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.