Hello Fresh often offers slight variations of the same dishes. I’ve encountered the Dijon sauce in this meal kit as a dill sauce and a chives sauce, both served on chicken breasts. I’m happy to say that the sauce is just as good without the herbs, though the kit makes about half as much sauce as you really need for this dish.
The garlic bread, made on a ciabatta bun, was very good as well – even though I had refrigerated the buns for four days by the time I made it. The reason was probably the copious amount of garlic butter it contained. HelloFresh doesn’t end you butter, so they’re very generous in their recipes with your own supplies. Here, each bun slice asked for a whole tablespoon of butter. Still, at least the results were worth it.
The main reason I’m giving this kit low grades was the salad. It was nothing special and I don’t think it went particularly well with the chicken.
The meal kit was easy enough to make, but the chicken half breasts were too thick to cook in the recommended time – they took me about 15 minutes to cook altogether. The ingredients were fresh, even though I cooked them four days after I received the box.
This was my first HelloFresh kit in over a year, and an update on a Parmesan chicken kit I had in 2019. I’m glad to say it was an improvement. The mozarella-panko-Italian seasoning crust was delicious – so much so that my daughter ate a second chicken breast (I got a meal kit for four this time) and asked me to make it again. Indeed, the kit made enough breading for six breasts altogether, so I did make it again for her a couple of nights later.
The couscous, which I found to be rather tasteless last time, was cooked in chicken broth and lemon zest this time, and was very tasty. The copious butter didn’t hurt, of course. The carrots were OK, not exciting, but good enough.
The portion size was adequate for non-huge apetites or people with a carrot fetish. Among the three of us, we ate the whole 4-person meal kit, except for the carrots. There were lots and lots of big, fat carrots.
I should note that the instructions for this dish left out how long the chicken should cook for. Fortunately, I was able to figure it out by looking at the Parmesan chicken instructions. The answer is 15 minutes.
The ingredients were fresh, and overall I was quite happy with the meal kit. It should be easy enough to recreate.
I did not actually order this meal kit, and I was quite unhappy when I saw it added to my order online. Neither my daughter nor I like salmon, and I need my meal kits to at least serve two people. I e-mailed Gobble right away, and they gave me a credit for the cost of the meal. As it happened, they sent it to me with top sirloin instead of salmon anyway.
Overall, this meal kit was a disappointment – even free. It consisted of another tiny steak, pan grilled and then sparkled with some paprika sumac spice mixture which didn’t add anything. The steak was good, but boring. On the side was a salad of frisée lettuce, pan fried potato slices, walnuts and olives (I omitted these) in a rather pedestrian lemon gremolata. It wasn’t a bad meal, but I can accomplish the same thing by getting steak and ready-made-salad at the supermarket. Again, I have no one to blame but myself for selecting this meal. But really, I’ve had trouble finding exciting meals in Gobble – something I noticed as well last year.
I do have to commend Gobble for the freshness of their food items. I cooked this meal exactly one week after I got it, the beef was perfectly fine and the lettuce had barely started to wilt.
My second Gobble meal kit this time was a little disappointing in its simplicity. I have no one to blame for this but myself, as I was the one that selected it, but it was the sort of meal that I could put together on my own without the need of a meal kit.
It consisted of a miniature top-sirloin steak, multi-colored carrots, sweet peppers and a slice of onion, a small jar of chimichurri sauce and some pepitas. All I had to do was cut the carrots in two, put the veggies in the oven with some chimichurri sauce and saute the steaks.
Because the meal was so simple, it all came to as how good the chimichurri sauce was. As an Argentine, I can’t say I was impressed. It was very tangy and didn’t really taste like chimichurri. If it had any oregano at all, I couldn’t taste it.
So the meal was OK, but it didn’t wow me. I should mention I cooked it 6 day after I got it and all the ingredients were still fresh.
It’s been a year since I last tried Gobble and I’m happy to report that it’s as good as ever – at least judged by the first meal I “cooked” since I renewed my subscription. As in the past, Gobble offers meal kits which are very fast to cook and put together because they rely on a lot of pre-cooked ingredients. But as you do cook the final product, you feel you’ve made the dish yourself – plus you get to enjoy the greater quality of ingredients that just don’t stand up well to reheating.
