HelloFresh Meal Delivery Service

HelloFresh is a meal kit delivery service that strikes a nice balance between cooking and convenience. It lets you peel, chop, and measure ingredients, with each box containing the perfect amount for each recipe. This flexibility means you can easily adapt HelloFresh's recipes to suit your tastes and dietary preferences. For this best-of-both-worlds approach, HelloFresh earns our Editors' Choice award for meal kit delivery services.

Pricing

HelloFresh costs between $9.99 and $12.99 per serving depending on how many meals you order per week—the more meals you order, the lower the per-serving cost. You pay $10.99 for shipping, the standard rate among other meal kit services (companies typically waive the delivery fee for your first order, while Blue Apron permanently waives it on all but its smallest plan).

A HelloFresh minimum order is two meals per week (with two servings each). Factor in shipping costs, and you'll spend roughly $60 per week. If you increase the order to four servings per recipe and top out at six meals per week (the most you can get), you'll spend about $250 per week.

HelloFresh's costs are in line with other top meal kit delivery services, including Blue Apron and Hungryroot. Those services have gimmicks that also affect pricing. Blue Apron focuses more on cooking education, while Hungryroot offers grocery add-on purchases.

For a similar price, you can skip cooking and order fully prepared meals that you simply heat and eat. Fresh N Lean is our Editors' Choice in that category, with meals costing close to $11 per serving. Factor is another good heat-and-eat option, and is owned by HelloFresh's parent company.

(Credit: Jill Duffy)

Menu

HelloFresh's menu options change every week. Upon signing up, you select one of six options so the service can suggest meals. The options are Meat and Veggies, Veggie, Family Friendly, Fit and Wholesome, Quick and Easy, and Pescatarian.

You can explore HelloFresh's meals before signing up. A few examples are Sunny-Side-Up Burgers with Bacon, Gouda & Smoky Potato Hash; Harissa Sweet Potato Pockets with Cucumber Dill Salad; and Salsa Verde Enchiladas with Poblano Pepper, Black Beans & Monterey Jack Cheese.

Each meal appears as a little card with a photo of the finished dish and a descriptive tag when relevant—Calorie Smart, Easy, Gourmet, Quick, Hall of Fame. The card shows the average rating that other cooks gave the meal, calories per serving, total cook time, and other info like Spicy or Shellfish. What you don't see are all possible allergens or other dietary preferences. You must click through to the full recipe to see those important details. That full recipe page has a summary highlighting allergens and other dietary tags.

The menu is wide enough to accommodate most dietary preferences, but this isn't a purely vegan or vegetarian meal service. Green Chef is our Editors' Choice winner in that category.

(Credit: Jill Duffy)

Packaging

Your package contains clearly labeled paper bags that make finding food a breeze. Meat and fish are individually wrapped and kept separate from the other ingredients. Vegetables are loose in the bag. Cold packs keep all the contents chilled, aided by fabric insulation.

According to HelloFresh's website, the insulation may change based on seasonal climates. The cold pack is a heft plastic bag filled with a frozen, non-toxic, water-soluble gel that you're supposed to dump in the trash. It's a plasma-like substance common in the meal kit delivery world.

Large menu cards for each dish offer detailed instructions. They also have glossy, color images of key process points (e.g., how ingredients look when diced) and the final plated dish.

(Credit: Jill Duffy)

Cooking and Eating

To test HelloFresh, we cooked three meals: Crunchy Curry Chickpea Bowls, Wild Caught Salmon, and Sirloin Steak Provencal.

The instructions were easy to follow. An experienced cook would probably take a few liberties and do a few steps out of order. An inexperienced cook will do just fine, though the prep work (peeling and chopping) might take longer. We fixed side dishes for the fish and meat meals, and pan-fried the protein. After cooking the meat, we deglazed the pan with stock and water to make a sauce. That was the gist of it.

By and large, HellFresh lacks premade sauces, which makes a huge difference. For one, it helps teach you how easy it is to make a quick lemon dressing, pan sauce, or crema. Second, you know exactly what's in them, with no extra sugars or stabilizers to worry about. Third, you can tailor the sauces to your tastes. For example, the steak dish called for a dipping sauce made from sour cream, olive oil, water, and a pinch of truffle zest.

HelloFresh sends high-quality ingredients. The fish filet was a skin-on sockeye salmon touted as being sustainably caught and was plump and vibrant. The sirloin pieces were quite different in size and shape. One was thin, as if it had been pounded, and the other looked like a miniature rump roast.

The Crunchy Curried Chickpea Bowls were a standout. The recipe began with the fragrance of melting butter. The aromas built as we added a pinch of curry powder to the pot and tossed in diced carrots to absorb the flavors. Soon, we pulled a tray of spice-crusted chickpeas from the oven and assembled them on a bed of rice that simmered with the carrots and curry. The purple cabbage was less pickled (as advertised) and more zippy, because it was marinated in lemon juice. Raisins added sweetness. Everything about this dish worked. It was stellar.

(Credit: Jill Duffy)

Verdict: Say Hello to HelloFresh

We thoroughly enjoy HelloFresh's selection. The service has fairly versatile recipes, so you can easily add or subtract ingredients to suit preferences and dietary needs. Although it doesn't always have the largest meal selection in certain categories, the recipe quality is terrific. If your diet varies widely or you're cooking for a household with mixed preferences, HelloFresh is an Editors' Choice winner for meal kit delivery services that's definitely worth trying.