Dr. Gourmet's Food Reviews

Meal and Ingredient Delivery Services

Delivered meal services can be a good idea - in concept.  If you don't have time to shop, it could be worth it, depending on the quality of the ingredients. What you are really paying for, after all, is for someone to shop for you. The drawback, other than the often terrible meals, is the massive amount of packaging used in shipping these ingredients to you.

Blue Apron

They say that they called themselves Blue Apron "because chefs around the world wear blue aprons when they're learning to cook." They also state that "We take great care to ensure that our recipes are suitable for beginner chefs and experts alike."

CookUnity

 ... another meal delivery service, but with a twist: this company doesn't send you the ingredients for you to do the cooking at home. Instead, a team of private chefs make each meal from scratch, plate it individually, and it's shipped directly to you.

EveryPlate

A few weeks ago my wife saw an ad for a food delivery service we hadn't seen before: EveryPlate. They bill themselves as "America's best value meal kit," charging $4.99 per serving. It's been a while since we reviewed a meal delivery service, and in these pandemic times people might be more inclined to use these services in lieu of going to the grocery store themselves. Part 1: Creamy Dijon Chicken | Part 2: Kung Pao Beef Bowls | Part 3: Panko Ranch Pork Chops

Freshly

Freshly delivers pre-cooked meals that they describe as "chef-cooked, healthy meals delivered to you." Six meals cost us $39 through an introductory offer - their regular prices range from $12.50 per meal to $8.99 per meal depending on how many meals you have delivered each week.

HelloFresh

We started with HelloFresh. Not because of Jamie Oliver, but because we had a Groupon. Without that deal, this is pretty pricey at $69.00 for 3 meals for two people, averaging out at $11.50 per meal per person. If you don't have time to shop, that could be worth it, depending on the quality of the ingredients.

Home Chef

The first thing that I noticed when unpacking the Home Chef ingredients from the box was the Minor's vegetable base. Minor's is not a household name because it isn't generally sold at retail, but it is widely used in restaurants. Bad restaurants.

Hungryroot | Hungryroot Returns

I am often asked in the Q & A after lectures what I think of meal delivery plans. We have reviewed a number of them here at Dr. Gourmet and they have been all mediocre or worse - and generally speaking quite expensive. Some of my colleagues argue that one good reason to recommend them to patients is it can help get them jumpstarted to begin cooking on their own – almost like taking cooking classes.

Sun Basket

[Sun Basket has] a number of menu choices, including "Lean & Clean" and a gluten free option. Pricing is a bit high at $11.99 per serving, with recipes making enough for 2 or 4 servings. That can get a bit pricy depending on the meal.

Plated

We'd been hopeful that [food delivery] services might be a good alternative to doing your own meal planning and shopping, and on paper they certainly could be if you don't mind paying someone to do the shopping for you (and not paying just a little, but a lot).

Note: Plated is no longer in business as a meal delivery service but supposedly sells meal kits at Safeway grocery stores in Northern California. We could find no store that appears to actually carry them, however.