Getting a meal kit delivered to your home is a great way to save time and avoid headaches. But there are a few things to know before you place an order.
I’ve tasted and tested over 35 different meal kit delivery services so I know a thing or two and would like to share a few tips with you.
Let’s get started!
1. Look for the best bang for your buck
It’s easy to be tricked by some of the amazing looking photos but your main focus when ordering a meal kit is to pick the most expensive items at the lowest price because often times they are priced the same. Ingredients such as steak, seafood are more expensive than ground beef, chicken, steak or veggies so try to pick these ones first.
2. Think about what’s for lunch.
Most meal kit delivery services tend to focus on delivering you dinner and price it accordingly.
But what about lunch?
Meal kits are often charged by how many you order a week and oftentimes the more you order the cheaper it is. So you might want to consider ordering a little bit more and having an extra meal or two for your lunch at work or at home.
3. Subscribe to more than one service at a time.
Almost every meal kit service has an intelligent ordering system allowing you to pause meals from arriving from one week to the next. To keep things interesting, most subscription services menus change from one week to the next.
So here’s what you do:
Subscribe to multiple services at the same time and when it’s time to order, simply select from the meal kit service with the menu you like the best that week and skip the others.
You pay for only what you receive and joining every service is free.
This is beneficial because you can then pick and choose from different food box delivery services and get the meals that you like the most.
4. Order, eat and learn your way to cooking supremacy
I’m a bit amazed at how little young people know about cooking. It’s almost saddening to know parents or grandparents failed to teach their kids some basic cooking techniques.
Luckily, these meal kits come with extremely easy to follow instructions or videos that are perfect for any inexperience cook to learn from.
What’s the worst that can go wrong with a photo and easy step-by-step instructions to follow?
5. Be aware where are you were delivering the meal kits to
Almost every meal kit I received came in a box or pouch with dry ice which is designed to keep your meals cool for several hours in time for you to come home and then put the meals in a fridge or freezer.
Because of this, you’ll have to do some thinking in advance to know where you’ll be on certain delivery date otherwise if you’re gone too long, some meal kits might not be cold enough by the time you get home.
If you live in warmer environments like Southern California or Florida, the boxes meal kits are sent in may not stay cold enough if you’re gone late into the night
6. Experiment and be adventurous
Some food box delivery services offer an incredible menu selection and allow you to taste and discover some deliciously new and unique foods that are found only on extremely high-end restaurant menus.
This is the time to go wild!
It’s a great opportunity to take advantage of this and be adventurous and try some amazing new foods.
Read more about my experience in tasting and testing over 35 of the best meal kits available in most parts of the U.S.A.
7. For lower priced meal kits, be prepared to prep like crazy.
The overall concept is amazing but I often wish meal kits provided more pre-prepared ingredients. For me, this is the main reason so I can cut down the prep time and just get down to cooking.
Some of the inexpensive meal kits require you to put wrap veggies and meats rather extensively before actually getting to the cooking process. I would suggest to skim the recipe first and decipher which vegetables need to be cut or peeled and do it quickly.
8. Preparation and cooking times are way off
Unless you’re an experienced chef, I feel the cooking times are greatly underestimated. For some of the cheaper meal kits like hello fresh, there is a significant amount of prep time that is required before actually cooking anything. If you’re not skilled with a knife it can take a while before you actually get a finished meal on to the plate. I highly recommend watching a YouTube video on how to properly handle a night if you have limited experience with it.
9. There is a lot of waste
If you are environmentally friendly somebody’s meal kits send an excessive amount of packaging that can be infuriating. You might want to look into some of the meal kits that send an enclosed cabinet that can be sent back or waste that can be returned back to them.
I hope these tips will help you and finding the right meal kit delivery service and get you and your family eating healthier meals together once again.
