{"id":1753,"date":"2018-10-27T06:34:09","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T22:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/?p=1753"},"modified":"2018-11-01T02:00:37","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T18:00:37","slug":"what-are-the-best-meal-kits-out-there-join-me-as-i-find-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/2018\/10\/what-are-the-best-meal-kits-out-there-join-me-as-i-find-out\/","title":{"rendered":"What Are the Best Meal Kits Out There? Join Me as I Find Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

For years, I had been avoiding meal kits.\u00a0 I’d get coupons for HelloFresh<\/a> in the boxes of online orders for all sorts of products or hear my friend rave about the cool Blue Apron<\/a> meal that awaited her at home, and I’d just shake my head.\u00a0 To me, the idea of meal kits made no sense<\/strong>.\u00a0 At a cost of $10-$12 per person, per meal, meal kits rival the cost of take out but you have to go through the trouble of making the meal yourself.\u00a0 \u00a0Plus unlike take out, meal kits portions are measured so you won’t have leftovers.\u00a0 Financially, I figured, I got more bang from my money from ordering out and with less mess.<\/p>\n

Meal kits, moreover,\u00a0 seemed to be the culinary equivalent of painting by numbers:\u00a0 you end up with something that may be nice but you put no creativity into it (though then again, 99% of my cooking means following a recipe, so what creativity do I ever use?).\u00a0 Moreover, I worried the meals would not be that tasty and that the portions would not be large enough to satisfy us.<\/p>\n

But I’ve been in a huge cooking rut<\/em>.\u00a0 I got to the “H” in my international cooking project<\/a> and I’ve been left with a lot of cuisines that have just not been inspiring me or that require me to hunt for ingredients that are problematic in the first place (pork belly, anyone?).\u00a0 \u00a0Moreover, I live with four people with very different diets: a vegan, an uber-picky tween, a low-carb eater and me, who hates vegetables.\u00a0 Forget cooking a meal that the four of us can eat, I can rarely cook something that will satisfy three of us!\u00a0 \u00a0So rather than cook, we’ve been eating a lot of frozen food and take out.\u00a0 Both horrible options for our taste buds and\/or our wallet.\u00a0 I was ripe for something else.<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, I was doing an online order for Safeway – our local supermarket – when I came across their listings for Plated<\/a> meal kits<\/strong>.\u00a0 They had four that I could get as part of my deliver order, with no commitment to a subscription and with no shipping charges.\u00a0 I figured I’d give it a try and wow, it was a revelation<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0 The meal was fun to prepare<\/strong> and I did enough of the work (albeit following detailed instructions) that, at the end, I had the same type of satisfaction as when I cook a meal from a recipe<\/strong> I chose and shopped for myself.\u00a0 The psychology involved reminds me of the story of how boxed cake mixes only took off after marketers began suggesting<\/a> that cooks add eggs and other elements to make them their own.\u00a0 \u00a0And the results were great<\/strong>.\u00a0 The portion was perfectly sized, the ingredients seemed high quality (unlike what I’m sure the cheap restaurants I order from use), and the results were very tasty.\u00a0 I wanted more.<\/p>\n

And that’s when I remembered those HelloFresh<\/a> coupons I still had around.\u00a0 \u00a0I figured I’d start with them and then give other meal kit services a try and see what they really have to offer and how do they compare to one another.\u00a0 \u00a0Some of these companies also offer their recipes online, I will be cooking some of these<\/a> both to get a greater sense for what each company offers without breaking the bank and to get a sense of just how good or bad of a deal the kits are versus shopping for the ingredients yourself.<\/p>\n

I hope you’ll come along in this journey and leave comments of your own experiences with these services – and these recipes.<\/p>\n

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Meal Kits Subscriptions Reviewed So Far<\/h4>\n