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Healthy Dinners Sorted! The Meal Box Adelaide Food Bloggers Love

The box, delivered right to your door, contains pre-packed ingredients with recipes for five dinners. That’s dinner sorted for the working week!

Let’s face it. Everyone is constantly on some health kick or other. Or trying to save time when it comes to making dinner. While we all love the convenience of UberEats, a longer term, healthier solution is always on our mind, and frozen meals just don’t cut it anymore.

Enter the abundance of home-delivered meals, and meal boxes. While Adelaide was fairly slow to grow, the market for pre-prepared dinner options is growing, and there’s a stack of great options to choose from.

There’s fresh, pre-made meals (just heat and go), options where you can buy boxes with ingredients ready-to-go and even grocery stores offering online shopping and delivery. It’s a little overwhelming to be honest – where do you start, how do you choose?

HelloFresh is one that keeps popping up in our newsfeed however, and we know a lot of people who are using it (and loving it). Admittedly, we were pretty impressed that HelloFresh source ingredients from South Australia where possible too, so we thought we’d put it to the test ourselves and report back to you with the ins and outs. We’ve also asked a number of Adelaide foodies to try it out too and share their experiences because we want to give you an honest look at what’s involved, whether it’s achievable, if there’s value for money and if it’s really worth the hype.

If you’re not familiar, HelloFresh is grocery box that’s delivered weekly, which comes with matching recipes for a set number of meals and people. The ingredients align with the recipes to minimise waste. You can choose a box for two or four people, for either three or five days of meals (dinners). It’s a great option if you’re short on time or motivation for that matter. Recipes change each week too so you don’t have to worry about getting bored of eating the same thing over and over. All you have to do is choose from one of three boxes depending on your diet and how many mouths you’re feeding. The Classic Box, for omnivores; the Veggie Box for vegetarians; and the Family Box which has kid-friendly recipes. If you’re interested in giving it a crack yourself, the guys at HelloFresh are taking $35 off your first box order – just choose which box you’d like by clicking here.

Tammii from the food blog ‘Good Food Thyme’ gave it a whirl this week and here’s what her and her family thought.


Sometimes when life’s busy and we get tired, by the end of the day it can be a struggle to cook a healthy, flavoursome, interesting dinner. My husband and I both work full time, our son’s at school, and with after school activities nearly every night of the week, and the odd social engagement, our days can get pretty hectic.

As a food blogger at GoodFoodThyme, I also eat out a lot. I find it pleasurable to cook at home, for my family or hosting a dinner party, but day after day, cooking can seem like just another chore. I was excited to receive a HelloFresh box. The box, delivered right to your door, contains pre-packed ingredients with recipes for five dinners. That’s dinner sorted for the working week!

Unpacking the HelloFresh box and flicking through the recipe booklet, I was delighted to see the range of recipes. Each meal is packed separately in its own bag, with fridge items in a cooler bag. The packaging makes it easy to identify the meals and to store them in the household fridge.

To get my 11-year-old son involved, I gave him the task of selecting the first dinner – he took great delight in choosing chicken schnitzel with lemon butter sauce and almond garden salad. A chicken schnitzel is often on the menu in this house; it’s a relatively simple dish to put together, and satisfying. Chicken breast was provided for the schnitzel and it was a great way to work out the day’s frustrations by pounding it with a rolling pin, to thin it out. Panko crumbs were provided, which I love to use. They give an extra crunch, especially if you double crumb.

Pan fried, the schnitzels came out golden brown, crispy on the outside and moist on the inside, exactly how you want them to be. And the salad – for the most, fairly standard fare, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, but with snow peas – was completed with a rosemary and balsamic vinegar dressing. Without a doubt, this was a huge hit with my son.

The next meal we tried was lemon pepper beef with warm mustard broccoli and potato discs. This came together so easily; the rump steaks were well cut, not too big, which suited us as we don’t tend to eat a lot of red meat. I loved the Dijon mustard stirred through the broccoli and the potato rounds were thin and light. The creamy garlic aioli topped it off.

The paprika chicken flatbread is a fun dish! I loved the shredded chicken and the long strips of vegetables on top, with carrot and zucchini adding bright colours and texture to the dish. Cut into pizza-like slices, my son enjoyed it too, even with all the vegetables! And yes, I’m a little OCD – making sure the tomato paste base was spread right to the edges. I may have added a little extra grated cheese to the top.

The sweet and sticky pork rice noodles with cashew vegetable toss was our favourite dish of the week. A flavoursome, healthy stirfry, with sweet kecap manis and crunchy cashews, with bright green crunchy beans. I think next time (and there will be a next time) I might throw in some bean sprouts.

The oven-baked pesto and goat’s cheese risotto with zucchini and toasted walnuts was the most special dish of the whole selection. We shared this dish with close family, and it was a perfect way to showcase what the Hello Fresh box offered.

It’s the first time I’ve made an oven-baked risotto. Usually I like to stand at the stove and agitate the saucepan. Plus, it was vegetarian, which we didn’t even notice. It was creamy and the rice was cooked perfectly with flavour from the onion, zucchini, baby spinach and basil pesto. The toasted walnuts added a toasty crunch but the goats cheese topped it off – creamy and salty and oozing into the warm risotto. Our family loved it; so moreish.

Personally, I found the recipes quite easy, so I wouldn’t mind seeing some more complex recipes from Hello Fresh in future. But what I love about the HelloFresh concept is it gives you a variety of cooking ideas to suit most tastes and moods. Everything is measured out to exactly what’s needed. In Australia we throw out $8-10 billion of food every year. And as a nation we waste four million tonnes per annum of food, which ends up in landfill. It made me feel good – that I was doing the right thing for our family.

If this sounds like something you’d like to try out, HelloFresh are giving Glam Adelaide readers $35 off their first box. Simply click here to receive discount on your first order.

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