7 best meal delivery services and kits for easy home cooking

Home Chef provided the best meal delivery service experience. The directions were simple to follow, and the meals were relatively easy to prepare, requiring minimal cleanup. Your first box comes with a binder where you can keep and sort recipes you love, with pages that include tips for making the most of the service (like how to edit your orders and equipment you’ll need).

Each recipe card lists the difficulty level, spiciness, and how quickly you should cook it after getting your box — helpful details that take out a ton of guesswork. Plus, the estimated cook times listed were actually accurate for me: The feta-stuffed za’atar chicken told me it’d take 40 to 50 minutes, and I had it on the table in exactly 49 minutes. While the meals were not quite as tasty as HelloFresh or Purple Carrot, they were still good, and I definitely enjoyed cooking these recipes the most.

During my week of HelloFresh meals, I felt like I was eating restaurant meals every night (except for the whole, you know, cooking-it-myself thing). Every dinner I had — tilapia with scallion sriracha pesto, chimichurri chicken grain bowl, creamy butternut squash and kale cavatappi — was delicious, with balanced flavors and satisfying textures.

Unlike with Home Chef, it did take me longer to make the meals than the recipe cards promised, sometimes by about 10 to 15 minutes. But I found the results were worth the extra time, particularly since large portions meant we usually ended up with full bellies plus leftovers for the next day.

The more affordable little sister to HelloFresh (they’re owned by the same company), servings of EveryPlate meals start at $6.99, making it the best budget meal delivery service. I found the quality ranged a little more. While a creamy spinach side was absolutely delectable — and I’m someone who usually hates cooked spinach — a cut of rib-eye steak was pretty tough and full of fat.

But the biggest difference I found was that the recipes seem to be a little “extra”: They had me grate parmesan and carrots and even crush peppercorn myself, steps that I know are technically ideal but feel a little overkill for a weeknight meal I just want to get on the table. (If I were buying the ingredients myself, I’d just buy the pre-grated versions.) Still, I loved the meal options acailable, including a nice range of cuisines.

As long as you’re getting meal kits delivered, why not get some general groceries, too? Hungryroot makes things easy by offering a box filled with a mix of recipes, pre-made meals, snacks, and breakfast and dessert options. You don’t even have to scroll through an endless list to choose what you want. After inputting your preferences, it suggests your weekly cart for you, which you can then customize — swapping, deleting, or adding as much as you’d like.

The recipes themselves were often more about assembling and heating up than intense cooking. A couple of them were just a bagged salad (the same kind that I get at my local market) plus some chicken I had to cook, or salmon that had already been smoked. The result was decent, though not as tasty as Purple Carrot or HelloFresh. But there’s only so much you can expect from meals you can put together in just 10 minutes or so.

My husband typically winces at anything labeled vegan, so when I made these meals, multiple times he told me he wasn’t hungry, but he’d “just try a little” — then he downed a whole serving. Even my toddler was able to find parts that she loved, and I was reminded of just how delicious tofu can be with the right prep, making Purple Carrot the best plant-based meal delivery service.

Also impressive: The produce was pretty hardy and lasted for five or more days when I didn’t cook it right away. All the meals were full of healthy ingredients with appropriate portion sizes. And I appreciated that the recipes included notes on how to customize the flavors to your liking, letting you choose how much sriracha or red onion to add — more than any other delivery service I tested, it gave me a sense of being in charge of the cooking.

If you’re looking for clean, healthy, organic meals to make, Green Chef has you covered. From the same company as HelloFresh, the ingredients are sustainably sourced, the produce is organic, and select recipes are certified clean by the Clean Label Project (meaning they’re free of heavy metals or contaminants).

There are 42 options to choose from every week, and you can filter for things like high protein, high fiber, or low in sugar. Many of the meals take only 30 minutes or less — and I found these estimates fairly accurate. But considering “green” is in the name, the meals I ate felt a little light on the veggies. Plus, unsurprisingly, the price tag is a bit higher since you’re getting things like grass-fed beef. Yet those kinds of high-quality ingredients do add up to tasty meals.

Want to try a meal kit every once in a while without having to commit to a subscription? Blue Apron lets you order a recipe (or pre-made dinner) whenever you want, without needing to sign up for a membership. And you can do it pretty last-minute: Unlike Purple Carrot, which you have to order a week in advance, I ordered my food on Friday, and it arrived on Monday. As you search through the dozens of options, it tells you exactly how much you’ll pay per serving, so there’s no mystery over how much you’re spending. Plus, most of the recipes allow you to customize the protein — for example, if you prefer salmon over shrimp, you can swap.

I did find that the quality varied. One stalk of bok choy arrived wilted, and a Vietnamese-style ground beef bowl was pretty bland. But a cheesy pork tortilla casserole was so easy and flavorful that I saved the recipe to add to my regular weeknight lineup.