Hello Fresh 11th Delivery & $40 Coupon



Pan Roasted Chicken with Dijon Mushroom Sauce & Brown Rice


Ingredients (click on photos to enlarge)


Nir's Lamb Stuffed Zucchini with Spiced Lentil Stew 


Ingredients


Seared Steak with Spring Veggie Succotash & Mint Chive Pesto 


Ingredients


This is a review of our 11th box from Hello Fresh which is a weekly food subscription box for $69 including shipping. They offer the choice of 3-5 recipes per week for 2-4 people and the choices are: classic, vegetarian and family. The vegetarian box is $59 for two people. The family box includes three meals for four people for $105. We order the classic box for two people. This week we gave all three recipes three out of five stars. Last week's recipes were much more enjoyable.

Pan Roasted Chicken with Dijon Mushroom Sauce & Brown Rice

We weren't crazy about the dijon sauce, it would have been so much better with more ingredients. That's one thing I'd like to see them change, add more ingredients per recipe. While it does save time to have less ingredients sometimes, in this case adding some white wine wouldn't have cost more time. Dijon mustard, sour cream, water, chicken concentrate, salt & pepper just made for too strong of a dijon flavor with too much sourness. Quite a bit of the thyme had turned brown and had to be thrown out. I'm not a big fan of brown rice since I find it too dry and I don't like the grainy texture, I prefer jasmine rice. The chicken and mushrooms were tasty. Hubby gave this recipe three out of five stars and I gave it two.  It was filling and we had leftover rice which we fed to our dogs. It took longer than the thirty-five minutes indicated. It's a gluten free recipe and it had 589 calories.

Nir's Lamb Stuffed Zucchini with Spiced Lentil Stew

Since we love lamb, I had to order this recipe. We recently learned of the Ras el Handout spice blend and have been enjoying it in several recipes lately. I think this recipe needed more of that spice, it just wasn't spicy enough for us. The lentils were too hard since the recipe had us cook them only fifteen minutes which wasn't long enough nor were they soaked overnight to help make them tender. A quick google search shows much longer cooking times with overnight soaking in water. So the lentils basically ruined the stew and I barely ate any of it. Due to the tomato base I couldn't share it with our dogs, so most of mine went in the trash, minus a few peas for the dogs. We thought jasmine rice or pilaf instead of the lentils would have made this dish delicious and worth repeating. The ground lamb and zucchini were the best part of this recipe though it didn't look appetizing to me. Perhaps if the lamb had been shaped into meatballs instead, it would have looked much more appetizing. This gluten free recipe had 634 calories and it took about forty-five minutes to prepare.

Seared Steak with Spring Veggie Succotash & Mint Chive Pesto

I'm very picky about mint sauce, so I was a bit surprised I liked this one. It's made with fresh mint, chives, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. I think we will use this part of the recipe  next time we have leg of lamb for dinner. I usually use mint jelly, but this is healthier and lower in calories. Our steak arrived leaking which was really disappointing and messy. I think the ice packs are too large and too heavy sitting on top of the meat and they squeezed the package open. Also, our UPS man places our box on it's side causing the leaking steak to leak up to the top of the box and leak on the produce. They need to change to a square box since the UPS man insists on placing rectangular boxes on their side. My Blue Apron, Home Chef and Plated square boxes always arrive right side up. The asparagus was very narrow and they didn't look like the recipe's photo that had nice thick asparagus. I think the zucchini should have been cut into larger pieces since it tends to overcook when cut so small. They only gave us one steak for two people, but due to the side vegetables it was very filling. I gave this three out of five stars and Hubby gave it two. He was quite annoyed there was only one steak for two people and the cooking time was off by fifteen minutes.  I would have given it four stars if the steak hadn't arrived leaking. This gluten free recipe had 489 calories.

I was going to cancel my subscription again due to the leaking steak and the mess I had to clean up, but I just received an email from them indicating that they are giving me the next box free as compensation. I have heard other customers have had meat or chicken leaking all over their box too. I wish they would come up with a solution rather than giving store credits. We are expecting the following recipes and ingredients on Friday:
  1. Jamie Oliver's Tasty Grilled Chicken with Warm Bean Salad
  2. Juicy Lucy Burger with Tomato Onion Jam & Baby Gem Lettuce Salad
  3. Dijon Pork Chops with Crispy Potato Cakes & Asparagus
Be sure to check out my Hello Fresh Pinterest Board to see the twenty-seven other recipes we have made so far. Click on the photo of the dish that interests you and it will take you to the matching blog post to learn more. If you haven't tried Hello Fresh yet, be sure to use my coupon "YVWF79" for $40 off your first box which makes it only $29 for 6 dinners! Who doesn't love free food! Join the fun! Also, check out my Food Subscription Box Comparison Chart to learn about the differences between Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, Home Chef and Plated.

Bargain Alert:
   
Hello Fresh - $40 off your first box, use coupon code "YVWF79", one Jamie Oliver recipe per week. 
Home Chef - $30 off your 1st box, click here, delivering to the west coast this spring.

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