The best meal kits: Rating the popular dinners-in-a-box
Meal kit services “can be especially useful during a pandemic,” said Jenn Harris in the
Los Angeles Times. Home cooks have turned to them more often in recent weeks as everyone tries to reduce visits to the supermarket.
The kits offer a “paint-by-numbers” approach to getting food on the table: You choose a meal online, and the service delivers the fresh ingredients and recipes in one box. But which services are best? My family and I tested seven, not including Martha Stewart’s popular Martha & Marley Spoon. We gave failing grades to two—Gobble and Every Plate—and named the following three as winners.
Purple Carrot, which offers only plant-based recipes, proved to be our favorite. All of the dishes offered “ambitious and unexpected” flavors, and they’re easy to make if you’re competent with a chopping knife. The Japanese yam sushi bowls deserve to be on regular rotation at your home, and the cauliflower “was on par with a meal at Crossroads, one of the best plant-based restaurants in Los Angeles.” (Roughly $7.82 per person per meal) Blue Apron finished as our runner-up—with meat- or veggie-based meals that “strike the right balance of adventurous and approachable.” Typical is a savory beef-and–bok choy rice bowl—tasty, easy to assemble, and modest in portion size. “If you’re used to big meals, this is not the kit for you.” ($11.98 per person per meal)
HelloFresh offers the best value. We tried the meatloaf, a sausage-and-kale soup, and Korean beef tacos, and all three were immensely satisfying—“like someone’s grandma whipped them up.” Just don’t expect great bread or tortillas from any of these services. ($10.32 per person per meal)