Review: Woop Balance meal

Remem­ber when we reviewed My Food Bag a bunch of years ago? We got approached by anoth­er com­pa­ny, and offered one meal. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, they sent us shrimp. Have I men­tioned late­ly in every sin­gle food review that I’m aller­gic to shell­fish? Luck­i­ly I found a tak­er to make the din­ner instead. Thanks Megan, take it away!

I have nev­er tried a food box in my entire life. Being a back­pack­er, mov­ing around quite fre­quent­ly, I was nev­er afford­ed the sta­bil­i­ty required to have reg­u­lar meals sent to me. Cue my new friend Joan­na, who is (unfor­tu­nate­ly) aller­gic to crus­taceans and shell­fish, with an offer to review a food box sent to her by Woop. This par­tic­u­lar box is part of their Bal­ance Box series ($117 for three meals for 2), and it includ­ed a super cute tea tow­el and all of the ingre­di­ents required to make prawn poké bowls for two peo­ple. Being a huge fan of Hawai’i and its rich and inter­est­ing cul­ture, poké just hap­pens to be my favourite food on this plan­et. Need­less to say, I was stoked for this expe­ri­ence!

While unpack­ing this box, I was imme­di­ate­ly impressed with how fresh every­thing was. Inside the kit was a head of baby cos let­tuce, one car­rot, a spring onion, some edamame, brown rice (pre-steamed and then vac­u­um sealed), shred­ded red cab­bage, fresh corian­der, toast­ed sun­flower seeds, and two sauces (chilli lime dress­ing and wasabi avo­ca­do cream) hand­made by some­one at Woop called Zoe. Last, and cer­tain­ly not least, a con­tain­er of gor­geous fresh prawns and a set of easy-to-fol­low instruc­tions were also pro­vid­ed. This box had lit­er­al­ly every­thing I need­ed to pre­pare and cook this appe­tiz­ing meal myself, plus a bonus gift to help with the wash­ing up after­wards.

Hav­ing nev­er done this type of thing before, I made sure to read the instruc­tions (which are only two steps) before I began. Every­thing was writ­ten out in a very clear and con­cise man­ner, so there was no guess­ing as to how to pre­pare and cook each ingre­di­ent. Even some­one like myself, who is averse to using recipes in gen­er­al, found it all quite eas­i­ly laid out. After a cou­ple of min­utes, I was con­fi­dent in my abil­i­ty to exe­cute this recipe quick­ly and effec­tive­ly. I chopped, fried, and mixed my way toward my end goal: a deli­cious bowl of prawn poké.

After slic­ing and fry­ing some of the veg­eta­bles (only for two min­utes to enhance their nat­ur­al flavour), I mixed them up in a bowl along with the dress­ing, the cab­bage and half the corian­der. After that, it was time to focus my atten­tion on fry­ing the hero of the dish. Thank­ful­ly, prawns cook very quick­ly, so I was­n’t left sali­vat­ing for long. I arranged the baby cos leaves and rice in bowls before pil­ing the veg mix­ture and prawns on top. Add to that the remain­ing corian­der, a dol­lop of wasabi avo­ca­do cream and a sprin­kling of toast­ed sun­flower seeds, and the dish­es were com­plete. Once all was said and done, the entire meal took about 12 min­utes to pre­pare, cook and plate. Being as excit­ed as we were to try the meal, my part­ner and I fin­ished our bowls in maybe five min­utes.

All in all, we were both impressed. The meal itself was very fill­ing, with my only crit­i­cism being that I could have done with a bit more brown rice. The dress­ing had a great flavour and a small amount of heat, which played well with the cool­ness of the edamame and cab­bage. The prawns were plump and rich, and the toast­ed sun­flower seeds added a bit of a crunch to the over­all tex­ture. The wasabi avo­ca­do cream was incred­i­bly mor­eish, and I even fin­ished the rest of the con­tain­er off using only a spoon. This hav­ing been my first encounter with a food box, I can con­fi­dent­ly say that I am now going to look into a Woop sub­scrip­tion of my own.