Welcome to my second Hello Fresh review. I made this meal Wednesday night, the night that north Atlanta was getting hit with storms for the second time in 3 days. I was afraid for a while that I was going to have to cook by candlelight, but luckily the power only flickered a couple of times at my place. Whew.
First thing right up front is that I should have read this recipe in advance. So note to all new Hello Fresh subscribers; Read your recipes as soon as you get them and note if anything needs to be marinated prior to cooking. This recipe called for the meat to be marinated in some of the ingredients for a minimum of 15 mins and up to 3 hours. Had I realized that, I’d have put everything together right after work to be ready to cook at about 7. Also I might have made this Friday instead of Wednesday, since we generally eat a little later on Fridays. As it was, I wedged a 15 minute marinade in there and it all came out fine, so it wasn’t a deal breaker.
As with the previous meal, all the non-meat ingredients came packaged in a cute little cardboard box. I wasn’t really paying attention to notice that the beef was already cut into stir-fry strips, but that was a nice time saver.
The box unpacked contained everything I needed except oil for the frying and the sugar to add to the marinade (2 tsp).
It took less than 10 mins to chop and mince, mix the marinade, and prep everything while the rice cooked. A note on the recipe here; I think the vegetable chopping instructions and the rice instructions should come AFTER the marinade instructions (the rice was step 1 and the veggie prep was step 2). For people in a time crunch, that’s a much more sensible way to order the preparation.
I did stash away the little packets of soy sauce for the next time Kevin orders takeout and used my own preferred brand of low-sodium Shoyu soy sauce for the marinade.
The main thing about stir fry is that it’s really important to get the skillet or wok as hot as possible – nearly smoking hot – and I don’t feel the instructions properly conveyed that information. I made sure my skillet was smoking hot when I put the meat in and it cooked very quickly. I love that in this picture you can see the steam still coming off of it.
Once the meat was removed, I added a little more oil and let the skillet come back up to smoking hot before tossing in the vegetables. Constant stirring is the trick here and it only took about 4 mins to get crisp-tender vegetables.
I had already cooked the rice (as I mentioned, it was step 1 of the instructions), so it was ready and waiting to plate up.
The only other thing I did was to mix up a little hot Chinese mustard to spice things up. I like to bring the heat when it comes to stir frys and I knew that this recipe wasn’t going to be spicy at all. Plus I really liked how this picture turned out and I wanted to include it. 🙂
Final Notes & Thoughts
Ease of cooking: Another quick and easy recipe that was very very good. As with the previous recipe prep time took exactly as long as they said it would and required only some simple slicing of ingredients. Rearranging the prep order would give a little more time for marinading, but that’s minor.
Portion size: The portion size on this was a little more generous than on the pork chops. There wasn’t quite enough rice for our liking, but then we’re both big rice/pasta people and we could probably do to cut down in that area. There was no rice leftover, but there was enough of the meat and vegetables to put aside for lunch tomorrow. A dish like this would be a good reason to keep a single serving bag of rice handy for leftovers.
Quality of food: Another just excellent quality meal kit. The beef was lean and very flavorful and tender. The vegetables were still fresh and crisp and … bok choy! How can you not smile when cooking and eating bok choy?
Quantity of ingredients: While I was cooking I was thinking that there was too much onion for the stir fry, but it turned out to be just right. No complaints here.
Overall: I rate this one really high. We both enjoyed this meal a lot. I would have preferred it to be a little spicier and if I were to order it or make it again, I’d add some pepper flakes to the marinade and maybe even to the stir frying vegetables. But even in it’s mild form, A+ from both of us. Plus, did I mention bok choy?
Recipe: Here’s the link to the recipe on the Hello Fresh website if you want to try to make it yourself: Sizzling Beef Stir Fry
The final meal for the week will be a walnut crusted chicken. Look for that later this weekend.
If you want to try Hello Fresh yourself, you can use this invitation link and get $40 off of your first box. Full disclosure; I get a $20 credit, too. Try Hello Fresh Now