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If you are thinking about Meal kit serviceMaybe you have questions. How much does it cost? Which services have the quickest or easiest recipes? Maybe you have picky eaters and need a lot Family friendly Options, or service, that can be modified to suit preferences or the number of people you are feeding. We consider all this, and more, when Test meal kits For review.
while Meal kit services Mostly follow a similar formula – sending pre-portioned ingredients to help you easily prepare home-cooked meals – there are differences that make some more suitable for those with specific tastes, Diets Or cooking skill levels. Some are better than others.
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We pre-cook each meal kit to ensure all ingredients are included.
At CNET, a handful of editors — including A A self-proclaimed apprentice chef, vegetable And some who are Experienced home chefs –We personally tested every meal kit we could wear with our oven mitts, starting with the original one that fired it all up, Blue apronSomething great for families, Hello Fresh or Purple carrotserving a completely vegetarian meal kit. All of this testing is aimed at one thing: to help you Find the best meal kit that suits your taste and budget. Here’s exactly what we do to examine it all and take a closer look at how CNET rates meal kit services.
Selection of meal plans and ordering process
The first thing any meal kit subscriber does is choose a plan, and that’s where we start. Some services offer a variety of meal plans at different prices to accommodate large groups or individuals who only want a few meal kits per week. Others have very simple meal plan options at standard prices.
We will always notice how easy it is to choose and change meals from week to week.
If a meal kit has plans and pricing that are too complex, we’ll note that in the review. We will also download and launch the meal kit app if it exists. The apps are very useful for quickly changing the order of next week’s meals or pulling a recipe if you’ve lost your recipe cards.
Pricing
Choosing a meal plan helps shed light on the total cost of a meal kit. There are economical meal kits Cheap recipes up to $6 Per meal and more with premium Meals that can cost much more. Later in the process, after cooking (or reheating if we are testing a Ready meal delivery service) and dining, we’ll determine if the meal kit service lives up to the billing and is worth the price.
We also include any special offers from the Service, such as a 5% Blue Apron discount when you sign up for Autoship, and if a subscription is required or not required to try the Service.
HelloFresh pricing (left) and Blue Apron pricing (right) for six servings as of November 2025. These prices include shipping and taxes, plus a 5% discount on automatic shipping built into the Blue Apron price.
Recipe offers and selections
Marley Spoon offers a variety of recipes.
This is one of the biggest differences and something we always think about carefully. If your meal kit menu selections and recipe options are very limited, it can be difficult to find meals you actually want to make. Conversely, if there are too many to choose from, it can be overwhelming. Beyond the sheer number is the quality of the recipes you choose. Are a wide range of cuisines represented, and do the recipes look interesting and tempting?
Special diets and vegetarian offers
Most meal kit services try to accommodate people who follow a special diet, whether… vegetable, KetoOr low carb, paleo, low calorie, or diabetic friendly. Some have much more options for those diets, so we always consider whether a meal kit service is suitable for someone with dietary restrictions, and if not, we will make a separate recommendation when possible.
Customize your order and recipes
Some services like chef and Hello Fresh They allow you to change the protein, serving size, and, in some cases, other ingredients of the recipe, including side dishes or starch. We always note how customizable meal kit services are, which can be important for people with food allergies, families with young children or picky eaters.
Some meal kit services are more customizable than others.
public health
Speaking of which, the health Any serving of a particular meal kit is always an important consideration, so we hired CNET’s Health Editor Anna Gragert For help here. Most services offer a fair number of healthy meals that contain lots of vegetables and lean proteins, but some focus more on them with lots of low-carb or low-carb meals. Vegetarian offers. There is also the quality of the ingredients to consider. Meal kit services such as Green Chef and Purple carrot They primarily use organic ingredients, while others are less particular about their sources.
Extras
Some services– Hello Fresh But not limited to – Get add-ons including breakfast foods and other grocery items meant to make your life easier. You can often add them to your weekly delivery and save a trip to the store.
Some services offer additional groceries and pantry goods to make life easier.
