Popdust

✖

How I Make Dinner So Fast, Easy, & Cheap

Spoiler alert: It's Chefs Plate

A brief history of my kitchen disasters: burning food, forgetting to add the main ingredient, adding the perfect amount of salt 3 times, burning water, and making rice that my mother deemed "the worst rice she'd ever had" (it looked like porridge).

I'm tired of trying new things only to end up with something inedible - with other people in the house, it just can't happen anymore.

I thought we'd be doomed to pasta and takeaways for eternity until someone at work recommended I try Chefs Plate. I'd heard of meal kits before, but I figured they'd be expensive. But she said Chefs Plate starts at $8.99 a serving, which was cheaper than my usual takeout.

I recounted my kitchen disasters to her, and she told me Chefs Plate was so easy, and probably the best way for me to gain confidence in the kitchen. Plus, it wouldn't break the bank, so I had nothing to lose - I decided to finally take the plunge.

Looking at the Chefs Plate website, I got lost in the delicious recipes - every week, there are Classic, Vegetarian, 15 Minute, and Slow Cooker options. This would give me my nights back if it worked out, especially if I could dump food in the Slow Cooker and come home to a meal! You can choose between 2-4 recipes a week, and their plans are super flexible. All of the pre-portioned ingredients are delivered to your door, and the boxes arrive with ice packs, so the food stays fresh.

It was so perfect! For the first meal, I chose a 15 Minute Garlic Pork Lo Mein with stir-fried zucchini and bok choy. They have plenty of classic cuisines, plus more exotic fare, too. The ingredients arrived perfectly portioned and labeled, and I mostly just had to chop up a few things.

In about 15 minutes, I had dinner for three ready. We dug in, and it was delicious! Better than the Lo Mein at our regular takeout place.

Before I started cooking with Chefs Plate, microwaving a potato was about the extent of my culinary skills. Now, cooking is so fun! It's hard to go wrong with the simple-to-follow instructions and encouragement that are included in the box.

With Slow Cooker recipes, it's almost unfair how easy and delicious it is, and with so many 15-minute options every week, I have so much more time in my week now. No stress about what to cook, what to do if my recipe goes awry, and no stress while I'm cooking. Plus, no spending unnecessary money on takeout.

Chefs Plate is the best thing to happen to dinner. No more struggling to pull a meal together – everything needed is sent in the box. It's my dinner life-saver!

Update: Our friends at Chefs Plate are extending a limited time offer to our readers. Follow this link to get 50% off your first Chefs Plate box!

sponsored

HelloFresh Will Spice Up Your Love Life More Than A Valentine’s Night Out Ever Could

Valentine's Day is coming up and with pressure from the greeting card aisle, your Instagram feed, and maybe even your S.O., there's a lot at stake for a perfect romantic dinner. Instead of calling every restaurant in town to squeeze into a table next to the kitchen, why not stay home and make something special for your sweetheart? Too busy, not a chef, or maybe you're not sure where to start? HelloFresh's award-winning delicious meals can save the day with a quick and perfect Valentine's Day dinner. America's most popular meal-kit fits the needs of every home cook or total foodie newbie, including vegetarian options. For those who hate to plan and those who plan down to the minute, HelloFresh has a menu for you.

Here are the four types of couples that should cook a romantic HelloFresh dinner for Valentine's Day.

The Couple Who Goes Out More Than Stays In

For the couple who has a rating on every restaurant in the city, sometimes staying in is the more romantic thing to do! Besides, the wine is always cheaper at home, and trying to get that beef tenderloin medium rare will bring you closer together.

The Couple Who Can't Get a Babysitter

When the babysitter falls through at the last minute, that doesn't mean Valentine's Day has to mean chicken nuggets on the couch. The HelloFresh family plan has options that are kid-friendly, but still gourmet, so dinner for four can be Prosciutto-Wrapped Chicken with a Truffled Mushroom Risotto. Or better yet, put the kids to bed early and enjoy a nice meal just the two of you.

The "Valentine's Day Is Too Commercial" Couple

If you had a courthouse wedding on a Tuesday because you don't need to spend money to prove you're in love, Valentine's Day may not even be on your radar. In just 20 minutes you can skip the sappy stuff and get down to debating Oscar nominations over Pineapple Poblano Beef Tacos.

The Couple Who Isn't a Couple

Just because you're single, doesn't mean you can't be the love of your own gosh dang life. Do Valentine's Day dinner for one, with some candles and Heirloom Tomato Flatbreads with Pesto, Fresh Mozzarella, and Balsamic Greens. Each plan makes two meals, so it's also perfect if you've just started seeing someone but it's too soon to brave Valentine's restaurant scene. Plan a 90's rom-com marathon that may or may not lead to a movie-worthy kiss of your own.

HelloFresh is the answer to all of your Valentine's Day stress. It's less expensive than take-out and cuts out the shopping, and recipe planning headaches for romantic nights in. Seriously, with pre-measured ingredients and clear instructions that include pictures, it's foolproof, even for the most clueless in the kitchen.

