I first found out about Hello Fresh while watching one of my favourite YouTubers, The Tim Tracker. At the time I thought, wow, wouldn't it be cool if they came to Australia, I checked online and couldn't see anything so forgot about it.
A couple of months later something appeared in my letterbox, a Hello Fresh brochure! This was in 2016 and I kept mentioning it to my family but we never got it. So, after moving houses and since we are all over grocery shopping we decided to give it a go.
We ordered 1x Classic Box for 4 people for 5 nights and we also ordered a small fruit box to try. When our Hello Fresh box arrived (which I forgot to grab a photo of as we were too excited and starting unpacking it, sorry) we were all so happy with the quality of the food. All the vegetables and fruit they gave you were ripe and to be honest looked too perfect. I loved how the rice, spices etc were all in individual little packets so you always use the right amount for the meal. When you unpack the box the recipes tell you which meals to eat first otherwise we just figured out what meat was expiring first to sort out in what order we should eat the meals.
Something to note, you do need pantry items. These are generally all things you can find in your house already such as oil, butter, water, soy sauce etc. Now onto the yummy meals we got to try!
Garlic & Rosemary Crumbed Lamb with a Warm Broccoli Salad
The lamb was delicious! So tender and yummy. I wasn't too fussed on the salad, mainly because I didn't like the dressing all that much, however my family loved it - so really that's just individual taste. My sister cooked the meal, it was a Level 1 meal and was estimated to take 40 minutes, she said it was rather easy, the hardest or most time consuming part was cutting all the vegetables.
Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Salad with Roasted Cashews
Firstly, sorry there is no photo of all the ingredients, forgot to take a picture. This meal was yummy, it just wasn't my favourite. I liked the flavours, we didn't add chilli as I can't eat really spicy food - my dad did add chilli to his because he loves it. We all thought there was far too much noodles. I'm not sure if we added too many or what, but it was probably my least favourite meal of the week. This was another Level 1 meal and estimated 30 minutes to cook.
Steak with Potato Medallions & Mustard Sauce
This was the first dish I cooked, it was a Level 2 meal and estimated at 45 minutes to cook. I did screw up the potatoes, I cut them too fine and therefore they burned a bit in the oven but still tasted delicious. The steak was amazing! I love a good steak with potato so perhaps I'm a little biased, but I really enjoyed this meal. The mustard sauce on top was really good too and this was my favourite until I had the next dish.
Chermoula Spiced Chicken with Zucchini Pilaf
To start with, this was a Level 1 dish and estimated 50 minutes to cook. I cooked this meal and found it quite easy compared to the steak the night before. Now I thought I wouldn't like this meal, but I loved it so much! The flavours were so good and the dish was incredibly filling, plus we even had leftovers for the next day. The entire family loved this one.
Fetta Stuffed Meatballs with Olive & Cucumber Salad
Start off by putting it out there, I hate fetta, so I definitely did not have any fetta in my meatballs. This was another Level 1 meal that was estimated 40 minutes to cook. So even though I had no fetta in my meatballs, they were still amazing and so yummy. I was also incredibly happy to get some sweet potato, I love it so much. And I thought the cucumber salad was really refreshing, so overall quite a yummy meal.
Overall this was a success. I got to try meals I'd never even think of cooking at home and best of all it's healthy, and made with fresh and local products. The recipes are easy to follow and the estimated cooking times are pretty spot on. I'd recommend everyone giving it a try, especially if you're like me and can't think of new meals to cook for dinner and really hate grocery shopping.
FYI I'm not getting paid or anything to promote Hello Fresh, my family and I just decided to try it and I thought I'd share my first week of meals with you all. If you are interested in trying Hello Fresh you can use THIS LINK - and get $30 off your first box!
If you do order Hello Fresh using this link you do give me $30 off my next box also. Once you start using Hello Fresh everyone is given a link they can send to people to get $30 off their next box.
So go out and give it a try! I did and so far I'm loving it.