After looking at the meal plans and menu options, it’s time to place an order. We will always place an order for at least one week’s worth of meals – between three and five recipes. We make an effort to choose a variety of dishes in a few different cuisines or categories – pasta, chicken, beef dish and vegetarian recipe if offered. We initially started testing meal kits years ago, but this year we made it a priority to retest services to see what changed. We’ve included all of this information in our updated reviews, too.
The meal kit arrived. What’s in the box and what does it look like?
When receiving meals, there are preliminary considerations. Did the meal box show up when it was supposed to? This is important, especially for busy people who have hungry mouths to feed and a schedule to keep.
Once the package is inserted and opened, we also take into account how clean the items inside are. Some services excel at packing and labeling ingredients accurately, while others are a bit more haphazard. It’s important that ingredients, especially less common ingredients, are labeled correctly and clearly so you know what to take when you need it. We also note that packaging is environmentally friendly, although most services will become very adept at this practice by 2025, using less plastic and more recyclable materials.
We always consider quality and freshness.
This is also done when we carry out an initial check for quality and freshness, especially produce, meat and fish. If anything is clearly past its prime or has sustained significant damage, we’ll make a note of it and move that finding forward to final review. If any items have expiry dates, we will always check to make sure the food is not past or too close to these dates.
Food is always shipped fresh and not frozen, so it is essential that it arrives cold inside insulated packaging or a disposable cooler box. If any recipe shipment arrives warm or at room temperature, it should not be cooked or eaten.
Time to cook meals
All ingredients are included for this healthy miso salmon with roasted vegetables.
Now it’s time for the main event: cooking the meals. For each meal kit recipe, we will carefully consider all of the ingredients listed. In most cases, the service assumes that the home cook has a few basics like olive oil, salt and pepper, but everything else should be considered and easily identified.
How easy it is to implement the recipe
This is especially important, especially if a meal kit service bills itself as a service for new cooks and busy individuals looking for hassle-free dinners. Before we get started, we’ll review the recipe to make sure all the words are clear. Does this recipe use terms and techniques that the average new chef would know, or is it geared more toward someone with a lot of cooking experience? To dig deeper, in our latest tests we put an amateur cook alongside more experienced home cooks to compare their experiences.
If the recipes are more complicated, that’s definitely okay, but we want to be clear about what you’re getting into before spending money on a subscription. If a cooking instruction includes highly technical terms and instructions, we expect it to be clearly defined so that anyone can at least try the recipe. Many services include a small glossary with each recipe to help with those more advanced aspects.
Check the listed recipe time against the actual time
Green Chef offers Organic Dijon Chicken and Potatoes.
Recipes give a specific time that a recipe should take to prepare, so we’ll time the recipe to see how close it is.
Let’s eat. What does it look like, and more importantly, taste like?
This is definitely the most subjective part of the evaluation but is still important. When you finish the recipe, you want it to look as close to the charming picture on the website as possible and to taste good, too.
For this part, you’ll have to put a little faith in our well-traveled palates, but we’ll always pass on anything noteworthy about the dish – good or bad. Was it too salty? Was the sauce bland or bright and balanced? Did the piece of meat or fish taste not fresh? The success of a dish depends on several ingredients working together, which is not always the case with meal kit recipes.
I’ve been eating parmesan and chicken in my Marley Spoon skillet all week.
One of the reasons I love meal kits is that they introduce you to new recipes, flavors, foods, and ingredients. We will always notice when something tastes unique or interesting. Some people may gravitate to familiar foods, so if their recipes are more classic than innovative, we’ll notice that too.
Portion size
EveryPlate serves chicken sausage flatbread.
This is also when we get an idea of the portion size. Are there barely enough to feed the number of people the recipe was intended to feed, or are there enough leftovers for lunch tomorrow? Large portions may not be the most important factor, but it’s definitely good to know, especially if you’re looking for value in your meal kit.
Overall impression
Having gone through each stage of the meal kit process, it’s easier to compare the experience to the cost, as well as compare to the rest of the category and competition. They also help us determine which specific meal combinations might be best suited: new cooks, more experienced home cooks, families or vegetarians, to name a few.
We take into account the entire experience, including the ordering process, ease of use of the website and app, delivery logistics, recipe execution, taste and overall value, before making our final assessment. Each meal kit service we test gets a score from 1 to 10. We hope they help you find just the right product.
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