Saffron Fix Subscription Box Review + Coupon – June 2017

Saffron Fix is a meal subscription box that specializes in Indian cooking. They ship every two weeks, and you can choose whether to receive 2 or 3 recipes in every box. Every box contains all of the ingredients you need to make the featured recipes.

This box was sent to us at no cost for review. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes.)

This review is of the Non-Vegetarian, 2 recipes, $50 every other week, box.

The Subscription Box: Saffron Fix

The Cost: Recipes begin at $10 per serving. More specific pricing information can be found here.

The Products: “Receive fresh ingredients, spices, naan/breads, and rice, to cook 2 new delicious recipes, each serving 2 people. Each recipe comes with an easy-to-follow recipe card to cook a delicious meal in under 30 minutes.”

Ships to: Saffron Fix currently ships to 21 states (plus Chicago and Atlanta). Here’s a map of the current delivery area:

Check out all of our Saffron Fix reviews and discover more meal kit boxes in the Food Subscription Box Directory!

Keep track of your subscriptions: Add this box to your subscription box list or wishlist!

The meals arrived in a box with the same eco-stuffing I've seen with Green Chef. This insulates the food well and you can compost the fibrous material once you remove it from the plastic wrap.

Saffron Fix included a nice little handwritten note in a beautiful card welcoming me and reminding me to use their hashtag, #saffronfix, to share photos of my meals.

This is my first meal subscription box review and I'm so excited to show you what I made!

Patra Ni Machi (Fish cooked in Banana Leaf)

Calories Per Serving: 180 (entree only)

Cook Time: 30 minutes

I chose this meal because I've been trying to replace a lot of the meat I eat with fish. I've never had anything cooked in a banana leaf, and it looked interesting! The card tells me that this dish hails from the Parsi community in the northwestern state of Gujurat and is typically served at weddings and special occasions. Does Tuesday night count as a "special occasion"? I hope so.

*It's also good to note here that they have a timeline that I didn't notice until later. This particular dish says to use within 2 days. I used it 3 days after receiving, and it was still good, but if those kinds of things make you nervous, you should plan your meals accordingly.

The back of the card has the instructions on preparing and cooking the meal. The fish doesn't really make an appearance in the photos, but I took some for you to see while prepping.

Here we have all of the needed ingredients. Everything is branded and already measured out and/or chopped. I worry a lot about waste from packaging in meal boxes, so I'm happy to see that Saffron Fix is quite minimal. The chutney came in a little plastic jar that I will probably reuse for something else in the kitchen. 

The first step is to add the cinnamon, cardamom, and clove packet to hot oil in a pot on medium heat. It says to toast for two minutes or until fragrant, and boy did it smell goooood! 

Then you add the onions. Now, I typically abhor onions of all kinds, but I credit Green Chef (which I used to subscribe to) with being able to allow cooked onions into my life. SO MANY recipes call for onions, and they 100% add needed flavors to most dishes, so I'm letting them in. That being said, I do love the scent of those little buggers cooking.

While that's cooking, you can go ahead and wash and drain the rice. Lucky for you all, I scrubbed my sink before taking this photo.

You'll then add the garam masala, water, and rice to the pot with the onions and spices, and after boiling, let it simmer 10 minutes.

On to the fun part!

Take your banana leaf- add some olive oil.

Plop down that white fish and salt both sides.

Now rub some delicious green chutney all over both sides! Smells so yummy!

Next you're going to wrap that baby up and jam some toothpicks (which were provided, but not visible in my ingredient pics) into the leaf to seal. Doesn't that look fancy?

You're going to add the banana leaf wrapped fish to a hot pan with some olive oil and cover it to steam for about 5 minutes, then flip it and do it again. This is where I get nervous! After all that work, maybe I will cook it too long, or not long enough! This pic was after the first 5 minutes.

Voila! Your fish is done, and you can plate it with your rice!

I garnished the rice with some cilantro I had on hand when I recalled that I learned recently how cilantro are the leaves of coriander, another favorite spice of Indian food. Was I the only one who didn't know that??

Here is my beautiful fish friend out of his banana leaf cover-up. It was cooked perfectly and tasted so very amazing! I love chutney, and this one was just the tiniest bit spicy. The rice was probably the best rice dish I've ever made. I make a lot that I pair with salmon, usually, but never with the cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves. They really come through, especially the clove. I even ate the onions!! Both of my thumbs enthusiastically up!

Massala Quinoa Bowl with Chutney Yogurt Sauce

Calories per Serving: 400 (entree only)

Cook Time: 30 minutes

Next up we have a quinoa bowl which I chose in part to be a bit healthy and again, not eat so much meat. When I chose this, I didn't notice the sweet potato ingredient, which I usually am "meh" about, but I will try anything a meal box throws at me in stride! This dish features a few heavy hitters in the nutrient-rich game, like the aforementioned sweet potato, the obvious quinoa, and also with baby kale. It's kinda fun to just throw a bunch of healthy stuff into a bowl and dig in.

This said to cook within five days, and on day four when I made this, my baby kale was a little mushy. I still had plenty for my single lady meal, but good to be aware of. 

On the backside, we have the cooking steps. This one being quite simple!

Here are our lovely ingredients. Such a joy to not have to chop anything up. (Yes, I'm lazy)

First things first, you wash those chick peas, then toss them in a bowl with the cubed sweet potato, madras curry powder, chili powder, salt, and oil. Mix them to get 'em all coated. They are gonna go into your 400 degree oven for 10-15 minutes.

My favorite part of this meal preparation was to toast the cumin which made my whole kitchen smell lovely.

You will then toast the quinoa for a couple minutes before adding water, and allowing to boil before you turn down to simmer for 10-15 minutes.

The next step is to mix the chutney and yogurt together to make a simple creamy sauce! Easy!

By this time, the veggies are all toasty and out of the oven.

Toss them in with the washed baby kale. It says the hot veggies will wilt the kale, but mine didn't really, which was fine.

Mmm the fluffy quinoa with cumin is finished!

Put it all together for this nutrient-packed beauty!

This recipe was a up against the previous fish dinner, which was very hard to follow. I felt real healthy eating this, but it wasn't quite as flavorful as my other meal in this week's box. That's still ok in my book. I honestly think I could have slathered more of the sauce on there to help. The portion I have left is very plentiful. Even thought this meal is for two, there was certainly a surplus for at least three, and this was super easy to make.

Verdict: I loved Saffron Fix! Indian food is probably my 2nd favorite type of food, next to Mexican, so this box is right up my alley. I used to hate cooking because I just don't have the creativity in the kitchen to whip something delicious up, but a meal subscription box like this has turned that around. I wouldn't normally try to make anything like this on my own, so I'm happy to have guided directions and perfect portions to help! As a single lady, this one box gave me about five meals, which is obviously so worth it. Even with two people, this would be roughly $12.50 per person per meal, so I think it's still a fair price. It'd certainly be more if I ate out, and I don't want to know how much it'd cost to buy all of these spices, on top of buying produce that I KNOW would just get bad. 

Do you love Saffron Fix? Should I start cooking everything in a banana leaf to appear fancy?