Food
Sheet-Pan Shawarma-Spiced Chicken
Shawarma, the beloved Middle Eastern dish of thinly sliced, marinated meat slow-roasted on a vertical spit, is typically served with flatbread and an array of accompaniments. This version, which calls on chicken thighs for their juiciness and resilience to overcooking, chars them under the broiler alongside chunks of onion for a fuss-free dinner that will quickly make its way into your weeknight rotation. After the chicken comes out of the oven you can push the thighs to the side to make room for all of the toppings: sliced tomato, cucumber spears, and a tangy garlic yogurt. Loading the lot into warm pitas makes for a satisfying meal that comes together faster than you could order it for delivery.
Food
HelloFresh Is the Meal Kit for People Who Are Bored of Predictable Meal Kits
Until recently, I didn’t understand the point of meal kits. The services I’d tried leaned on the same tired recipes of sloppy joes, bland chicken breast, and boring pasta. After trying HelloFresh, I can finally say I get it.
Of all the meal kits I’ve tried, HelloFresh stands out for one reason: Its menu reads more like a restaurant’s than a meal kit service’s. You’ll find dishes like za’atar-crusted Halloumi cheese, moo shu pork bowls, and Peruvian chili-soy steak stir-fry, with over 100 rotating options and more customization than any other service I’ve tried.
Whether you rarely set foot in the kitchen or cook elaborate meals on weekends, HelloFresh takes the stress out of the most tedious parts of cooking. Figuring out what to make, down the right ingredients, and avoiding the inevitable half-used bunch of cilantro rotting in your crisper drawer are all someone else’s problem now.
I spent a week cooking with HelloFresh for my husband and me. Here’s what won me over, and what didn’t.
Watch us put HelloFresh’s cook times to the test
The HelloFresh ordering experience
Ordering meals from HelloFresh was easy. You’ll start by selecting your serving size (up to six people), how many meals you want per week, and a dietary plan: Meat and Veggies, Veggies, Family-Friendly, Fit and Wholesome, Under 20 Minutes, or Pescatarian. I opted for the two-person serving size and the three-meal-per-week plan for my husband and me. Prices start at $57 for two meals for two people per week.
From there, you’ll choose your meals from HelloFresh’s extensive menu. There are over 100 delicious-sounding rotating options, from coconut shrimp and cabbage curry to bavette steak with creamy truffle polenta, all filtered by your dietary preferences. Nutrition- and prep-related callouts like Fiber Smart, Easy Prep and Clean, and Vegan are marked under each meal to speed up your selection process, and you can browse up to five weeks of menus in advance since options rotate weekly. Each listing also includes ingredient amounts, cook time, nutritional info, allergens, and the full recipe. For those short on time, HelloFresh also offers a selection of heat-and-eat Ready Made Meals.
Food
Big Bean Ceviche
When the weather gets too warm to turn on the stove, ceviche offers a cooling respite. Typically made with high-quality raw fish or seafood cooked in citrus juice, this vegetarian version doesn’t require a trip to the fishmonger—and is far cheer. Turn to a trusty can of fat butter beans for the base of the dish. The bigger and meatier the bean, the more reminiscent this dish will be of proper ceviche—you could even cook your own gigante, corona, or white lima beans from dry; but any can of white beans will suffice in a pinch.
Inspired by Ecuadorian and Mexican shrimp ceviches, which feature a soup-like broth, you’ll blend a large, ripe tomato (if you can’t find a nice heirloom, use smaller Campari or Kumato tomatoes, which are sweet and juicy year-round), then stir in lime juice and hot sauce for a powerful bean-marinating liquid. While you could add toppings—sliced jaleño and red onion for heat, offset with buttery avocado—immediately and chow down with a bag of chips, the longer the beans sit in the tomato mixture, the more flavor they’ll absorb.
Food
The Rocco Fridge Is a Hosting Game Changer
Before the Rocco, that meant perching bottles on top of my roommate’s old college mini fridge: a retro light blue number that looked cute next to our yellow couch but left a lot to be desired functionally. The interior was designed like a fun-size version of a normal fridge, with no space-efficient way to store cans or bottles. It also jutted into the room further than we’d have liked, and the square top was fine for stashing bottles but not great for actually finding them.
The Rocco seemed like the ideal upgrade. Designed to hold a mix of wine bottles and canned beverages on adjustable racks, with a top built to function as a home bar and a shallow depth that works well in tight quarters, it promised to meet every one of my needs. Plus, it was pretty.
What I love about it
In addition to being cute, the Super Smart Fridge boasts dual temperature zones to keep your reds and whites propriately chilled and a host of smart features (hence its name), like p connectivity and a camera that supposedly tells you what’s inside your fridge.
After testing this fridge for two years, I can confidently say that it’s been a true hosting game-changer. I love that I can set one half of it to fridge-cold for sodas, hard seltzers, and the like, while keeping the other half at a warmer temp more suitable for wine—all of which I can control remotely from the p (which works very well for that purpose). It’s incredibly quiet and even has multiple noise level modes that you can switch between (Smart, Quiet, and Party).
Food
Chimichurri Grilled Shrimp
These grilled shrimp are the kind of low-effort, high-reward dinner that tastes best eaten outside—you can practically feel the beach breeze in every bite. A confetti-like chimichurri packed with parsley, garlic, lime juice, red wine vinegar, and Fresno chile adds a splash of color and bright, fresh flavor that perfectly complements the charred shellfish.
