All right, I mean it's true, yeah, that looks pretty good.
It feels like there's a million meal kits to choose from.
So let's break it down and work out which is the best meal kit for you
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Settle down.
Now I researched a bunch of different meal kits and I whittled it down and I managed to cook a week's worth of dinners from each.
In three distinct categories.
Now all these meal kits work in a fairly similar way you go online, you select the meals that you want for the week.
You can also swap in proteins and also indicate some dietary preferences say if you're vegetarian, but if you have more specific dietary needs.
We do have a full breakdown of meal kits that cater for pretty much every person on cnet.com.
So the three categories that we're going to test out are the classic or the Oji.
This one I chose Blue Apron the name synonymous with meal kit delivery.
The second category is the gourmet.
This one is sun basket to cater for a few more interesting recipes and things that you might not normally cook yourself at home.
And the third category is the cheap and cheerful.
This one I chose every place.
Now speaking of price, there is always always ALWAYS gonna be a discount code available for these meal kit services.
Just do some quick searching online.
Even if you go to the company's website and start making an account and start looking at items to throw into your meal kit, they'll usually offer you a discount code on the spot.
So at least your first few boxes won't be at full price.
But at the time of recording for four meals per week for two people, this is the price without discount codes.
Blue Apron is $80, Sun basket is $90 and every plate was around $50.
All right, let's start with the ergy.
It's Blue Apron.
So I'm excited to see what's inside.
[UNKNOWN] food bricks in here all good.
So when I took everything out of the box, I noticed that all of the ingredients were either organic or had some indication on them about where they came from, and how sustainably they were sourced which I really liked.
These are important.
The instructions on the menu cards were pretty clear and easy to follow, which I appreciated.
And there were also some photos to give you an idea of what things should look like after you've prepped them.
Do you know what the heck Medium dice means for the bell pepper.
Does that look right?
Even though I still have no idea what medium dice means away.
Now the meals themselves were really flavorful and very tasty.
I have to say Blue Apron was the closest to the photos.
When it came to me plating up my dish.
I was surprised that I could make a dish look that good and I didn't even bother trying to food style it.
It was just as instructed me to plate it.
The one downside with Blue Apron for me was that the portions for some of the proteins, specifically the fish and the chicken just weren't big enough for hungry appetites like mine.
So I suggest if you have a larger family or people that are a little bit more hungry, hey me Definitely consider adding another portion to it and then maybe having leftovers because it's still going to be pretty tasty.
My favorite meal from Blue Apron was far and away the Calabrian beef meal key off.
Chef's kiss.
It was like your Nala mated and I just walked into this kitchen with aromas everywhere.
It was really good and I want to eat that again.
Now let's get a little fancy with sun basket.
When I unpacked the ingredients from this meal kit, I was pretty impressed that everything was labeled and placed in a paper bag.
So this made it super simple to know which meal I was pulling out of the fridge and I didn't have to go hunting around going is that cucumber meant for this dish or do I have to save it for the other dish?
Because the other two meal kids didn't have things labelled as well as sun basket did, it's actually been squeezed for me like how crazy is that?
Like Blue Apron the ingredients were also really fresh and mostly organic when I did take them out of the box, add olive oil.
Yes please.
But overall when I finished cooking each of the meals and I did my big reveal, this was the meal kit with the pictures definitely didn't match up to the reality.
They didn't look anywhere near as vibrant or as colourful as the meals that I've cooked which looked a little bit bland compared to those pretty stock images.
Now fortunately, what the dish looks like didn't necessarily reflect in the flavour.
I thought that all of the Sun basket meals were pretty tasty.
Some of them were not as much of a hit as others But I did appreciate that all of the meals really pushed me outside of my comfort zone in terms of things that I would normally cook.
And again, some of the portions were a little on the smaller side.
So do you take that into consideration?
My favorite meal from sun basket was far and above.
It was the pad Thai, which honestly, this tasted like something I could have got from a top tight takeout restaurant.
It was so good.
I honestly want to eat this every week.
All right, my first every plate books arrived.
And our final category which was the least expensive meal box, this one is every plate.
Now every plate is hellofresh.
It's the cheapest sibling.
So you might notice a couple Couple of the ingredients do have the hellofresh branding.
Overall when I took the ingredients out of the box I liked it there wasn't too much plastic packaging a lot of the vegetables were loose, which was great because a lot of the other meal kits they were wrapped in plastic, I don't know why you need to wrap individual skelly and individual carrots in plastic is a waste of waste or waste.
To plastic so that was really impressive about every plate.
All that said most of the produce I noticed in every plate was not organic.
So that is just something to bear in mind if that's important to you.
Tonight's menu will be crispy chicken that KATSU I subbed out the pork for chicken.
Step one, wash and dry produce already have because i'm paranoid.
Now the every plate recipe cards themselves look these one not laid out the best and they were a little bit confusing even for someone that cooks Almost every night, like me, I really would have appreciated a little bit more division.
Maybe a bigger recipe card would help a couple more steps just to divide it up.
But all that said, Every plate the meals were really tasty and I didn't feel like I. Skipped out on anything because I chose a cheaper meal delivery kit.
They were all excellent meals.
My favorite overall was the chicken katsu, which it was delicious.
I actually Look, I could have used another piece of chicken but that's only because it was so tasty.
The portion sizes on every plate were really good as well and definitely didn't feel like I needed to add too much more.
I was just being greedy because I really liked the flavor looks pretty good.
So before I choose an overall winner, I wanted to give you an idea of the way.
Is that these meal kits generate each week?
Kind of weird and gross, but I did keep all of the packaging from each week's meal kits to give you an idea of what was generated.
So this This is Blue Apron.
It's a pretty big bag.
Mostly plastics.
There's maybe like one tin can in there and just a lot of small bottles and packaging.
Then this is sun basket which was a lot of paper bags and again some plastic packaging and small individual portions And finally, this was a surprise it was actually every plate which was the least amount of waste and plastic packaging out of all three.
All right time to pick the overall winner Across all the different categories taste, ease of cooking, waste generation and also the price.
The winner for me is every plate.
I'm actually surprised that I chose this one.
Yes, it is the cheapest but overall I felt like these were meals that were closest to things that I would actually cook and something that was easy enough and not as.
Expensive as the other two options, and I really liked the lack of packaging, it was nice that all those vegetables weren't individually wrapped.
Sure it wasn't as fancy as some of the other two boxes but overall I think I would definitely get every plate again.
Thanks so much for watching.
I hope this was helpful for you in working out the best meal kit that will work for you.
If you want to check out our full comprehensive list of all the other meal kit delivery options, you can find that on cnet.com.
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