I have been wanting to do a meal kit delivery service for a while now, and recently signed up for Hello Fresh. I figure I might as well do a quick little Hello Fresh review for those that might be interested in trying it as well! If you don’t want to read and just want to try it, then here’s the short version: I totally recommend it and please click here to use my referral code to sign up: Save $40 on Your First Hello Fresh Box! (and I get $10 off my boxes, yay! and thank you!) *** scroll to the bottom if you want the latest update!

You can also check out my Cooking with Hello Fresh Pinterest board, where I’ve been posting pictures of some of my favorite meals.

A couple weeks ago I posted on Facebook asking what meal kits everyone had tried and Hello Fresh was mentioned several times. I had tried Blue Apron a few years ago, and liked it but they hadn’t seemed to master the art of keeping things cool on delivery in the Florida summer heat. I got a few stinky things too often and cancelled it. So I was ready to try something new on this round.

I went with Hello Fresh and am LOVING it so far. Yes, all caps. LOVING it. I’m on my second box and both deliveries were nice and cold, with nothing smelling off or old. Everything was literally, fresh. The first meal I made was their Shrimp & Zucchini Ribbons over rice, and I have already added this recipe to my favorites and plan to make it again! The lemon zest sauce and marinated zucchini ribbons were both new for me, which is one of the reasons I wanted to try a meal kit – to push me to try new things. I’d done zoodles before, but not ribbons. And I’m starting to really love adding lemon zest to things.

Next up was the Beef Bulgogi Meatballs with rice and baked carrots. All I can say is YUM. I am now a total fan of baking carrots in the oven. They turned out amazing. Everything about this was delicious.

And that brings us to the third selection, Chicken over Lemony Spaghetti, which has now made me a fan of lemony spaghetti. I think I overcooked the chicken on this one a bit because it was kind of thin and I’m used to cooking thicker pieces, but the yummy tangy and creamy sauce made up for that.

The Overall Hello Fresh Review:

Each meal was easy to make, didn’t take me very long to do, and was big on flavor. All the ingredients were provided except for basics like salt, pepper and butter. So far the fanciest thing I’ve had to do was zest a lemon. It helps to have a zesting tool for this. I recommend you get one. You won’t regret it. I think I probably got one when I tried out Blue Apron, because apparently citrus zest does magical things so it’s included in many recipes.

I also found the portion sizes to be perfect! I ordered the kit with two servings of each meal, because my son just wants plain spaghetti or chicken nuggets for every meal. There was plenty for both my husband and I, with sometimes even a little leftover on some meals for a lunch snack.

So that’s it! I’m about to break into our second box tonight and make a Chimichurri Barramundi. I’m betting there’s some lemon zest in there somewhere…

And once more, in case you missed it, please use my link to save $40 off your first Hello Fresh box and count that as your good deed for the day because then I get $10 off mine 🙂

**After writing this review, I went to make dinner and got my first non-fresh thing: a very sad sprig of half black and soggy cilantro. I managed to salvage enough to make a decent chimichurri sauce, but I was disappointed to find that. So I guess no meal delivery is going to be perfect. The meal still turned out really good though.

***July 12 (one month update): Everything is still great, but I did get a bag of moldy stinky green beans. I contacted customer service through the app to let them know, and they credited my account in less than two minutes. So they have excellent customer service!

***July 22: After the moldy green bean incident, my next box arrived wet and leaking because all the ice bags had melted. The food wasn’t all that cold but it was still edible. Then yesterday my box didn’t even arrive. I had to order pizza for dinner because I was planning on cooking it right up until 8:30PM when I got an e-mail saying it was running late. When I tried to contact customer service, the wait time was 38 min! When I finally got through this morning, they credited me $10 for “the inconvenience” but I’m a bit of an unhappy customer right now. Wondering if the box will even be edible once it gets here.

***July 23: Box arrived the next day, everything was cold and the meals were delicious as usual. I think it was more the fault of UPS than Hello Fresh. But I am going to try out another service to see how they do, and compare.

***Sept. 1: I tried Every Plate, Blue Apron and Home Chef and nothing compares to Hello Fresh! I keep going back to them. Their recipes are the best and they have the best variety.