Review Wednesday - HelloFresh (Week 17)

We are back once again with our review of three new recipes from HelloFresh. We provided the link so if you want to order from them or just try them yourself you can. This week we had Pesto Chicken with Lemony Couscous, Zucchini and Lemon Linguini, and Steakhouse Cheese Burgers.

So the first meal we made was the Zucchini and Lemon Linguine with Peas and Pesto. I was a little concerned after the Linguine last week that this would be bland. I had never used Pesto before now so there was a little user error on my part but this dish came out great. One thing I have to say is that the lemon in this dish was the star. It made everything brighter and fresher somehow, so make sure you use the lemon (I never usually use lemon in cooking but this changed my mind completely). On another note, it came with chili of some sort, I didn't use that. I don't like too much heat, but that is a personal preference.

One note about pesto and the instructions they give. It chunked up on me and was really hard to work with which was a problem. (Note that the green in the photo is leftover broccoli I added NOT pesto.) Instead of their instructions, I encourage you to take the vegetables out of the pan. Add a tablespoon of butter to the pan and let it melt. Once it has melted add the pasta to the pan. Add the pesto next and the vegetables and mix it together. You may or may not need some of the pasta water. (It is always good to keep a half cup of pasta water once it is cooked no matter what recipe you are making.) You may need it to thin the pesto out, if not simply pour it down the drain. Once everything is mixed well, add some of the cheese.

The next recipe I made was the Pesto Chicken with Lemony Couscous and the pesto worked much better for me (because I learned these few tricks, this is the recipe I tried them on). The meal was delicious but it was a lot of work for nothing in my opinion. It wanted me to make a Zucchini Salad by slicing thin strips of zucchini (a vegetable peeler would have done a much better job) but I didn't really like that idea, so I cut the zucchini in half and then half again and I sliced that. I wasn't a fan of the salad idea so I baked the zucchini in the oven with the chicken. One final change I made was I coated the chicken in breadcrumbs. That is just the way we prefer it, but it would have been fine the way they suggested it.

And finally, the Steakhouse Cheeseburger with Mushroom Gravy, Montreal Steak-spice Potato Wedges, and Zesty Mayo. I didn't really like this recipe at all. Gravy on a burger, it just sounded wrong. So I pan-fried the mushrooms in a little butter and spices and just put them on top of the patty. They also sent a tiny amount of cheese, I exchanged that for an actual slice of cheese. The meat for these was tiny. I'll post a photo of just the burger, you can see (below) that the mushrooms cover it completely that's how small it is.

It was a good burger, there is no doubt about that. But it was tiny. The fries were not that good. I was a little gun shy about them I guess. The last time I cooked them in the air fryer they were overcooked and this time they were undercooked. You can see in the photo they don't look right. All in all, we ordered a pizza two hours after we finished supper.