30 Things That May Actually Make You Dread Winter A Little Less

*Just kidding, because you’re gonna love having ingredients sent right to your doorstep so much, you’re never gonna wanna leave the house again!

My colleague Maitland Quitmeyer is a HelloFresh subscriber and swears by it! Here’s what she has to say: 

“For me, there are three great reasons to try a meal kit like HelloFresh right now: 1. to reduce trips to the grocery store without having to forgo fresh produce, 2. to get out of the same-dinner ruts, especially when we’re cooking at home more than ever, and 3. to learn new cooking skills in a basically foolproof setting.

Here’s how it works: You can select from the four preferences: meat and veggie, veggies, low-calorie, and family-friendly. Recipes come portioned to two or four people (but I find the portions to be generous), and you can get either three or four recipes per week (for the two-person plan) or two or three recipes a week (for the four-person plan). And, of course, you can skip weeks, upgrade to ~premium~ recipes (think surf and turf) for an additional fee, or change the number of meals at any time. When your box arrives, you get everything you need to make the recipe, chilled to perfection and portioned accordingly (you just need to provide pantry staples like butter, oil, salt, and pepper).

And the instructions? Totally foolproof. My fave recipe so far exemplifies how helpful HelloFresh is for trying out new recipes and techniques — say hello to my little friend, tempura shrimp. I have thought about making at-home tempura for like…years, but it seemed like a lot of work, and I’d burn myself on the hot hot oil.

But this recipe took all the scariness out of it — turns out I *didn’t* need a whole pot of oil to fry these bbs up, a shallow fry worked PERFECTLY. And when I feel done with HelloFresh, when we’re no longer social distancing from the grocery store and I feel like I’ve learned enough, I will 10000000000% make this again on my own. And I’ve been thinking about the sauce (an easy mix of mayo, Sriracha, and apricot jam) ever since, and will put it on just every single thing from here on out — including just a spoon. And the portions are IMO, very generous — I could not eat what they’d consider one portion in a single night, and the leftovers always reheated just as deliciously as they were the first night. And the best part = you can access their database of over 2,500 recipes even when you’re not a subscriber, so you can just use it as a cookbook when you’re done subscribing.” 

Subscribe to HelloFresh starting at $9.99/serving.