Today we are reviewing the Hello Fresh Meal Subscription from the December 2018 menu.
Hello Fresh is a popular meal subscription box that sends you most everything you need to make 2-4 recipes per week. You'll get fresh vegetables, meat, and spices/condiments to make gourmet meals at home. You can choose from 3 different plans: Classic, Family, or Veggie.
What it costs:
Veggie Plan – as low as $6.99 per serving
Family Plan – as low as $7.49 per serving
Classic Plan – as low as $8.99 per serving
Hello Fresh Deal: Right now, you can get $40 off your very first Hello Fresh box using this link.
Hello Fresh Meal Subscription December 2018 Review + Coupon
We are reviewing the Hello Fresh Classic Plan (3 meals per week for 4 people), which only cost us $55.87. This ended up to be only $4.66 per serving!
Here is the Hello Fresh box that we got. It's super heavy so I needed some extra help carrying it into the house.
Our first peek inside showed a bunch of info cards and coupons from Hello Fresh.
Once we opened the corrugated packing material, we saw 3 brown bags that had all of our non-meat ingredients.
Underneath these brown bags were the meat packages, which seemed to be packed in dry ice. The meat was super cold, even after being in transit for at least 24 hours!
Here are the info cards that we got with this box. We got a welcome card with a pop-up holder to hold our recipe cards.
This card reminds you that you can select your meals each week before they ship, then you can specify the delivery date. You can also skip or cancel deliveries 5 days before your delivery day – which is especially helpful if you know you'll be out of town!
From their menu, you can filter on meals that are in their Hall of Fame, Gourmet Meals, One-Pot Wonders, 20-minute meals, and Kid-Approved. You do need to make sure you always keep salt, pepper, sugar, oil, and butter on hand.
Hello Fresh also has a Wine Club, which you can also pair with the meals in your weekly Hello Fresh meal delivery.
Here are the 3 brown bags. I love how each meal has its own bag so you can easily grab a bag and cook a meal for dinner.
We got to choose our recipes ahead of time. There was something like 20 recipes on the menu for the week. Since my husband is allergic to chicken, I was able to choose meal that didn't have chicken! The 3 recipes we got were:
- Pork Carnitas Tacos
- Meat Loaf A La Mom
- Autumn Spiced Pork Chops
Now, onto the recipes!
Pork Carnitas Tacos
This Pork Carnitas Tacos recipe is in Hello Fresh's Hall of Fame.
You get a recipe card detailing each step (with a photo), the ingredients, and how much time it takes to make each recipe.
Here are the ingredients for this Pork Carnitas Taco recipe.
Everything is pre-portioned, so no need for measuring cups or spoons!
The finished result tasting AMAZING! This pork carnitas taco recipe was bursting with all kinds of flavor!
My husband and I really liked it!
And the kids loooved it too! We could customize this recipe so they didn't get the red onions or anything that was too spicy.
Meat Loaf A La Mom
This next recipe of Mat Loaf A La Mom was a nice comfort food recipe.
Here is the recipe card.
This meal required quite a bit of chopping – so it helps if you have another adult or teenager who can help you prep if you want to get dinner on the table fast.
Here were the pre-portioned ingredients for Meat Loaf a la Mom. Since some of us are gluten-free in this house, I just subbed gf breadcrumbs and gf flour for what was already included. I also added one egg to the meat loaf recipe.
Here was the finished meal! This one was pretty good as well. I especially like how all of this was cooked on one sheet pan, and this meal was nearly Paleo. The sauces that Hello Fresh includes really makes these meals feel like they are gourmet.
Autumn Spiced Pork Chops
Our final meal was the Autumn Spiced Pork Chops.
Here is the recipe card.
This was another meal where you used a sheet pan to roast the vegetables. While the veggies were roasting, we cooked the pork chops in a frying pan.
And here was the finished product! Unfortunately, we forgot to take a picture of the ingredients, but next time.
The flavor of this Autumn-Spiced Pork chop recipe was pretty amazing – there was a lot of thyme and cumin in the pork recipe.
My kids gobbled this recipe up as well. We omitted the thyme on the Brussel sprouts for the kids, but they loved the honey butter on the sweet potato!
In Summary
We really liked this Hello Fresh meal subscription box. I liked how I could choose meals that fit my family's tastes. My husband and I like to eat nearly paleo, and are gluten free as well. I could customize the recipes to omit spices that my kids don't normally like – and they loved every recipe. One thing about Hello Fresh that I didn't know is that the meals take a bit longer than they claim on the recipe cards, unless you have a helper in the kitchen. Each of these meals took about an hour to prepare, but that was okay for me because these meals were really delicious, and something I wouldn't normally prepare. The meals were also really healthy to boot, so if you are paleo or have food allergies – this may be the meal kit subscription box for you!
Hello Fresh Deal: Right now, you can get $40 off your very first Hello Fresh box using this link.
