I got this BBQ sauce at Grocery Outlet before the pandemic. I was intrigued by the very minimalist packaging and the small jar – I don’t use that much BBQ sauce at once. I finally got to use it one day when I was craving – of all things – meatloaf. OK, I was craving something sweet for dinner, and the only meat I had at home was ground beef, so the only thing I could think of was meatloaf. I was very happily surprised. The sauce is thick and tangy, with a slight alcoholic-like flavor (it doesn’t have any alcohol, I checked). While it has “natural” smoke flavor and artificial flavors added, it doesn’t seem to have any preservatives and has sugar rather than corn syrup.
The sauce is available at Walmart at $3 for the 15.5 oz jar, and while I try not to shop at Walmart, I’d buy it again.
My daughter absolutely loved this recipe, and it was very easy to make. I very lightly adapted it from Minimalist Baker.
Ingredients
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 large shallot, thinly diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 butternut squash, peeled, de-seeded and cubed
1 1/2 Tbsp curry powder
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
salt & pepper to taste
1 14-ounce can coconut milk
2 cups vegetable broth
2 Tbsp maple syrup
Directions
Heat a soup pot over medium heat. Add the oil. Add the shallots and garlic and sauté for 2 minutes, stirring.
Add the butternut squash. Stir in the curry powder, cinnamon and salt and pepper. Cover and cook for 4 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the coconut meat, vegetable broth and maple syrup. Bring to a boil, then reduce to low and simmer, covered, for 15-20 minutes or until the squash is very soft.
Using an electric blender, purée until smooth. Taste and adjust seasoning.
My daughter has been asking for tomato soup for a while, and I figured tonight was a good time to make it for her – plus I had all the ingredients! I followed a recipe I found online, with a couple of modifications from the comments, and my daughter was very happy with it. It was quick and easy to do – I actually made the soup in advance, and then had her heat it up and add the coconut milk when she was ready to eat it. Note that I added a diced fresh tomato to the ingredients below – I had it and it was getting close to going bad so I had to use it.
Ingredients
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 28 oz can diced or whole tomatoes
1 cup water
1 tsp. smoked paprika
1 tsp. oregano
1 tsp. dried basil
1/2 – 1 tsp vegetable broth base
salt to taste
1/3 cup coconut milk
Instructions
Heat oil in a medium sauce pan over medium-low heat. Add onion and saute until soft. Add garlic and saute, stirring, for a minute. Add the tomatoes. If using whole tomatoes, push with a wooden spoon to break out. Add the water, paprika, oregano, basil and vegetable broth base. Turn heat to medium-high and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. Using an immersion blender, puree until smooth.
Taste and add salt if needed. At this point, you can refrigerate if you want to use it later. Right before serving, heat the soup until warm and then stir in the coconut milk.
Home Chef sent me a “come back” offer of $25 off per week for four weeks, so I’ve been back using it. The service has grown up a bit since the last time I used it. For one, meals have different prices now. While before they all used to be $10 per serving, they now have a weekly “slow cooker” meal for $7.50, and their more upscale meals (including the one that has steak) are $12/13 per portion). You can now further customize these with more expensive proteins – a meal kit that includes choice boneless ribeye steak will cost you $24 per portion, or the same you can expect to pay at a restaurant. Of course, the choices of these more expensive proteins, including antibiotic-free chicken, does send the message that their regular proteins are pretty crappy.
Home Chef seems to have a greater variety of dishes now, including some with an international flare, but most everything they offer is directed to very standard American tastes. And it’s sending more prepared ingredients, which means that it’s far quicker to put these meals together. They also have almost oven-ready meals, which require very little preparation.
This was a pretty straightforward dish and quick to prepare. The chicken was pre-cubed and the orange sauce pre-made, so there wasn’t too much to do: make the race, roast the broccoli, mix the coating, coat the chicken, fry it and then mix it with the orange sauce. I like that they included the oil, as it took quite a bit to fry it.
It was a fairly tasty dish, not quite restaurant quality but good enough. Still, I wouldn’t eagerly order it again.
This was another fairly easy dish to put together and tasty enough. It did not, however, taste at all like Thai pad thai. That’s because it used oyster sauce, rather than the sauce used for pad thai. I appreciated that the carrots came pre-shredded, that saved me a lot of time. The steak also came pre-cut in paper thin slices, which I couldn’t have done myself manually and made cooking it very fast. While I liked the dish well enough, I wouldn’t order it again if I had better options.
This was one of those almost oven ready meals. It still required washing and seasoning the green beans, cooking them and then adding the chicken, spreading it with tomato pesto and covering with cheese before baking, but it was all rather quick to put together. The pesto came already made. I didn’t actually taste this dish, but my daughter was pleased enough with it.
In all, these meals were fine – not as tasty as the ones I got from Hello Fresh the week before, but far quicker to put together. Though at the end, it seemed like I could do so just as easily with stuff I bought at the supermarket and, was I paying full price, probably for less.
I really enjoyed this mayo spread with the HelloFresh Pork Burgers I made the other day. While I doubt I’ll have a reason to make it again, you never know. It’s also a tasty dip for fries
Ingredients
1 lime
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup sour cream
2 cloves garlic, minced
Instructions
Zest the lime and set aside, half remaining lime. In a small bowl, mix together the mayo, sour cream and minced garlic. Mix in the lime zest and squeeze the lime into the mixture.
Last time I renewed HelloFresh I forgot to choose my meals, so I ended up with three of HelloFresh’s choice. While I wasn’t thrilled at first, two of them ended up being a good choice – I cannibalized the ingredients of the last one for other stuff.
