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On average, each dish required at least one pan, one pot, a baking sheet, a chopping board and knife, and maybe a bowl to mix ingredients in. Specific ingredients were called out in boldface type and the recipes offered cooking tips about each dish: what pots, pans or extra ingredients you might need, how to make it vegetarian if you wanted and even a good wine to pair it with.Įach dish took about 30 to 45 minutes to make, give or take some prep time (and the focus required for a newbie chef to avoid losing a finger while slicing and dicing). The menus were simple to read and follow, and included pictures. The vegetables were colorful, the greens were never wilted and any extra spice or additive was already measured out. I felt like a "real" cook every time I emptied a bag's contents. Everything fit nicely into the fridge (which I cleaned out for this article. The whole box is structured to keep things cold if you're not home when it shows up, which had been one of my concerns. When I opened the box, I found each meal's fresh ingredients neatly packed into brown paper bags (which you're encouraged to recycle), with the meat tucked under an ice pack. Read more: Our favorite meal-prep containers will get you excited to make lunch The three meals I chose were the Balsamic Fig Chicken, the Southwest Chicken Sausage and Rice Skillet and Teriyaki Pork Chops. On the HelloFresh website, you can see a menu of meal kit options for each plan for the next six weeks, with about 20 recipe choices to select from (you can see the menu for each plan without signing up for anything - perfect for picky eaters).
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This ends up being anywhere from $8-$11 per serving, plus $8 per box for shipping. A two-person box ranges from about $50 for two recipes to $115 for six recipes. From there, you can select two people or four people, and how many recipes you want per week (two to six). You're not locked into your original meal plan and can change it later if it doesn't seem like the best fit. The service has several customizable plans to choose from: Meat & Veggies, Veggie, Family Friendly, Quick & Easy and a Calorie Smart (low-calorie) option.
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It always sounded like an interesting thing to try, but I wasn't expecting much by way of quality - for some reason, I had a picture in my mind of a frozen dinner, not fancy plated meals. If you listen to podcasts at all, odds are you've heard an advertisement for the meal kit delivery service. Of all the dinner boxes out there, HelloFresh was the one I'd heard of most often.
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