HelloFresh Meal Kit Review

How HelloFresh works

HelloFresh has three core meal plans that you can choose from.  The Veggie, the Classic, and the Family Plans. All of them are subscription programs, which you can pause, cancel at any time - or you can choose to skip a week if needed. Each plan has at least a few different recipe options.

The Veggie plan provides 3 recipes every week, and you can order them in 2 or 4 person quantities. This plan costs $8.99 per serving.

The Family plan lets you order either 2 or 3 recipes per week, but each recipe has enough for 4 people and costs $7.87 per serving.

And the Classic plan provides the most options, where you can order 2, 3, or 4 recipes per week, for either 2 or 4 people per recipe. The classic plan costs $8.99 per serving and has about 15 recipe to choose from.

Meal options vary across the plans, with the veggie plan obviously focused on meatless recipes. The meals themselves don't seem to follow any particular theme, and offer a pretty diverse selection. At the time of writing, between the plans, a sample of the recipes offered included:

• Sriracha Cha-Cha Chicken
• Juicy lucy burger
• Pork & poblano tacos
• Satay chicken stir fry
• Hot honey barbecue chicken legs
• Pear & Balsamic Flatbreads
• Pasta Parmesan
• Crispy chickpea tacos

The classic plan has the most meal choices with 15. While the veggie option only has 3, and the family plan 6.

So far, I've cooked four Hello Fresh recipes, a Juicy Lucy (burger), Sriracha Chicken, Carnitas Tacos and Steak with Peppercorn sauce. Two recipes came in one box, packed with cold packs. When one of the box arrived, one of the corners was a bit banged up, and one of the cold packs had punctured and leaked. But I put that on the shipping company vs HelloFresh. And because of how the ingredients were packed, none of the spillage got on any food.

The proteins for the meals were packed separately, closest to the cold packs, and were well chilled when I pulled them out. The other ingredients were separated by recipe and packed in their own recipe bags, which meant no sorting required. I simply put everything away in the fridge to cook the next day.

Along with each box were two recipes cards with directions for cooking each meal, as well as some other welcome material. The cards were well done, and all the directions made sense. The only major mistake I saw was the lack of an oven temperature for one of the steps. The cooking times were accurate, and met my expectations.

All of the vegetables and pantry items that came were good quality, and met my expectations. There were two items, sugar & butter, that the recipes called for that HelloFresh did not include. Which is fine, as most will have those on hand; but some of the other providers I've tried have included those ingredients.

My one major concern was with one of the two steaks sent for the Steak with Peppercorn sauce recipe. While one of the cuts of sirloin was very good, the other had a significant amount of grizzle that was just inedible. And with a smallish (~8oz) steaks, if a few bites are no good, it's a significant amount.

Registering & Ordering

You register for HelloFresh much like any other shopping/subscription site. Your first step is picking the plan that you're most interested in. It's that choice that will determine which recipes you're assigned by default every week.

Obviously, critically important is confirming that they deliver to your area. And early in the registration process you put in your zip code and address to ensure they can deliver to you. And you complete the process by providing your shipping & billing info, and picking a date to receive your first box.

Once signed up, there is a calendar interface where you can see what recipes your scheduled for and when; with the ability to look ahead a few weeks. HelloFresh picks your first recipes by default, but you're free to go in and change those if you'd like. The process to change recipes was a bit confusing, but after a few extra clicks I was able to figure it out.

As a subscriber, you'll get regular updates on when your next shipment is coming, and what's included. And they have an app for managing your orders on your mobile.

Where does HelloFresh Deliver?

HelloFresh delivers to all of the continental US. And through separate entities to many international locations. Unfortunately, like many other providers, Hawaii and Alaska are out of luck.

Is HelloFresh Organic?

On their website, HelloFresh acknowledges that while some of their ingredients are organic, the majority are not. Again, that's consistent with many other providers.