I’m a huge fan of beef bourguignon and I was very impressed with this recipe. It requited me to slice a few mushrooms, onions and baby carrots, saute them, and then mix them with an already made red wine sauce, beef broth and pre-cooked stewed beef. All simmered nicely for 6 minutes, while I reheated the pre-made and pre-seasoned mashed potatoes. The meat was tender and succulent, the sauce was nicely flavored and went well with the mashed potatoes and the freshly sauteed veggies were tasty. Basically, it was almost as good as homemade.
I look forward to the next Gobble meal. Currently, they cost $24 per 2-serving meal, plus $7 shipping.
—
This post contains a referral link, but Gobble has suspended its referral program.
I got this honey by mistake. I’d order a different one through Instacart, asked for yet another as a substitution, but ended up with this one all the same.
All in all, this taste like a pretty generic, uncomplex and yet very tasty honey. At 65°-70°F, it’s quite thin and flows very easily. It has a perfectly delicious, mild, not overly sweet, honey flavor. It seems like a sort of general purpose honey.
Despite its name, Nature Nate’s 100% Pure Raw & Unfiltered Honey is not really raw nor unfiltered. While the honey is not pasteurized, it is heated to some undisclosed temperature and studies have shown that heating for a short time will degrade the nutrients, enzymatic activity and water soluble vitamins in honey. So this honey is probably best left for uses that require heating it anyway – such as sweetening hot drinks or creating a syrup by mixing it with water and heating it.
Similarly, while this honey is “unfiltered,” it is strained. I’m guessing that what they mean is that the filter they use has holes too small for impurities to go through but too big for pollen.
My biggest concern with honey is adulteration. There is a big problem with adulterated honeys, and only one laboratory in the US has the capacity to test them. According to a lawsuit filed against Nature Nate’s in 2019, some of the samples of their honey were found to be adulterated with other syrups. That still means that other samples were fine, but it also means you can’t be assured you are getting what you paid for. The lawsuit, btw, was dismissed but on technical rather than substantive grounds.
In all, this is not a premium honey but it’s tasty enough and should serve most of your needs. If you are looking for a top grade raw honey, I’d probably hit the farmer’s market instead.
—
Note: the link to Instacart is a referral link, if you subscribed immediately after you click on it, I might get $10 credit and you would as well. Instacart refunded me the cost of this honey, as it wasn’t what I’d ordered.
I continue in my quest of finding a commercial orange juice that can rival fresh squeezed. Basically, I want something that tastes as good as Odwalla did back in the 90’s, before an e-coli crisis forced them to pasteurize their juice. I realize it’s quite hard.
At $7-$9 for a 52-oz bottle, Uncle Matt is priced as a premium supermarket brand (similar to Nature, Evolution and the former Odwalla), and it seems to achieve pretty much the same quality. It’s closer to orange juice than the cheaper brands, but not quite fresh. I still prefer the Costco brand more, but this will do in a pinch. I did find it too sweet for my taste.
I got these frozen beef empanadas by mistake in an Instacart order. They come 4 to a package, each individually wrapped. They are on the small side, each weighing about 2.5 oz. You are supposed to deep fry them, but I air fried them instead after spraying them with olive oil. The ones in the photo were cooked for 8 minutes at the default setting, but you can add a couple of minutes more to get them darker.
The little empanadas do pack a lot of flavor – both natural and “enhanced” -; while they don’t seem to have vinegar, they taste like they do. They’re aren’t bad, but not something that I would seek out. The dough is on the salty side as well, and I can only imagine it’s better if deep fried.
In all, I wouldn’t buy these even if they weren’t Goya brand, as they aren’t that special. But I’ll finish the box.
—
Note: the link to Instacart is a referral link, if you subscribed immediately after you click on it, I might get $10 credit and you would as well. You probably can get a better deal elsewhere, though. Links on the margins may also be referral links, check.
