Hello Fresh review

Last month we tried SimplyCook, a service that sends you recipes with only some of the ingredients. This month we've tried Hello Fresh, which is the same sort of premise except you get all the ingredients. It's sort of like Dinnr, which we tried last year, though with Hello Fresh you have the choice of receiving three or five main meals each week, and their hope is that you continue your subscription each week rather than it be a one-off. (Dinnr appears to have closed down.)

I was given a £25 giftcard outside Farringdon Tube station, so it cost us £14 instead of £39 for their classic box. This got us three meals for two people, with delivery, which is a bargain considering that the ingredients are from high-end suppliers. The cod, for example, came from James Knight, who supplies The Queen and Prince Charles.

Hello Fresh recommend you do seafood dishes first so that's what we did. Our first meal was James Knight’s baked lemon butter cod with capers.

Looks yum, huh? I can confirm it was, and it's not something we would have thought to cook for a weekday meal, which is the point of us using Hello Fresh. Both Olly and I are good cooks but sometimes the last thing you want to do in the week is think of yummy recipes, go out and buy the ingredients, and then get cooking. Whilst I can't see us using this service on a weekly basis, I can see us ordering a box a month to shake up our repertoire or give us an easy week of cooking.

The next night we cooked the rosemary lamb burgers with sweet potato chips and sour cream dip - delicious, but not a new recipe for us - saving the Sicilian caponata with herbed pork and garlic ciabatta for last. We should have had their summery grain mustard potato salad with pan-fried chicken, but it didn't appeal to me and luckily you can swap meals. I know I've said that using Hello Fresh was about trying things we wouldn't usually make but a mustard potato salad is not my cup of tea. I'm not a fan of aubergine either so the caponata was my least favourite dish of the three, though it was still very tasty (the non aubergine part). 

What else? The recipes were easy to follow, and I'm super impressed with the quality of the ingredients. Going by the use by dates of the meat and bread though, you do need to make sure that you're home for three consecutive nights or else you might find you're wasting a meal. Another thing to note is that if you have this delivered to work, the box is quite heavy (it's all the ice inside to keep it fresh) so you might want to make use of your office fridge during the day and then take the food home in a bag, sans ice, if you're using public transport.

If you want to give Hello Fresh a whirl, use the code LZJ25T to get £20 off your first order. x

UPDATE, SEPTEMBER 2014: Whilst I was pleased with Hello Fresh, they have called me several times to see when I'm going to use them again, despite me selecting that I only wanted to receive communications from them via email or text. (Why ask me my communications preferences?!) I've found them to be quite pushy, which somewhat ruins my positive opinion of them.