HelloFresh Vegan: Menu Options, Pricing, and More - Healthline

Posted: 21 Dec 2020 06:39 AM PST

We include products we think are useful for our readers. If you buy through links on this page, we may earn a small commission. Here's our process.

HelloFresh is a popular meal kit delivery service that offers weekly deliveries of recipes and all of the ingredients you need to cook them.

While the company offers a plant-based option, it's not strictly vegan.

If you're interested in tweaking it to accommodate your vegan diet, it can be done — although it may be a bit tricky.

This article reviews how you can customize HelloFresh plant-based meals for your vegan diet.

To turn your HelloFresh box into vegan-friendly meals, be sure to select the veggie option when you personalize your plan. You can select three to five recipes per week for two people, or two to four recipes per week for four people.

When you select your meals, you'll be able to choose from all of the plant-based recipes available that week.

HelloFresh's website has a recipe archive that allows you to view all of the ingredients and instructions for their entire catalog of recipes. You can filter by dietary preference to view all of the vegetarian recipes.

Use this tool to select the most vegan-friendly menu options from the recipes that are available in a given week. Some tips to choose the most vegan-friendly options include:

Avoid dishes with creamy or cheesy sauces.
Avoid dishes that contain egg as a key protein source.

Once you receive your box, you can discard the non-vegan ingredients and either leave them out of the recipes or replace them with a vegan alternative. Common non-vegan ingredients included in vegetarian HelloFresh meals include sour cream and cheese.

Occasionally, some breads may contain milk. You need to check the ingredient label to verify. It's a good idea to keep vegan alternatives to sour cream and cheese, along with some vegan bread, on hand.

Summary

Choose the veggie plan on HelloFresh and then select the meals on each week's menu that would be the easiest to make vegan. Keep vegan sour cream, cheese, and bread on hand for easy swaps.

HelloFresh offers a variety of vegan ingredients in their recipes. Here are a few examples pulled directly from plant-based recipes in their recipe archive:

Protein: black beans, chickpeas, peanut butter, sesame seeds, peanuts, pistachios
Fats and oils: guacamole, sesame oil
Grains/carbs: rice, couscous, pasta, breadcrumbs, flour, potatoes, baguette, farro
Vegetables: scallions, peppers, onions, zucchini, carrots, yellow squash, broccoli, arugula, butternut squash
Fruits: tomatoes, limes, lemons
Spices and seasonings: chili flakes, thyme, balsamic vinegar, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, white wine vinegar, basil, garlic powder, parsley

Summary

Although HelloFresh doesn't offer an exclusively vegan option, many of the ingredients are vegan-friendly.

Some of the plant-based recipes offered by HelloFresh that could easily be made vegan include:

Brown butter gemelli with asparagus, walnuts, and lemony ricotta. Remove the cheese and cook with oil instead of butter.
Veggie burrito bowls with charred corn and tomato salsa. Don't add sour cream or cheese to the bowl.
Sesame peanut noodles with bell pepper and carrot ribbons. This recipe is vegan as written.
Chickpea-powered couscous with zucchini and heirloom grape tomatoes. Don't add the feta cheese.
Charred corn elote bowls with farro, spiced pepitas, and chipotle-lime dressing. Make the recipe with oil instead of butter and don't add sour cream or cheese.
Guacamole green goddess bowl with farro, crispy chickpeas, and roasted sweet potato. Replace sour cream with a vegan alternative.
Smoky black bean and corn tostadas with pico de gallo and lime crema. Don't add cheese and replace sour cream with a vegan alternative.

Summary

You can easily make many plant-based HelloFresh recipes vegan by leaving out the cheese and sour cream, as well as cooking with oil instead of butter.

One concern you may have with altering your HelloFresh box to be vegan is whether you'll be getting adequate nutrition from these meals.

Many of the vegetarian recipes from HelloFresh seem to depend heavily on dairy products — and eggs, to a lesser extent — for their protein content.

To remedy this, you may want to keep a variety of protein-rich, vegan dairy alternatives on hand, such as vegan yogurt or sour cream to make creamy sauces or dressings, as well as dairy-free cheeses to sprinkle on dishes or use in sandwiches.

You may also want to keep some tofu or vegan egg substitute on hand to replace eggs when they're needed.

Otherwise, the meals feature a wide variety of vegetables, plant-based protein sources, whole grains, and herbs and spices that'll provide a wealth of nutrients.

Summary

Many plant-based HelloFresh meals get a significant portion of their protein from dairy. Keep some protein-rich, vegan dairy alternatives on hand so that you can make sure these meals still contain enough protein after you tweak them to be vegan.

HelloFresh is one of the most reasonably priced meal kit delivery services. This table compares the price of HelloFresh with some of its competitors.

Summary

HelloFresh is a competitively priced meal service, and its only major competitor that offers an exclusive vegan option — Purple Carrot — is significantly more expensive per serving.

HelloFresh is a meal kit delivery service offering a vegetarian option, but you can tweak it at home to make it vegan-friendly by replacing certain ingredients, such as dairy products and eggs.

However, with these products removed, some of the meals may be low in protein. You can add extra vegan protein to these meals to make up for this.

HelloFresh is one of the most reasonably priced meal kit delivery services, and by tweaking their plant-based recipes to be vegan, you may be able to save some money, compared with an exclusively vegan meal kit delivery service.

Get started with HelloFresh here.

Indian food specialist's 7th cookbook, 'Vegetarian Flavors,' makes cooking vegetables easy - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Posted: 22 Dec 2020 07:04 AM PST

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Indian food specialist's 7th cookbook, 'Vegetarian Flavors,' makes cooking vegetables easy Milwaukee Journal Sentinel