Jumbo shrimp can go directly on the grate, but if you’re working with smaller ones, thread them onto skewers to keep them from slipping through. Tossing the shrimp with oil before grilling helps prevent sticking (without fussing with the grate) and encourages those smoky, lightly blistered edges everyone wants from grilled shrimp. Serve with grilled bread, steamed rice, a big green salad, or whatever else your cookout heart desires.
Do I need skewers for grilled shrimp?
Jumbo shrimp can go straight on the grill—though skewering them is fine if you prefer it. Smaller shrimp are easier to flip and less likely to fall through the grate when threaded onto skewers.
How do I know when grilled shrimp are done?
Food
Please Stop Buying Pre-Ground Coffee. Get a Coffee Grinder Instead.
The only problem, if you want to call it that, with the ESP is that it has no way to measure a dose of coffee. Getting an exact weight of coffee is incredibly important for pulling good espresso shots. It’s not a huge problem. It’s possible to put single doses in the grinder like you do with the Fellow, thanks to the low grind retention. The Encore ESP consistently had output within .1 or .2 grams of what went in.
Oxo Brew Conical Burr Coffee Grinder
Oxo Brew Conical Burr Coffee Grinder
I still like this former top budget pick. Oxo’s original burr grinder has 45 settings (the Compact recommended above only has 29), and it also has time dosing and a hopper that can hold 12 ounces of whole coffee beans. But that dosing mechanism only works so-so. It doesn’t lock in place, so it’s hard to set precisely. It still grinds evenly and has great grind retention, but the Compact can do everything you really need a burr grinder to do with a smaller footprint and a lower price.
With a price tag under $200, KitchenAid’s burr grinder is relatively affordable for everything it offers. It comes with 70 grind settings, which is plenty if you have a house that enjoys both espresso and French press. It uses a digital timer for its dosing and can also grind directly into a portafilter, making it the least expensive option we’ve found with both those features (the Breville Smart Grinder Pro has both, but is a bit more expensive). It’s durable—we’ve used it for years—and think it’s a good choice if you’re looking for a truly budget espresso grinder, but the evenness of the grind and quality of the materials is better on the Baratza Encore ESP.
Baratza Virtuoso+ Conical Burr Coffee Grinder
Baratza makes burr grinders that range in price from what we’d call very affordable (the Encore) to pro-level machines that can top $900. The Virtuoso+ is a step up from the brand’s entry-level machines, but that step is a sizable one. It uses a digital time dosing down to the tenth of a second, which I found to be very consistent. Using setting 18, which Baratza recommends for drip coffee, I repeatedly got exactly 9 grams of coffee in four seconds. Your mileage may vary with different roast levels, but use that as a jumping-off point. It uses Baratza’s M2 burr, which gives a bit more precision than the M3 burr in the Encore and makes this a better bet for brewing methods that need coffee ground at the extreme ends of the spectrum (Turkish, espresso, French press, or cold brew). We’d note, though, that the Encore ESP also uses the M2 burr, and while it doesn’t have digital dosing, it is less expensive.
Eureka Mignon Filtro Coffee Grinder
Eureka is an Italian coffee equipment company that specializes in high-quality (and often expensive) machines, most of which are well outside the price range I considered in these tests. And while the Mignon Filtro is Eureka’s most affordable model, it has the same sort of high-quality construction you’d expect from a much more expensive grinder with features like 50-mm flat burrs. It’s simple and fully manual, but it features stepless adjustment. That means the burrs don’t lock into preset settings, but expand and contract freely, allowing for ultra-precise, fine-tuned control. That kind of versatility is a big plus, but the downside is that it’s impossible to tell how the grinder is set when you look at it for the first time. The adjustment dial is numbered 1–5, but it can make four rotations, so it takes patience and a willingness to do some trial and error. It’s also really only equipped to do middle-of-the-road grinds for methods like drip or pour-over. Despite its relatively low price, it’s definitely a more advanced grinder.
Eureka Mignon Notte Grinder
The espresso-only entry from Eureka functions much like the Filtro, with manual operation and stepless grind adjustments. It’s designed to grind finer and only into a portafilter. The quality of the grind is wonderfully consistent, and the Mignon Notte also features a burr adjustment that makes it easy to clean and reset the burrs. If you are okay without any automatic dosing, you’ll like this grinder. I just think features like time-dosing or single-dosing (like Fellow does) are preferable options for most people.
Breville Smart Grinder Pro
Breville Smart Grinder Pro Coffee Mill
Breville’s Smart Grinder Pro, like many of its espresso makers, provides a quality product at a mid-level price. It uses conical burrs and offers 60 settings—plenty for all brewing methods—and both manual and automatic grind settings. The Smart Grinder Pro doses by time, and selecting a set number of cups correlates with a preset amount of grinding time. You’re going to need to tweak it, though, because while I got a suitable 9.8 grams of coffee on the 1-shot setting, I got 45 grams of coffee on the 2-cup setting, which is way too much. Forty-five grams of ground coffee is enough for four cups. The grinder is easy to adjust, though, produces a consistent grind, and allows for direct grinding into both a 54-mm and 58-mm portafilter, so if you’re willing to do some trial and error on the dosing, I think you’ll be hpy with this one.
