Purple Carrot Taught Me How to Cook Vegan Food Like a Pro
I tried two weeks of recipes from the only 100% plant-based meal kit service. Here's everything I learned and everything you need to know before you try Purple Carrot.
Our Experts
Score Breakdown
Pros
- Super fresh ingredients and healthy, flavorful recipes
- Simple meal plan and meal selection
- Great way to learn plant-based cooking
- No unhealthy fake meats
Cons
- On the expensive side
- Meals take longer than other services
- One of the recipes I made was bland
There are plenty of reasons to love meal kits. They're convenient, healthy and as some recent number-crunching revealed that certain meal kit services can save you money over shopping at the grocery store. If you want to hone your cooking skills, particularly your plant-based cooking skills, Purple Carrot is the one to try. I tested two weeks of Purple Carrot meals. I ate well, enjoyed some relaxing evenings of meal-making at home and added a few seriously healthy and delicious vegan meals to my recipe repertoire.
Purple Carrot delivered on its promise of wholesome plant-based meal kits.
Purple Carrot is the only completely vegan meal kit service and it takes plant-based cooking seriously. You won't find many recipes that try to imitate meat, but just lots of recipes featuring vegan staples such as lentils, legumes, cashews, grains, cauliflower, root vegetables and healthy greens.
Some Purple Carrot meals take longer to cook and require more effort and focus than the likes of HelloFresh and Home Chef, but you'll taste that extra effort in the resulting food. Having tested the service twice now, Purple Carrot remains a firm editor's pick and the best meal kit service for vegan food in 2024.
Here's everything you need to know about Purple Carrot and my firsthand review of the 100% vegan meal kit service.
Purple Carrot meal plan options are simple and straightforward.
How Purple Carrot works
Purple Carrot works like many other meal kit companies in that it sends the ingredients and instructions to make lunch or dinner recipes at home. Because it's all vegan, plant-based cuisine, you don't have to choose from a slate of meal plans -- just one. It's also worth noting that Purple Carrot is a subscription service, meaning meal kits will come every week, but you are free to cancel or pause anytime with no penalty, so don't be deterred if you want to try it out.
Editor's note: Purple Carrot offers prepared meals in addition to meal kits but did not at the time of this original writing. We plan to test them soon and will incorporate our findings into this review.
When you sign up for Purple Carrot, you'll start with a quiz to dig into your eating habits and dietary preferences. There are some other admittedly odd questions, including about gender and how often you go to the gym, that I assume the brand uses to glean marketing insights.
The only big decision you'll make upon signing up is how many servings per meal and meals per week you'd like to try. If you pick just three recipes per week and two servings per meal, it's $13.25 per serving. Choose a two-serving meal plan with four recipes per week and the price drops down to $11 per serving. The four-serving plans are $11 per serving whether you choose three or four recipes.
The Plantry is filled with vegan snacks, desserts and breakfast items.
From there, you'll have eight vegan dinner recipes to pick from each week for the following week's delivery, which is less choice than most meal kits but considering this is vegan food only, it felt like enough of a selection to me. While those may be the weekly dinner meal minimums, Purple Carrot also allows you to add breakfast and lunch meal kits as well as vegan snacks from the "Plantry" (plant-based pantry) to your weekly shipments if you choose. The Plantry includes lots of grocery add-ons like vegan cheese, breakfast lentil bowls and desserts.
Purple Carrot pricing
| Servings per meal | Price per serving | Total per week (3 meals) |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | $13.25 | $79.50 (6 servings) |
| 4 | 11 | $132 (12 servings) |
Unlike some meal kit services, Purple Carrot picks your shipping day based on your proximity to fulfillment centers. Ingredients arrive in cooler bags and are said to keep for as long as 72 hours. That's longer than most meal kits and likely due to them not containing any meat. Shipping is always free, which helps offset the higher overall price
What are Purple Carrot meals like?
Purple Carrot meals are colorful from start to finish. The produce from this service was as fresh as any I've tried.
Purple Carrot meals are 100% vegan and healthy, although not necessarily low-carb or low-calorie. Most are centered on whole foods and vegetables with no meat, dairy or animal products of any sort. That might sound like a given, but I've noticed that many meal kit companies have incorporated plant-based meat alternatives like Impossible Beef and Beyond Meat into their vegan and vegetarian recipes. Not so with Purple Carrot. You'll find some tofu-based proteins like tempeh and tofu but not a lot of the newfangled lab-produced imitators.
Purple Carrot meals can take as long as 50 minutes to finish but most take more like 30.
Expect lots of hearty bowls filled with grains, nuts and veggies from Purple Carrot, as well as filling lentil soups and rib-sticking stews like vegan chili or West African peanut stew. There are also generally a couple of delicious-looking vegan pasta dishes on a given week's menu including lemon zucchini pasta with cashew cream sauce and artichoke hearts.
The red lentil skordalia with garlic and potato is a hearty side dish that I'll be adding to my regular rotation.
There's often a plant-based taco recipe or sandwich option to choose from. While some meal kit companies play it safe with familiar flavors, Purple Carrot takes some big swings with flavorful curries, sauces and spice mixes to add some welcome pizazz to its vegetarian recipes.
Meal add-ons: Breakfast, lunch and snacks
In addition to the weekly meal kits, Purple Carrot has breakfast and lunch meal kits as well as snacks you can add to your delivery a la carte. Lunch meal kits are two servings and clock in at $9 per serving while breakfast kits, like tropical coconut pancakes with fresh fruit, are under $5 per serving but come in four-serving portions only. Snacks are priced individually and include sweet and savory munchies such as mushroom jerky, vegan chocolate and peanut butter truffles.
