When I broke my foot and it was hard to shop, I relied on Instacart for groceries, but I also started using meal kit services. Basically, they send you the fresh ingredients you need, pre-portioned out, so you can follow a recipe along and make a real dinner.
I’ve tried a few of these and they are super convenient — not just from a shopping standpoint, but if you’re indecisive like me, they plan your meals for you. I’ve tried four of them out to date — Hello Fresh, Plated, Blue Apron and Purple Carrot — so I thought I’d give a review of my experience.
The overall experience
I love these meal kit services. Sure, I realize they seem like a luxury and people might think it’s a waste of money. But in my experience, it’s the opposite — I think it’s a great value for money.
I live alone and cooking from scratch means 1) buying a ton of ingredients I won’t get through or 2) cooking it all up and having more food than I will ever eat. I’m just not capable of eating the same meals 12 times per week, so it makes buying all the ingredients for recipes that I want to try both expensive and wasteful.
On top of the wastefulness, finding and deciding on a recipe I want to tackle on my own can be daunting. I tend to be indecisive, and if you google “vegetarian dinners” for instance, you get about a thousand options. These meal kits make the decision for you and do all the work for you.
I’ve learned new flavor combinations, new dishes and even new foods I didn’t know existed. I’ve also found recipes I can tweak a little to cook really easily and quickly on the fly. I’ve made a few of my Hello Fresh meals over and over again. My cooking skills have gotten a definite upgrade from these kits too.
Hello Fresh | Grade: A-
Overall: This is my favorite of the kits I have tried. Every meal I’ve gotten from them, my reaction has ranged from “like” to “love.” They always send you everything you need, whether it’s eggs or whatever else. (The only exception, which runs across every meal service, is basic stuff like olive oil, salt and pepper.) And it’s the best value for money.
Price: $60 for the vegetarian plan (3 meals x 2 people)
Quality: Great. One thing I love about Hello Fresh is they almost never send items in cans. If I wanted to eat out of a can, I could do that at home. Frankly, I think canned food is gross and I use these meal services to eat fresh. Whether they are sending crushed tomatoes or garbanzo beans, Hello Fresh usually sends them in a carton or similar.
Options: Great. Most weeks have three meals I’d give a try, or two that seem good and one where I’d have to make a minor alteration (like skipping the mushrooms, for instance).
Problems: Generally everything is always fresh and I’ve ordered from them about 10 times. One time my lettuce looked a little wilted and one time my ginger felt a little soft, neither of which I complained about. One time my eggs got cracked and I did send a complaint, expecting them to refund me just for the eggs themselves, but they refunded me for the whole meal.
Blue Apron | Grade: C-
Overall: I don’t know what to say – I ordered from them once and I was so unimpressed, I never ordered from them again. None of the items tasted that good and the recipes seemed fine on paper, but tasted like the ingredients didn’t make sense.
- I didn’t take any photos of what I made because none of it turned out that great.
Price: $60 for all plans (3 meals x 2 people)
Quality: This is where I felt most let down. They sent me some tomato sauce in a can (the sauce was for enchiladas, which tasted so weird, by the way) and they sent me chickpeas in a can too. I’m not into canned items, and they seemed big on shortcuts.
Options: Not good for me. Honestly, I had been eyeing Blue Apron’s meal options for a while waiting to find a set I would like so I could try it, and it took a long time to find three that interested me. They seem to think vegetarians just want to eat mushrooms all the time, and I hate cooked mushrooms.
Problems: I only ordered once and there wasn’t a problem with the delivery.
Plated | Grade: C+
Overall: I do like the options and the meals have always turned out quite good, but I think it’s too pricey, particularly since I recently ordered a meal that required eggs and they expected me to buy my own eggs! Also, I’ve twice had delivery issues now.
Price: $72 for all plans (3 meals x 2 people)
Quality: Generally pretty good. They once sent me hominy for a posole (I had never heard of hominy or posole but I loved both) and it came in a little plastic box, packed fresh. They did send canned beans for that same recipe, and I swapped out for some non-canned ones. Mostly everything is quite fresh though.
Options: Very good. They often have meals that interest me, and they have standing “encore” meals so you can swap any week’s choices for one of the encore meals if you want, which makes it easy to find a week that fits your preferences. They tend to have some unique recipes that sound interesting but I’ve never tried.
Problems: They’ve sent most of my deliveries via OnTrac, which is I guess a cheaper shipping alternative to UPS or FedEx, and well, you get what you pay for. Twice my deliveries were held an extra day and my box came late. That presents two problems: 1) If you are actually planning your meals around your box arriving, having it not show up can screw you up and force you to order dinner out or run to the grocery store. 2) Who wants fresh, refrigerated groceries that have been stuck on a truck for 24+ hours longer than they were intended to? Not me. Also, like I said, I ordered a box for a meal that required eggs, but they didn’t send the eggs. That wasn’t a problem per se, because that was intended, but I thought that was pretty lame. It’s not like eggs keep for long stretches of time like olive oil, salt and pepper do.
Purple Carrot | Grade: C+
Overall: This service is for vegans, so any dissatisfaction I have about the lack of cheese in their recipes is not their fault. (Seriously, isn’t cheese great?!) This seems to make a lot more sense if you are a vegan though, because all the other major services offer vegetarian options.
Price: $68 per week (3 meals x 2 people)
Quality: Everything here is super fresh. Just like with Hello Fresh, they only seem to send in cans when they have to. Otherwise, you’re working from scratch with whole foods. They seem to care about organic stuff too.
Options: If you don’t eat tofu or soy (which I do not), you’re gonna have to skip a lot of weeks. And even then, I wasn’t always thrilled with the end product. I mean, my meals mostly turned out good, but I always felt like they needed more flavor (and more fat), to be honest. Some of the choices were a little unsatisfying as a dinner. Like my savory South Indian pancakes with chutney (pictured above) were pretty good, but not the most satisfying dinner. I also made some Japanese yams topped with a slaw and sunflower seeds — it was good, but it didn’t feel like a meal.
Problems: I ordered from them three times and never ran into any issues.
Broken Fifth Metatarsal 