Update: Our friends as HelloFresh are extending a special Valentine's Day offer to our readers: Follow this link to get 6 meals free!

sponsored

Advertisement Feature

How HelloFresh Makes Home Cooking Easy and Fun

Recently, I've heard about all these dinner-delivery kits that show up on your doorstep with pre-planned dinners and groceries, neatly organized and ready to cook. I thought maybe they could save me some much needed time and energy to make my life easier. Over the past few years, making dinner has become a chore. I used to like to cook, but recently, I've been too tired to decide what to make for dinner, and my husband and I revert to the same boring meals every day. I tried a few dinner delivery services first, but HelloFresh, which came recommended by a friend (greatly appreciated), totally changed my lifestyle.

HelloFresh recipes take only 30 minutes, and the dinners are fresh and delicious. My husband, is a simple steak-and-potatoes guy, and I like my salmon and veggies, so we needed something simple and versatile. Some of the other meal-kits had me chopping vegetables for 20 minutes and spending more time cooking than I'd planned for. But HelloFresh allowed me to cook my dinner stress-free and with very little setup and cleanup.

Every HelloFresh meal comes in mini boxes perfectly packed with everything I need for each recipe. Each box fits neatly in my fridge, and it's ready to go when I'm ready to cook. It helps me break the cycle of just grabbing a bag of chips and plopping on the couch.

We like the Classic Plan, which provides 3 nights of dinner for two people each week. I am picky when it comes to veggies; I like them colorful and crispy, but off-season grocery store specials can make this challenging. The HelloFresh veggies were just the way I like them—beautiful orange carrots, green broccoli, and red tomatoes.

My favorite recipe was the Shrimp Burgers with Sriracha Mayo and Carrot Fries. I followed the instructions and found the burgers, including the sriracha mayo, to be surprisingly delicious. The recipe called for a brioche bun that we warmed in the oven for 5 minutes before. It was heaven: just like when you get to the bakery first thing in the morning. The carrot fries were something I never would have thought up on my own. We sliced the carrots so they looked like orange french fries, drizzled them with olive oil, a pinch of salt and pepper, and baked them for 15 minutes— that was it. Easy peasy. Altogether it was a wonderful meal, and even the cooking part was fun.

I tried HelloFresh with hopes it would save me time, but it's actually helped me get back into cooking. I don't have time to be a gourmet chef or the energy to come up with creative meals, but I want to eat healthy, and live a more balanced lifestyle, something HelloFresh helped me to accomplish with ease. The quality of produce was just as fresh as my farmer's market, and they have really good meats. Plus, their website offers a variety of plans and dietary options, and they allow you to turn on and off delivery each week or pause your account. And you can cancel at anytime.

Update: The folks at HelloFresh are extending a special offer to our readers.Follow this link to get $80 OFF including FREE shipping on the first box!

From Your Site Articles

sponsored

How HelloFresh Is Going To Change How You Cook Forever

Whoever you are or wherever you live, I can bet you that you've heard of meal kits. You may not know much about them, but I'm fairly sure you've heard of them. Instagram, Facebook, or even through your mailbox, you've heard of them somewhere.

For those of you living under a rock, meal kit companies like HelloFresh send you recipes and the exact ingredients to make 3 meals for two people (frequency and servings are flexible), in a box right to your door. So instead of measuring out 2.7 tablespoons of curry powder, you bung it all together, and voilà, you have yourself a delicious, home-cooked meal.

While I, like you, have been aware of their existence for quite a while, I had never considered it for myself. I can make six recipes well, and I don't see why I would need a service like this. Then I was over at my mate's place, who is a famously lousy cook, burning both toast and baked beans when we lived together at university, and he presented this divine looking steak with a chimichurri dressing and a potato and spinach salad.

He swore it hadn't just come from the local takeaway, but I wasn't convinced, that was until he showed me the HelloFreshrecipe card. I realized that a meal kit wasn't for the lazy or the privileged bloke, but for anyone who liked food and needed the inspiration to spice up their weekly dinner routine.

I ordered a box on the way home to surprise my girlfriend Olivia, and a week later we gave it a go. It was so straightforward to order, and I even got to choose which meals we were going to have in the box, even though that was quite difficult as they all looked so tasty. It was new, it was fresh, and it was also a bit of a laugh too.

I value convenience very highly because when I get home from work, all Olivia and I want to do is quickly whip up something to eat and argue over what to watch on the telly, not do a shop then spend 2 hours cooking. With HelloFresh, we can not only make these tasty new dinners with just 30 minutes in the kitchen, but we also get to try new flavors and cuisines that we never thought we'd cook up ourselves. We've even started becoming more adventurous with the food we eat.

The first thing Olivia said to me when we sat down to the first meal was, "this is bloody good." I was stoked. I guess we associate convenience with something bad for you, boring or not tasty, but that is certainly not the case with HelloFresh.

It has really re-inspired our dinner time, as we are no longer eating the same thing week in, week out. We've continued it ever since for 3 meals a week, giving us the chance to still eat out when we want to. With the meals starting at $9 each, it's hard to see how we could get better variety in such a convenient way and at such a good price versus the supermarket.

Writing this, I can already tell you're a tad skeptical about the whole thing and fair enough, I was too.

I can honestly say though it's changed our week, coming home knackered and not having to go down the shop or think of what to have, the excitement and simplicity of HelloFresh makes dinner a breeze.

Update: The folks at HelloFresh are extending a special offer to our readers! Follow this link to get $80 off HelloFresh!

From Your Site Articles

sponsored