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1. Choose Your Meal Preference
Each week you will choose from 25 HelloFresh crafted meals. Set a reminder to chose your menu for the week, or better yet, choose your meals for the entire month. All menu selections must be done five days prior to your delivery date. If you forget to choose your menu for the week, HelloFresh will select your meals for you and you may be stuck with some meals you are not that thrilled about. There are tons of mouth-watering options on their website that change weekly.
Meal Plan Options:
- Vegetarian
- Meat & Veggie
- Family Friendly
- Calorie Smart
- Quick & Easy
- Pescatarian
There are six meal plans to chose from. Choose the best category that fits your lifestyle. HelloFresh will select 25 recipes each week that fit your preferences. If you are a busy mom juggling work, family activities, and your side hustle the Quick & Easy meal plan would be the best fit for you!
Difficulty Levels
- Level 1
- Recipes that are simple, easy, and quick. Little multi-tasking and clean-up involved. Include basic ingredients that most people are familiar with.
- Level 2
- Recipes that require concentration, multi-tasking, and skill. Challenges chefs in the kitchen to broaden their cooking techniques and taste buds.
- Level 3
- Recipes that are more involved, require a high volume of multitasking but are doable. Includes ingredients that are new and unique.
Wanting to breeze through the recipe or increase your cooking skills? HelloFresh categorizes their recipes into three levels of difficulty. I will choose to do meals with a level three difficulty when I have a good amount of time to really enjoy and learn the cooking process. At the end of the meal you can look at your dish and say, “Damn, I did that!”
2. Read the Recipe
Reading the recipe is a very important part of any HelloFresh Meal. I read the instructions all the way through at least twice, before starting any assembly. Have some free time at work? Take a few minutes to read through the steps for tonight’s dinner. HelloFresh recipes are presented in the form of steps, each step has instructions that cannot be missed. Take time to read through the recipe so you can plan the cooking process beforehand and ensure a delicious meal for your loved ones.
3. Mise en place
Mise en place is a French term meaning to put everything in its place. In the culinary world, it is the process of setting up your workstation: equipment is set out, vegetables are cut, ingredients are measured. Make sure you have the needed kitchen tools and ingredients for your dish. Most HelloFresh meals will call for additional household ingredients like butter, oil, or flour. A zester is most likely needed for your HelloFresh Meal, make it easy to zest those lemons and limes with a real citrus zester.
4. Make it Your Own
Did you forget to pick your favorite HelloFresh meals this week? All HelloFresh meals offer a great base for a chef to add their spin and creativity to the dish. Don’t be afraid to make the meal your own. Look to add some additional protein, your favorite vegetables, or some additional spice! There is no right or wrong way. We accidentally got the vegetarian Refried Black Bean & Poblano Flautas. After a long day of skiing, we wanted to add some protein so we incorporated some Mexican pork. The extra additional pork made it so we could not roll the tortillas into flautas, so we made tacos instead. They were delicious and ended up on my Favorite HelloFresh Meals List.
5. Timing is Everything!
HelloFresh breaks each recipe up into a handful of steps, each step has a list of instructions. Make sure you set timers! Timers are important because it can be very easy to forget that something is in the oven or something needs to be added to the simmering pot on the stove. Some HelloFresh recipes will require 2-3 timers running at one time. I use my cell phone, oven, and microwave for the various timers. Make a mental note of what timer goes with which step in the recipe.
6. Clean Up
HelloFresh meals can produce quite a bit of trash and dirty dishes. One of my top tips is to use the brown paper bag that the meal was delivered in, for a trash bag. Keep the bag on your kitchen counter for easy and quick access. Clean up as you go and keep up on those dirty dishes. Have a small break in-between steps? Wash up some dishes while your food simmers and builds in flavor.
Level 1 HelloFresh recipes create the least amount of dishes because they are simple and easy. On the other end, level 3 recipes create the most amount of dishes because they are intended to broaden your culinary techniques and challenge your abilities in the kitchen.
7. Pause your Weekly Delivery
Going to be out of town for the week or have big dinner plans out? Don’t forget you can skip your weekly delivery at no additional charge. It is not a requirement to receive a delivery from HelloFresh every week. All changes must be done five days prior to your delivery date to ensure the delivery will be paused in time before packages are shipped out. Changes can be done through the My Menu Tab on the HelloFresh website. I love that HelloFresh offers this because it eliminates food waste and does not require you to pay for meals every week.
8. Give HelloFresh Feedback
Unhappy with your HelloFresh meal or craving a meal you had months ago but hasn’t been on the weekly menu for a while? Give HelloFresh feedback on what you like and dislike. You can favorite the meals you loved by clicking the heart icon on the recipe. The recipe will be saved to your personal account. #HelloFresh on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook with your favorite meals.
9. Don’t let the Extras go to Waste
Sometimes your HelloFresh Meal will come with more ingredients than what the recipe calls for. I have noticed herbs, spices, and onions are very common extras. Don’t let these ingredients go to waste! Fresh herbs are always great to have on hand and can be expensive if you buy them at the store. We accumulated several types of fresh Italian herbs and used them in a homemade ratatouille.
10. Get the Most Bang for Your Buck
HelloFresh offers affordable meals that are delivered right to your door. Meal plans start as low as $7.49 per serving + Shipping. To get the most bang for your buck, go for the meals that include more expensive ingredients. We aim for the meat forward recipes with unique vegetables and spices.
Be careful when selecting your weekly meals, some of the generated meals are Gourmet with premium ingredients. The price per serving will be a few dollars more than your chosen meal plan. Splurge on the Gourmet Meals for those special occasions!
[…] Feeling a little overwhelmed? Check out my Top Tips for Any HelloFresh Meal […]