Tonight for dinner, I made a fabulous oxtail stew from a recipe from Jerez de la Frontera – I will publish it shortly. Making the stew, however, was far easier than actually procuring the oxtails. They used to be a relatively cheap cut of meat, but I guess demand has gone up as prices are through the roof and all over the place.
I ordered my first four pounds of oxtails from Safeway, as they were on sale for $7/lb. This is what passes for a very good price right now for a cut that is mostly bone, fat and gelatin and, as a result, has very little meat. As usual, I asked for no substitutions as Safeway almost invariably substitutes the meat on sale I order for far more expensive stuff. Indeed, I’ve had to call to complain about these substitutions so often, that the day before I placed this order I spoke with two different Safeway employees about the fact that I did not want any substitutions, no matter how well intentioned they were.
Anyway, I digress, but as I half expected, Safeway did not send me the 4 lbs of $7/lb oxtails I ordered, but instead sent me two small packages of vacuum packed oxtails for $13/lb! To add insult to injury, those packages included some of the thinnest bones from the tail. I was not happy. I got a refund, but was still left in need of another source for oxtails to have enough for my recipe.
What do you think Safeway guarantees 100%?
Enter Cardenas supermarket, which also had fresh oxtails on sale, for $9/lb (though closer to $11/lb when you add Instacart fees and tips). That might seem a lot, but the price of oxtails at other supermarkets was even higher. They were $10/lb at Costco, $13/lb at Raleys, $17.3 at 99 Ranch Market and $23/lb to $34/lb at Hmart! Now, these are Instacart prices, but what the hell???!!!!
There were significant differences between the oxtails I got from Cardenas (those seen at the top of the pan) and Safeway (bottom). The former were all medium to large pieces, and had a fresh red color. The latter included quite a few small bones, and they had a weird purplish color, that didn’t quite show up in the picture, probably from the packing method. Still, once I cooked them they were all very good. Indeed, the tiny pieces had very little meat but what they had was particularly succulent, probably as it shared more surface area with the sauce.
I was telling my husband how this could have been an $80 dish if I hadn’t shopped so carefully (frankly, it’d have been more – I’d forgotten about the $16 bottle of sherry I’d pour into the stew). He said he felt it’d have been worth $80. He is a smart man.
—
Note: the link to Instacart is a referral link, if you subscribed immediately after you click on it, I might get $10 credit and you would as well. You probably can get a better deal elsewhere, though.
Signature Reserve appears to be a premium version of Safeway/Albertson’s store brand. They cost more than twice than regular Signature pasta sauces and this one, at least, was imported from Italy and claimed to be made from a “Porchettini family recipe”. I’m not sure who they are, but a recipe needs to come from someone or other.
This particular sauce wasn’t bad, if you really like the flavor of artificial truffle. Basically what you get is a pretty fresh, tomato forward sauce, immediately followed by an intense black truffle flavor that lingers on. Now, I learned last year that the flavors of actual truffles and artificial truffle is quite different, and what most of us understand as black truffle is artificial – so I was expecting this sauce to taste that way. Perhaps not as intensely as it does, however. It’s not bad, but the truffle in the sauce will obfuscate any other flavor that surrounds it.
While I wouldn’t order this particular pasta sauce again, I might try one of the other ones – they have at least five other flavors.
I am a huge fan of meatballs but I don’t make them often enough because if I have ground beef and I’m going to eat it with pasta, I end up making a meat sauce instead and then it feels redundant. I figured that if I buy the meatballs already made, I could would just eat them with pasta and store-bought tomato sauce for a very quick dinner. I have yet to find a good brand of refrigerated or frozen meatballs however and these, despite its fancy packaging, weren’t them.
The main problem is that they are too dense and heavy. Indeed, these meatballs only contain ground pork, cheese and spices. They don’t have bread to make them light and airy. Baking them as per the instructions, doesn’t contribute to making them any lighter.
I wasn’t thrilled by the flavor either, but that’s my fault for buying spicy meatballs. Who knows what prompted me to do that. Still, having tried them their dense consistency is enough of a deterrent to try any other flavors.
Recent Comments