I tried a free week of Hello Fresh vegetarian meals: Here are the pros/cons of these tasty but fussy meals

My best friend is a big fan of Hello Fresh meal kits, and she sent me an invitation for a free week’s worth of meals. A $60 dollar value for free? Yes please! I’d been curious about meal kit delivery services for a while, and I was excited for this opportunity to do a review. We are pescatarian, but Hello Fresh does not have a plan for that (nor would I really expect them to), so I signed up for the “classic” vegetarian plan for 2 people. This is actually just three meals per week (2 servings each); I suppose they expect that people are getting takeout or otherwise fending for themselves the other nights. I was able to select from about five different meal kit options that week. Here’s what we made, complete with nicknames my husband and I gave to each dish.

“Fried zucchini with not enough panko” AKA Katsu-style zucchini with ginger scallion rice and roasted broccoli

This one involved roasting broccoli with oil, salt, and pepper. This is actually a side I already make a lot, so I added soy sauce as is my habit. I otherwise stayed true to all the directions. Next, we made white rice with ginger and scallions on the stovetop. This is something I never would have done otherwise. I always cook brown rice and do it in my Instant Pot. After cutting the zucchini, we were supposed to dip the zucchini in a tempura batter, then dredge in panko, and shallow fry. We ran out of panko halfway through and ended up digging through our pantry to find an old box of gluten free panko, which we used for the rest. Result: the rice was nice and gingery, zucchini were super crispy and delicious; the katsu sauce provided really took it over the top but there was not enough of it!

“Make some sweet potato fries and put them on a taco” AKA Sweet potato fajitas

This recipe had a lot more fussy steps than it really needed. You were supposed to cut sweet potatoes into wedges and roast them. Meanwhile, slice onion and a pepper and caramelize in a pan on the stove. These two steps could have been combined—the onion and peppers could have roasted on a sheet pan with the sweet potatoes in the oven. You also made salsa, pickled jalapenos, and limey sour cream. You were supposed to cut up a fresh jalapeno and quick-pickle it using the juice of half a lime juice, sugar and salt. This resulted in a pile of jalapenos not even close to saturated by the tiny pool of lime juice at the bottom of the bowl. Separately, you made a pico de gallo out of a sad tomato, cilantro, onion, and lime. This is a standard and delicious pico de gallo that I make all the time, except I usually add fresh or pickled jalapenos. I would have preferred to add the jalapeno provided directly into the salsa. You were provided a packet of maybe 1 T sour cream and were supposed to add lime zest and lime juice. So we had like 1-2 T of slightly limey sour cream to split between six tortillas. My husband wanted more sour cream, so we plopped on some extra from the fridge. We really liked this meal and will probably make a variation again sometime. We would probably roast sweet potatoes, peppers, and onions together with some cumin, oregano, and adobo seasoning, and then serve on tortillas with refried black beans, pepper jack, pico de gallo (with jalapenos), and sour cream.

“Dinnertime oatmeal salad” AKA Roasted veggie farro bowls with marinated cranberries

For this meal, you simmered farro in veggie stock concentrate, roasted sweet potatoes and onions, and marinated dried cranberries in lemon juice and then made a dressing out of the marinade. Everything got tossed together at the end with some arugula, shredded parmesan, and sunflower seeds. This one was the biggest departure from our usual cooking. We had never had farro before, and we don’t usually have bowl meals. This was the meal my husband was least excited about based on the description, but it ended up being our favorite!

Roasted veggie farro bowl ingredient pack

Pros

1. All meals were delicious! We enjoyed all of the dishes and they were hearty and satisfying.
2. Introduces new recipes and techniques. Based on the description of the dishes, I probably wouldn’t have chosen to make these myself or ordered them off a restaurant menu. But, now that I’ve made them, I absolutely WOULD pick these meals again. So, Hello Fresh did get us out of our comfort zone trying new things. My husband and I had never had farro before, and that ended up being our favorite dish!
3. Fun activity to do with partner. My husband and I made two out of three meals together, and following the recipes and discovering how they turned out felt like a fun game to do together.
4. Doesn’t take up a lot of storage space. If you live in a place without a lot of storage space, this would be ideal. The three meals come packed in three relatively compact brown bags that tuck into one shelf of the fridge.
5. Includes all the spices you need. Relatedly, if you don’t keep a lot of spices on hand, this is great because it sends a perfectly measured mixture for your dishes. (Personally, I have quite the spice hoard currently.)
6. Less food waste. Ingredients are portioned precisely so you have no awkward leftovers. (No extra random celery or half a can of coconut milk languishing in your fridge.
7. Does (some of) your grocery shopping for you. If you were only planning on cooking at home three nights a week, this plan will save you from grocery shopping for dinner. You’ll still need to buy staples like oil, butter, salt and pepper, and things for breakfast and lunches. This could be especially helpful for people who live in big cities and/or don’t have a car to schlep a load of groceries around.

Cons

1. Steps are fussy and time consuming. The Hello Fresh meals took longer than my usual recipes, and after all that work over the course of 45 min to an hour, we only got one meal out of it. There was one night where we had planned to make a Hello Fresh meal, but we were so busy that it seemed like too much work, so we made an old standby recipe with other ingredients we had on hand instead.
2. No leftovers. This might be a pro for some people who hate leftovers, but that’s not me. If I’m going to take the time and effort to cook, I want to maximize my efforts with leftovers!
3. Uses lots of dishes. The recipes used a silly amount of dishes. For the farro bowls, you were supposed to marinate dried cranberries in one bowl, pour the leftover marinade in another bowl and mix with oil to make a dressing, then add the cranberries back to the dressing and pour into a third bowl with salad, only to combine them all into two more serving bowls in the end.
4. Most meals were low in protein. The zucchini katsu was all vegetables and rice, the only protein in the sweet potato fajitas was pepper jack cheese. Why not include beans in that recipe?
5. Produce was not at peak of freshness. The broccoli and arugula were yellowing a bit. The tomato was hard and under-ripe. The tomato was small, hard, and not fully ripe. I happened to have a bunch of tomatoes from my garden I’m trying to use up, so I used one of those instead.
6. Lots of single-use plastic waste. I was surprised that most of the items came in little plastic bags. There were a few items that came in much more recyclable/biodegradable foil or paper sachets, and I’m not sure why that wasn’t the default.
7. Missing or insufficient amounts of ingredients. The roasted vegetable bowl recipe involves roasting two veggies: sweet potatoes and onion, but the onion was missing! Fortunately, I had an onion on hand, otherwise, it wouldn’t have been roasted vegetables plural.
8. It’s expensive, especially for vegetarian food. It’s about $10 per person per meal, which is generally more expensive than the meals I make. For other people, this might be a reasonable tradeoff for the convenience, or if they are used to ordering takeout more often. 

What this experience has taught me is that my cooking philosophy makes me pretty much the complete opposite of Hello Fresh’s intended customers. I like to create my own recipes, and I design them to be as efficient and flavorful as possible. I really hate fussy cooking. I love one-pot meals and try to minimize the number of dishes I dirty. Hello Fresh is not for me, but there are plenty of pros that might appeal to others. If your cooking philosophy is more like mine, check out some of my favorite recipes on my blog!