Green Chef (owned by HelloFresh) is a great meal kit subscription for beginners. I said a lot about our area Meal kit buying guide. The recipe cards are full of helpful pictures, and the intuitively assembled instructions don’t skip important steps. I’ve spent weeks testing meal kit subscriptions during my time at WIRED, but we’re testing them again in order to give them individual reviews. Green Chef has been an honorable mention in our guide since I first tested it, and I still think it’s a good choice for anyone looking to build their culinary prowess.
Green Chef has a few plans available. You can get three meals with two servings per meal (which works out to $13.49 per meal), or you can go for four meals with six servings per meal (which works out to $11.99 per meal). Different lifestyle and diet options include vegan, low-calorie, high-protein, keto, and gluten-free (among others). Note that Green Chef’s prices are higher than similarly designed meal kits, because almost all of the ingredients are organic.
There are usually introductory offers to make your first week(s) cheaper. Every week you get to choose your dishes from Weekly menu And make any customizations, such as switching proteins or adding additional parts. You can pause or cancel your subscription at any time as long as you do so at least five days before your order ships. Most of the packaging is made from recycled materials Recyclable itself.
An emotional rollercoaster
During the week I tested Green Chef, I experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows. for me Steak and shrimp with creamy truffle sauce It was a brown, over-salted disaster—partly due to my heavy hand with Maldon chips, and (I think) partly due to the instructions asking me to salt my dish six separate times. For context, there wasn’t any specific type of salt to use, most meal kit services provide you with your own salt, so I just used Flaky sea salt Which I always season with. I was so busy following each step meticulously that I didn’t stop to think, “Hmm. I’ve already salted and peppered this four times. Instead, with reckless abandon, I enthusiastically seasoned, and in the end, I cried, threw it away, and, unfortunately, DoorDashed myself the chicken nuggets at 10:30pm and for what it’s worth, even outside of the salty sauce, I didn’t like the green beans and tomatoes that came with it. I didn’t like the shrimp to steak ratio. I just didn’t like this dish!
Photo: Lauren Strampe
On the other hand, oh Chicken with maple dijon sauce It was delicious. Probably one of my favorite dishes I’ve ever made. The chard, sweet potatoes and apple hash would have been a meal in itself, and the maple glazed chicken was fantastic. I realized it reminded me of my favorite dish from Sweetgreen (the Harvest bowl), and after trying the finished dish well enough to be able to review it, I deviated from the recipe and added a dollop of goat cheese to more closely mimic the Harvest Bowl. It was perfect. So good that I didn’t want to share it. I loved this dish so much that I kept the recipe card.
I had a similar experience with the third dish—Shrimp with lemon and garlic. The star of the meal were sun-dried tomatoes soaked in lemon juice and vegetable broth mixture. It was bright and refreshing, a real treat that brightened up the heavy pasta and prawns. I’ve cooked with lemon juice, sun-dried tomatoes, and vegetable stock individually hundreds of times. Why didn’t I think of combining them before?
Overall, I found that the time estimates for the recipes were a bit short. I think all recipe collections have this flaw. If you’re Ina Garten or one of the cool ones Good appetite Food editors, maybe you’ll get the timing right. But for the average person, it’s safe to give yourself a 20-minute buffer in addition to the estimated preparation time listed on the recipe card.