Review Wednesday - HelloFresh (Week 13)

We are back with our next back of reviews!! This week we are looking at three more dishes from HelloFresh! Today we are going to talk about Cornflake-Crusted Chicken, Salisbury Steak Meatballs, and Crispy Chicken Parmigiana.

So our first recipe is Cornflake-Crusted Chicken with Sweet Potato Mash and Garlic Maple Dip. This one was good, it was a simple recipe, you can easily make it at home. It was kind of disappointingly simple. While I enjoy recipes that are easy to make, I could have used the leftovers from my cereal box (in fact the same day I made this, I saw Cornflake breadcrumbs at our local grocery store) and thrown some vegetables with it and made the same thing.

(This picture is one serving of chicken and both services of Sweet Potato and Broccoli)

I made this a little differently than they suggest. I personally don't enjoy Sweet Potato Mash, so I just chunked them up with a little oil, salt and pepper and popped them in the oven. That's really the only thing I changed, and that's just a personal preference. I also didn't make the maple dip, I personally don't like Maple on my meat (unless it's breakfast sausages!), and since I didn't make the mash, I didn't even open the Maple Syrup. Next, we have the Salisbury Steak Meatballs with Mushroom Gravy, Peas and Creamy Chive Smashed Potatoes. This recipe was great, I do something similar myself, so it was good. Again, pretty simple you can make this had home easily, which is a good and bad thing depending on your perspective. The only problem I had with it was portion size. On the photo, they send there were only four meatballs. And that really isn't enough if you don't eat everything else, and even then. My Picky Eater (PE) doesn't eat mushrooms or onions and he can't eat potatoes, so all he would have had was four little meatballs and gravy. Instead, I made a pan full of smaller meatballs and we make Crescent Rolls (Pilsbury) to go with meatballs usually. So thank god for that. The mashed potatoes do help full you, but you never want more mashed potatoes than meat and that was the case in this one.

And finally, we have the Crispy Chicken Parmigiana with Baby Spinach and Bell Pepper Italian Salad. I have made this one before and I wasn't a huge fan of the way it was executed. So I was hesitant to try it again. However, I had made a few suggestions in that post about how they could make this meal better. So I decided to try my own advice and see how it turned out. If you remember last time crispy was nonexistent. It lost all "crispiness" when I baked it in the sauce. All the breading turned soggy, which really isn't a surprise. So this time I paired the chicken with pasta. We just had Macaroni laying around so I used that. And I followed their recipe to a point. I baked the chicken in its crust, and then I let it rest. I made my own pasta sauce using the peppers and shallot they sent along with half the Italian Seasoning and I added the baby spinach at the end. I have to say, it was delicious, I loved it this time, which was a surprise since I was so on the fence last time. I think the key to this dish is to keep the chicken crispy. One way to do that is to cut the chicken breast thinker and not add the sauce to it but have it sit on the sauce if you can. Of course, eating as soon as possible will save it from getting too soggy as well.

QUICK NOTE:

As you see, I took a recipe and changed it up. Feel free to do that with ANY recipe you got whether it is from HelloFresh, a different Food Subscription Box, or any recipe in general. Play around with it, do what you like, what you think you and/or your family will enjoy. Don't be afraid to add or subtract anything to suit your own personal likes and dislikes.