All posts tagged: meal kits

Dinnerly Meal Kit Review (2026): Hearty Meals on a Budget

Dinnerly Meal Kit Review (2026): Hearty Meals on a Budget

Published by skeptic

And so Dinnerly saves on cost not by downgrading its proteins—it’s mostly the same stuff that arrives in a Marley Spoon box—but in large part by keeping flavorings simple, just a spice mix or a single main herb and maybe a citrus fruit, with both zest and juice coming into play. This doubles as good cooking. Dinnerly also saves itself some money by relying on you to have your own garlic and butter in stock and not bulking up meals with quite as many carbs. Last year when I tested Dinnerly, the effect was sometimes a little too simple. The meals I tried felt like they took a few too many shortcuts, leading in some cases to the occasional struggle meal. This year, I didn’t have that feeling at all: I found more international and interesting flavors, and more fully developed meals, even with prep that mostly hovered around half an hour. A Little Spice Is Nice Photograph: Matthew Korfhage This shift toward including a more diverse and interesting array of international meals is something …

Tempo Prepared Meal Subscription Review (2026): Surprisingly Tasty

Tempo Prepared Meal Subscription Review (2026): Surprisingly Tasty

Published by skeptic

If you have eating restrictions, you’ll likely see even more repetition. My colleague Kat Merck, who tested GLP-1-appropriate meals—and also stated a preference for no fish—found herself drowning in a sea of chicken on the six meals she tried. She found the portions appropriate to those on GLP-1 meds, and appreciated that the meals offered her the proteins she needs to maintain muscle mass even while chemically un-hungry. But still: chicken. After eating five of her six meals, she wrote, “I don’t think I had one I didn’t end up liking, but they were absolutely repetitive. Chicken chicken chicken chicken.” The sixth meal she ate, a mushroom cream chicken, was the only utter failure. The chicken tasted different from the chicken in other dishes either of us tried, she noted: thick, dry, slathered in viscous cream with no sign of the advertised mushrooms. It was a little sad, a reminder of TV dinners past. But if anything, that failed meal cast into relief just how surprisingly well-managed most of the proteins turned out to be. …

Marley Spoon Meal Kit Review 2026: Less Martha, More Moroccan

Marley Spoon Meal Kit Review 2026: Less Martha, More Moroccan

Published by skeptic

This included a Persian turmeric chicken with dill-currant rice that fits seamlessly into Marley Spoon’s repertoire, deglazing with lemon juice instead of wine. The rice was toasted, then cooked with currants and spinach. It was simple, elegant, and kind of a treat. Among the pan-Asian dishes, this was the most successful. Other international meals are less faithful translations. The essence of a Moroccan tagine is the hours it spends braising and caramelizing in a conical clay pot. The challenge for a meal kit is translating this to a 45-minute meal. Marley Spoon’s chefs achieved this on a beef and apricot tagine largely by calling for fast-browning the onions and carrots rather than slowly caramelizing them, and using ground beef in place of a richer cut that would require a slower cook. Video: Matthew Korfhage The flavors, a mix of almond and dried apricot and northern African baharat spice, were delicious. The cook was easy and intuitive, with minimal prep. When the recipe called for 30 to 40 minutes of cooking, it was actually true. But …

EveryPlate’s Meal Kit Offers Affordable Vegetarian Options

EveryPlate’s Meal Kit Offers Affordable Vegetarian Options

Published by skeptic

Each week, there are 36 meals to choose from, including about 10 weekly vegetarian options (I skipped my veganism for the week since EveryPlate’s vegetarian choices rely heavily on butter and cheese). You can look through the next three future weeks of selections, and each meal is labeled with things like “calorie-,” “sodium-,” or “carb-smart,” “quick prep,” “25 minutes or less,” and “veggie.” Although recipes repeat over time, there are always new meals on rotation each week. You’ll need to choose whether you want three, four, or five meals a week, or servings for two, four, or six people. (As previously mentioned, my two-person meals often stretched into three or four meals for me as a single person.) You can also do a CustomPlate, which allows for adding or swapping ingredients, like adding chicken breast or ground beef to a vegetarian pasta or rice dish. Once you set your meal preferences, you’ll create an account, fill out your shipping information, and choose a delivery date. The earliest available delivery date was four days later, and …

10 Best Meal Delivery Services, Tested by an Ex-Restaurant Critic

10 Best Meal Delivery Services, Tested by an Ex-Restaurant Critic

Published by skeptic

Frequently Asked Questions Are Meal Delivery Services Worth It? AccordionItemContainerButton If you’re talking raw materials by the pound—meat, zucchini, rice, noodles—meal kits will of course cost more than buying food at grocery stores. It’s a service, after all, with added value above simple ingredient cost. Unless you’ve got quite expensive taste, you’ll easily be able to make delicious meals at home for less than the $7 to $14 a serving that a meal kit will cost. But this said, this doesn’t necessarily mean that meal kits are expensive for what they offer. I conducted an experiment, trying to re-create four different meal-kit meals by going to my local grocery store—buying every ingredient provided by the meal kit. Turns out, if you don’t have the right sauces and spices at home already, it’s very difficult to recreate these tasty meals at grocery stores for less than they cost from a meal kit, in part because you’ll most likely have to buy full containers of sauces and spice instead of pre-portioned ingredients, So, is HelloFresh worth it …

8 Best Plant-Based Meal Delivery Services and Kits (2025), Tested, Tasted, and Reviewed

8 Best Plant-Based Meal Delivery Services and Kits (2025), Tested, Tasted, and Reviewed

Published by skeptic

Compare Our Picks Others Tested Courtesy of Sakara Life Sakara Life; starts at $141 per week; up to $465 for specialty programs: This plant-based, gluten-free meal kit reminds me of what most people think when they think of “crunchy” vegan food—raw vegetables with an earthy taste. Nearly all meals in Sakara’s lineup are uncooked and preprepared—items like veggie burgers are without buns, lasagnas are “deconstructed.” For example, a “Lavender Quesadilla” has broccoli pesto and cashew “cheese” with hibiscus salsa … you get the idea. The menu is curated each week, and meals come in single servings. Sakara also has health supplements (which can be scientifically dubious), like a metabolism booster and fulvic acid cell reset. Sakara’s signature nutrition program meal plan is designed to replace all meals and is delivered twice weekly. If you buy one week of five days, three meals a day, it’s $465 per week; weekly subscriptions of five days, three meals a day, is $395 per week; prices go down to $141 per week with a 12-week subscription for three days …