I was particularly worried about this recipe for pork burgers. I figured, if pork burgers were any good, you’d see them in restaurant menus. Ground pork doesn’t seem enticing at all, it’s so greasy for one. But I got the kit, so I made it, and I was quite surprised at how tasty the burgers were. They didn’t feel too greasy, and though I probably overcooked them (you can never be too sure with pork), they were still moist. Still, I wouldn’t make them on my own.
In the year+ since I’ve subscribed, on and off, to Hello Fresh, I’ve almost never had issues with the quality or freshness of their ingredients and this time it was not different. I live in the Bay Area in California, so YMMV elsewhere.
I made this coconut curry for my vegan daughter and vegetarian niece for a family dinner, and they both enjoyed it. It’s very easy to make and you can use any vegetables you have around, tofu or really, anything. My daughter did like it with the sweet potato. Use as much curry as you like.
1 tsp olive oil
1/2 yellow onion , chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 14 oz. can coconut milk
4+ tsp curry powder
1 Tbsp. soy sauce
1 Tbsp. maple or corn syrup
1/2 tsp salt
1 sweet potato , peeled and chopped
2 cups vegetables, peeled and chopped
Instructions
Heat olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onions and sauté until they soften, about 5 minutes. Stir in garlic and sauté for one minute.
Add the coconut milk, curry powder, soy sauce, maple syrup and salt. Mix well. Taste and add more curry powder as needed.
Bring to a boil and add the sweet potato. Turn down heat to low, cover and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the rest of the vegetables and mix well. Cover the pot and cook until the vegetables are done, about 10 minutes.
I selected this meal kit for Moroccan Pork Sausage Tagine with Dried Apricots and Chickpeas over Couscous because it seemed easy enough to veganize it for my vegan daughter, by simply substituting vegetable concentrate for the included chicken concentrate, and omitting both the sausage and the cream on her portion. It did mean having to cook the sausage in a different pan, but that wasn’t a big deal.
All in all both my husband and daughter enjoyed this dish, and it’s simple enough to put together. It was a good portion for both of them. If you make the original recipe, beware that the sausage is very salty, so be careful of how much salt you use in the other ingredients.
All ingredients were good quality, though the carrots were a bit wobbly.
I should point out that calling this dish “Moroccan” is almost insulting. Yes, the dish includes couscous and dried apricots – but that’s as far as the Moroccan influence goes. The vast majority of Moroccans are Muslim, and Muslims cannot eat pork. The sweet Italian pork sausage included in this recipe is not used in Morocco. Moroccans are famous for their merguez sausage, which is made of lamb or beef and has no pork products in it, but it is probably too expensive for HelloFresh to include.
I paid about $8.50 for this mealkit or about $4.25 per portion. Great deal!
Hello Fresh seldom offers steak as part of their regular offerings. Instead, dishes with steak are usually considered “gourmet” and require an additional supplement. These are usually a very poor value, so I never ordered them. I did this time because when I added to my cart, HelloFresh showed that the 65% off discount that I had applied to the supplement as well. Alas, when I checked my account I realized that I was charged the full supplement price, which makes me feel defrauded. Still, it’s a lesson learned and in the future I just won’t order any meals that require paying a supplement.
This meal kit for Sirloin in a Mushroom Sauce with Caramelized Onion Mashed Potatoes and Roasted Carrots was pretty good, if a little too much work. It basically had 5 components that had to be cooked separately: the steak, the mashed potatoes, the carrots, the onions and the mushroom sauce. I think one (the onions) could have been skipped without losing much beyond cooking time.
But all ingredients were very tasty and, in particular, the mushroom sauce was phenomenal, which helped elevate both the meat and the mashed potatoes. I’ve had similar mushroom sauces before, but I liked how simple and quick this one was (recipe below).
All the ingredients were included and they were mostly fresh (the carrots were a little wobbly) and good quality. The steaks were very, very thick but at least they were around the same thickness.
I paid a little over $20 for this meal kit, including the supplement, or about $10 per person.
Mushroom sauce
I recommend you double the sauce
3 Tbsp butter, divided
4 oz white mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 garlic clove, minced
1 Tbsp. beef demi-glace
1/4 cup water
1 tsp Dijon mustard
Melt 2 Tbsp. butter over medium-high heat in a pan, preferably one you used to cook steak. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring frequently, until softened – 2 to 4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Add the demi-glace and the water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and stir in the mustard. Simmer until slightly thickened. Stir in the remaining Tbsp. butter.
After being off meal kits all summer (both because I wasn’t cooking and because I didn’t get any good “come back” offers), I went back to HelloFresh after getting a “65% off your first box” deal. Apparently I had forgotten just how hard it was to find meals that I actually wanted to make, which is why I ended up selecting this kit for Mozzarella-Stuffed Meatball Bake with Cavatappi and a Crispy Panko Topping.
Truth be told, I love pasta baked with sauce and cheese, and I’m a pretty big fan of good meatballs as well. Still, this is the sort of dish I can easily make on my own and, as it turned out, much better.
There were lots of things wrong with this dish. First, baking the meatballs was a mistake, they were left dry and with a crusty shell. The recipe also called for too much salt. Second, the tomato sauce was pretty tasteless. No wonder, making a pasta sauce requires a long simmering town. This dish would have been much better with a commercial pasta sauce. Finally, the mozzarella cheese was pretty bland. The dish could really have used some Parmesan cheese instead of the bread crumbs that was included.
I paid ~$8.50 for this meal kit for two people with the discount.
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