Monday, June 27, 2016

Meal Kit Services

I've been trying out the meal kit delivery services. It's been fun. So far I've tried Blue Apron, Plated, Green Chef, and Hello Fresh. I plan to try a few more.

Blue Apron had the best tasting meals and the way they package the ingredients is really convenient, but one of their recipes took about 90 minutes longer than they claimed it would.

Plated was similarly tasty . The ingredients they sent were great quality. Some of the recipes were pretty elaborate in the number of ingredients, but they generally didn't take too long. There a few more ready-to-use sauces than with Blue Apron.

Green Chef wasn't organized quite as neatly as the others, relying on color-coded stickers on each item. The ingredients are excellent though, and organic if you care about that. They prep a lot of ingredients for you, which saves times but I kind of don't like it because it feels less fresh. They had some strange combos for some of the vegetarian meals. Blueberries, spinach, and avocado? Overall these meals were pretty quick to make, but I didn't like them as much as Plated and Blue Apron.

Hello Fresh still gets another week before I finish testing them, but so far they're not doing very well. One of the vegetarian dinners they sent was essentially a plate of nachos. The ingredients are fine, but not any better than my local supermarket.

The biggest problem with all of them is getting healthy stuff.

None of them use whole grains for their pasta, pizza dough, or much of anything. Blue Apron at least had quinoa in one recipe. Green Chef did better than the rest on this.

They all make it difficult to get fish without getting meat. In fact I gave up with Hello Fresh and just got their vegetarian meals.

Most meals don't include a high enough proportion of vegetables. Starch rules the vegetarian meals. Green Chef did slightly better there.

Nevertheless, I plan to keep trying them because it makes a big difference in my week to not have to plan as many meals.

UPDATE: Here are the meals I tried from each one.

Blue Apron


Plated




Green Chef



Hello Fresh