How easy are Purple Carrot meal kits to prepare?
Purple Carrot sends a bound recipe book with glossy images.
One thing to note about Purple Carrot is that meal kits are on average more difficult to prepare and take longer than other services. Purple Carrot meals don't require high levels of cooking skill but they have a good deal of prep and recipes contain more directions and steps than competitors such as Blue Apron and HelloFresh.
There's always a good bit of plastic waste when you're dealing with meal kits but Purple Carrot is no worse than others in the category.
Most Purple Carrot meal kits take about 30 to 40 minutes while others take longer, sometimes as long as 50 minutes or so. The cooking times are all listed on the menu each week so you can always select the quicker meals if you don't think there will be time for a longer session that week.
What I cooked and how it went
- Red lentil soup with parsnip ribbons and tamarind sauce: The whole dish worked but the sweet roasted parsnip ribbons were my favorite part of this meal.
This red lentil soup was made even better when drizzled with cashew cream, tamarind chutney and topped with parsnip ribbons.
- Black pepper tofu with brown rice and chard: This was as good as restaurant takeout and took less than 30 minutes to make. It was my favorite of the bunch, although it wasn't the healthiest meal I made.
The black pepper tofu was as good as any Chinese takeout I've had lately.
- Cauliflower steak with red lentil skordalia and garlic green beans: This meal took a while to prepare but was pretty tasty in the end. Cauliflower steak is always a bit of a let down but the red lentil skordalia more than made up for it.
The cauliflower steak looked a little better than it tasted. Don't they always?
- Green curry lentils with brown rice and vegetables: I had to psych myself up for this one since I like lentils but would be lying if I said they excite me. But it was so, so good. Amazing balance of sweetness and heat and a big portion. I joyfully finished the leftovers for lunch the next day.
This curried lentil soup was one of the better meals I made.
- Butternut squash gnocchi: This one was also really tasty and very filling and is a good fall or winter meal. It was easy to prepare and had excellent flavor throughout.
- Peanut and avocado Buddha bowl: This one was good but not very exciting. It was the only one I finished eating, considered the price, and then thought to myself, "Was this worth the money?"
The Buddha bowl was good but perhaps not worth $13 per serving
Purple Carrot support materials
There is nothing too extraordinarily good or bad about the recipe cards. I found them clear and concise with some helpful footnotes for beginners and helpful cooking tips I may not have considered otherwise. I also appreciated the quick little explainers for any unusual recipes.
Who should try Purple Carrot?
These meal kits are great for existing vegans or folks trying to incorporate more plant-based cooking into their diet. For me, it was a good way to learn to cook vegan staples and work with ingredients I'm not as familiar with cooking such as lentils, nori, parsnips and butternut squash.
Roasted parsnip ribbons dressed up simply with olive oil and cumin seeds are an example of a simple and tasty plant-based food I never would have thought to make.
Who should not try Purple Carrot?
Besides the obvious answer, meat eaters, Purple Carrot is also not great for those trying to keep to specific diet plans like keto, paleo, the Mediterranean diet or others. There aren't tons of weekly choices and, despite being healthy overall, many of them contain a substantial amount of carbs, calories or both. It is also on the expensive side, though not the priciest I've tried. If you're looking for a truly budget-friendly meal kit, see our list of the best cheap meal delivery services.
How much do Purple Carrot meal kits cost?
Purple Carrot meals are either $11 to $13 a serving, depending on how many servings per meal you order. A box of three meals per week for two people will cost about $79.50.
Most meal kit services offer a trial discount for new customers and Purple Carrot is no exception. If you're new to the plant-based meal delivery service, they'll knock an extra $20 off your first order.
Purple Carrot packaging and environmental friendliness
Purple Carrot is not too much better or worse than other meal kit services when it comes to packaging. The meals were each separated in plastic bags while some companies use paper but Purple Carrot's cooler bags are recyclable and the ice packs are biodegradable. Get the brand's full recycling breakdown here.
Changing, skipping or canceling a Purple Carrot order
You can add, change or cancel meals easily through the app or the website. You can also skip a week's delivery or cancel anytime before the weekly cut-off.
Final verdict on Purple Carrot
Purple Carrot meal kits take longer than other services but the recipes are thoughtful and the ingredients are fresh.
While some meal kits drive home the value proposition and others lean into the speedy convenient aspect of meal kits, Purple Carrot has kept a consistent ethos over the years. A plant-based diet can do wonders for your health and Purple Carrot is committed to authentic vegan recipes without compromising on quality.
I found most of the meals I made to be healthy but still surprisingly craveable. The portions were also bigger than most services: A recipe meant for two often yielded more like three or four servings. Plus, the ingredients were super fresh and much of it was organic.
As someone who still enjoys meat and has no plans to dice it out of my diet completely, I'm not sure I'd want to cook Purple Carrot meals every night. But since you can skip weekly shipments anytime you want, I love the idea of having recipes and ingredients for interesting vegan meals showing up semi-regularly.
If you want a weekly stream of meal kits but don't want to commit to eating 100% vegan, try Sunbasket or Blue Apron which have excellent recipes with and without meat. If it's mostly meatless food you're looking to cook, you won't find a service that teaches you more important vegan cooking skills than Purple Carrot.