulled out my bag and both packs of chicken, as well as the ingredients I already had in my pantry with the necessary pans/utensils. Following the instructions exactly as written, the recipe took me about 50 minutes from start to finish.

HAPPINESS: This was a delicious take on a basic chicken dinner and I really liked the fresh marinara sauce. My son is very picky but once he peeled the crunchy, cheesy coating off the chicken (which my husband gladly ate), he was fine with everything else on his plate, including a side salad from our fridge. The Pork and Thai Basil Stir-Fry was eaten by the whole family but LOVED by my husband and myself. The favorite of the box was the Pesto Turkey Burgers. My kids are already fans of the frozen turkey burgers from Trader Joe’s but even my son said, “This is the best turkey burger I’ve EVER had!”- even with the pesto flavor, he loved it! The instructions on how to cook the turkey burgers made me feel comfortable cooking the meat (because I am not usually comfortable cooking meat) and it kept them juicy and scrumptious! Happy kids at dinner = happy parents at dinner. I favorited this recipe in my account right away, along with the stir-fry. The side of roasted carrots has become a staple that I can easily recreate by picking up carrots at the store and following the HelloFresh instructions.

AMAZING CUSTOMER SERVICE: One of my recipes had two produce ingredients that were below my expectation for what I was paying to use this home cooking delivery service. I emailed photos to customer service, explained the problem and they were fast to reply and make up for my difficulty.

REFERRAL PROGRAM: I mentioned this before, but you can send a friend (if they are not a current customer) a $40 off first delivery coupon and receive $20 for your next delivery after they sign up. They often offer free meals that you can send to your friends with no benefit to yourself except the joy of helping out a friend.

Are you ready to become a #FreshFriend and start cooking with HelloFresh Home Cooking Delivery? CLICK HERE for my referral code to receive $40 off your first order!