Pros & Cons
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- Delicious, vegetable-heavy menus
- Superb quality
- Excellent options for meat eaters, too
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- Potentially unwanted ingredients in sauces
- Unnecessary plastic in packaging
Green Chef Meal Delivery Service Specs
| Dairy-free Options | |
| Gluten-free Options | |
| Paleo Options | |
| Pescetarian Options | |
| Price Per Serving | $11.99-$13.49 |
| Shipping Fee | $9.99 |
| Vegan Options | |
| Vegetarian Options |
Meal kit delivery services serve many audiences, but vegans and vegetarians face the added challenge of finding meatless options. If you fall into that category, check out Green Chef. More than any other meal kit service we've tested, Green Chef offers fresh, vegetable-forward entrees. If you eat a plant-focused diet or want to, Green Chef is the meal kit delivery service to try. Even the meat offerings put a healthy dose of vegetables in front of you. Green Chef is a wonderful option for people who need help getting more vegetables onto their plates, and is an Editors' Choice winner for plant-based meal kits.
(Credit: Jill Duffy)Green Chef's Plans and Pricing
Green Chef's prices vary depending on the plan and how many portions (two or four) you want for each meal. If you choose four portions per meal, the per-portion cost goes down. You can skip weeks, change your meal preferences, and cancel anytime.
Although there's no long-term commitment, you must order three kits in each shipment. So the smallest box has six portions: three meal kits with two servings each.
Generally speaking, you end up paying between $11.99 and $13.49 per portion. Depending on your location and whether you receive any special first-time customer deals, you may see added charges for taxes and shipping. It's roughly $75 per shipment, which is par for the meal kit course (unless you explore non-traditional options like fully prepared meals from Fresh N Lean or Hungryroot's grocery add-ons).
Most meal kits ship a minimum of two servings per meal. Splendid Spoon is one exception; it specializes in smoothies, soups, and bowls (think "served over rice" type meals) for one. Daily Harvest is similar, focusing on single servings. Its meals are premade and require minimal heating or blending.
The Green Chef Menu
Among meal-kit delivery services, there's ample differentiation. Other Editors' Choice winners, such as Blue Apron and HelloFresh, have menus that appeal to all diets. Green Chef's niche is organic ingredients for healthy meals that you can cook in about 30 minutes. Unlike the fully vegan Purple Carrot, Green Chef has great meat options, too. But Green Chef shines as a service for vegetarians and vegans.
The plans include Keto, Gluten Free, Protein Packed, Plant Based, Mediterranean, Gut and Brain Health, Calorie Smart, and Quick and Easy. You can switch plans at any time, and select multiple preferences when creating your account. This is just a filtering step; you have full menu access every week for choosing meals.
The recipes are nutritious, but sauces are the exception. They typically come premade and add potentially unwanted ingredients to a meal. You can see what they contain in the ingredients list (including allergens) on the website and on the menu cards that ship with each box. In the Moroccan carrots and rice dish, for instance, the cashew crema contains cashews, water, apple cider vinegar, lemon juice concentrate, extra virgin olive oil, salt, and xanthan gum.
Most people making a cashew sauce from scratch probably wouldn't use xanthan gum and would use fresh lemon juice instead of concentrate. However, doing so would add a few extra steps and about 20 minutes of prep time.
(Credit: Jill Duffy)Packaging
The three meal kits from the Plant Based menu arrived neatly packed together. We picked Korean fried rice with kimchi (there's no fish sauce in the kimchi, so it's vegetarian), quinoa tabbouleh with tahini, and Moroccan carrots and rice.
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The ingredients arrived cleaned, pre-portioned, and, in more cases than not, chopped. Each ingredient is sealed inside plastic, down to the peeled garlic cloves and a few carrots. Not all meal kit delivery services use this much plastic. EveryPlate, for example (which is owned by the same company as Green Chef), doesn't bother to wrap vegetables that don't need it, such as whole sweet potatoes, an onion, and a green pepper. Sunbasket does the same, leaving vegetables intact and naked when they don't require additional wrapping.
Each meal kit was packed in a brown paper bag and labeled. The box also contained two cold bags, one on top and one on bottom, keeping the entire shipment cool. Because the meals lack meat, we weren't too worried about keeping everything chilly.
Disposing of the cold bags proved confusing. Each one feels like a thick plastic bag filled with a slab of ice. The words on the instructions are clear, but they said to dump the "non-toxic contents," which are liquid, into the trash. Who puts liquid in the trash?
Green Chef's site has more detailed instructions for disposal. Sure enough, the ice blocks are not made of water but rather a slow-melting, soluble, non-toxic gel. And yup, you're supposed to empty it in the trash. If you want to rinse and recycle the bag, you can try. It's number-four plastic film, which may require dropping off at a special facility rather than mixing in with your LaCroix cans for curbside pickup.
Green Chef's packaging doesn't seem too wasteful, but there's enough of it to warrant limiting how often you might use the service.
Cooking and Eating
An experienced cook could easily assemble these recipes without looking at the recipe card. They're quite simple. We followed all the instructions as outlined in the recipe, though we wanted to veer off track. Sometimes you should! For example, ditch Green Chef's rice-making method. There was way too much water and the rice came out mushy. If you have a system for cooking rice that works for you, follow it. The ratio of rice to water and cooking time varies based on many factors (altitude, water, type of rice, equipment).
The meals mostly blew away our expectations. Green Chef's healthy portions were ample for two adults with good appetites. Everything from the roasted Moroccan carrots to the quinoa "tabbouleh" with chickpeas and tahini was fresh and delicious. When the only nitpick is "maybe too much sauce," you know you're eating well.
The kimchi fried rice was great, too. We recommend using a cast-iron skillet or something else that could hold heat better than a standard nonstick pan. That should result in fried rice with a crusty bottom, not a soft, slumping pile. Would the typical budding home chef know that cast iron would work better? Or even own cast iron? Perhaps not. In that regard, Green Chef could use more in-depth cooking instructions.
Verdict: The Best Pick for Plants
We can't express just how much we enjoyed Green Chef's meals. Personal food preference plays into it heavily, for sure. We're talking about taste, after all. But if you appreciate great, plant-based meals, these entrees will be right up your alley. That makes Green Chef our Editors' Choice winner for vegans and vegetarians, without leaving carnivores in the cold. Servicing those specialty diets helps Green Chef stand out among other top meal kit delivery services such as Blue Apron, Fresh N Lean, HelloFresh, and Hungryroot.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: Green Chef)
Green Chef Meal Delivery Service
Green Chef's meal kits offer fresh, vegetable-forward entrees for vegetarians and vegans, plus meat options for people who follow paleo or keto diets.