Let’s be honest: Meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking, and doing the dishes can be seriously draining—especially if you’re doing it on a consistent basis. One potential solution? Green Chef, a meal plan service where you can pick two to four meals worth of ingredients to be delivered right to your door. Speaking from experience, these kinds of meal kit deliveries can really take some of the pressure off of having dinner on the table every night, whether you’re cooking for yourself or a full table.

Green Chef is known as one of the healthier meal kits on the market, with fresh, organic ingredients and nutritious recipes. After testing it for a week, I can speak to whether it’s really worth the money, how it might fit into various lifestyles, and if the meals actually taste good. Here’s how it went and what you need to know if you’re considering trying it too.

Green Chef offers a number of ways you can customize your meal experience. The company allows you to pick the portions, meals per week, and recipes you receive.

The first step in creating your box is selecting your lifestyle preferences in which you can choose from the following options: Mediterranean, keto, protein packed, calorie smart, plant based, quick and easy, gluten free, and gut and brain health. There really is something for almost everyone! The second step is choosing how many people you are feeding—you can choose two, four, or six people. Finally, you can select how many meals per week you would like to receive: two, three, or four.

Once you have submitted your lifestyle preferences and signed up for the week, you are now ready to pick from a list of recipes that change every week. Green Chef offers 44 weekly options with sustainably-sourced ingredients and organic produce. This was a huge plus for me since I usually shop organic and purchase products from farmers markets to support more local businesses. Another perk is that you can swap the protein in any of their dishes featuring chicken, salmon, or beef. So if you love the sound of a dish but don’t eat red meat, you can swap it for chicken or salmon.

I opted to receive three meals for the week with two servings each (my roommate was eating good this week!). As someone who does not follow a specific diet or have food allergies, I was excited to explore the weekly recipes and select options I would not usually cook for myself.

I’ll start off with what everyone wants to hear: You get 50 percent off your first order, plus free shipping, and 20 percent off for the two following months! Without the discount, the weekly total would come out to $82.93 total or $11.99 per serving, with an extra $10.99 tacked on for shipping costs. My first order, three meals for two people, totaled to $35.97 or $6 per serving (with the discount).

If you bump your party size up to four people, the non discounted price increases to $154.87 per week, staying steady at $11.99 per serving. Increasing your party size up to six people brings your three-meals-a-week grand total to $226.81 (again without the discount) and still averaging $11.99 per serving.

As someone who is a big home chef, I have always been a little wary of meal prep services. I worried they would not be worth it price-wise and that the ingredients wouldn't be up to my standards. Like, what if the chicken has those weird bits that I would avoid if I was selecting the thighs myself at the grocery store? But if you usually shop organic or local, your grocery bill is probably adding up fast, so Green Chef—at $11.99 per serving—is pretty enticing.

If we’re comparing Green Chef to take out, I doubt there are a large variety of options you can find, especially with delivery fees, that are beating Green Chef’s price. (And if you can, please drop me the restaurants—I can't open DoorDash without spending $30!).

One thing to keep in mind is that Green Chef only allows you to order two to four meals a week. So you still have at least three days of the week you need to know what you’re eating for dinner.

The ordering process is quick and painless. You can order at your convenience and choose what day of the week you would like your order to arrive. Depending on where you live. Green Chef boxes are delivered Monday through Saturday and will arrive between 8:00 am and 8:00 pm. Being able to order whenever you want and have the box come on a day you specify is such a game changer. I didn't have to scramble to get my order in by a specific time, and I loved the ease of choosing when I got my delivery based on what I already had going on, and in my fridge for the week.

Green Chef also allows you to skip weeks and easily cancel your subscription. You just need to hop into your settings and submit changes seven days before your scheduled delivery day.

The meal kits arrive in a recyclable mini cooler box, stuffed with insulation and ice packs. The ice packs can be put in your freezer for reuse or recycled. The rest of the packaging that comes with your meal kits is also recyclable thanks to Green Chef’s commitment to sustainability. Their website offers instructions on how each material can be recycled.

I found Green Chef recipes very quick and easy to follow. Each recipe comes with an instruction card detailing your ingredients and cooking directions. When ordering, the cook time of the meal is shown, so you can pick based on the desired amount of time you want to spend in the kitchen. In my order, I got all the ingredients I needed to whip up the meal, including proteins, veggies, sauces, and spices. All you need is the utensils to execute.

Green Chef prioritises healthy meals by working with registered dietitians to create their recipes. They prioritise nutritional elements and provide you with a variety of recipes to choose from to fit any lifestyle. They also created their recipes based on the FDA’s recommendation for daily values of key nutrients like fats, sodium, sugar, and protein. They also offer free nutritional consultations where you can meet with a nutritionist before ordering your meals.

I appreciated the variety of healthy meal options too. Living a healthy lifestyle is going to look different for everyone, and Green Chef allows you to prioritize your food preferences and goals in a way you can enjoy—you don’t have to conform to one version of “healthy” to use this meal service.

Overall, the portions felt substantial. I ate until I was full and then had some leftovers to stick in the fridge.

I was very surprised with how tasty the meals were! They were flavorful and very satisfying. I care a lot more about eating foods that are tasty and make me happy than hitting a nutritional breakdown so I was very excited when these were both healthy and something I liked eating.

I also really enjoy cooking, so I appreciated that Green Chef could take the grocery shopping and prepping off my plate but I was still able to chop, sear, saute, and plate my own meals.

My favorite recipe was the beef tenderloin with porcini cream sauce. It included parmesan mashed potatoes, sauteed broccoli, onions, and peas. There were seven cooking steps, starting with boiling the potatoes and searing the beef tenderloin. We then sauteed the veggies and mashed the potatoes before plating. This was truly delicious and the meat was high quality and very tender with no chewy, fatty bits.

Another favorite I cooked was the chicken pesto penne and tomatoes. This dish was simple, refreshing, and perfect for summer. If you’re not really into cooking, pasta is always an easy choice and this came together quickly.

Green Chef was delicious and I would absolutely order it again. From the seamless ordering and delivery to the flavorful meals, I could not be happier with this service. Being able to order three meals a week perfectly fits my lifestyle—I didn’t have too much food and I was able to cook other things for the week and eat out. I think Green Chef was a great way to get outside my comfort zone and try meals I wouldn't otherwise have cooked for myself. I also loved knowing the meals I was cooking were healthy and sustainably packaged.

As someone who loves to cook and finds cooking to be a way to wind down, Green Chef took the prepping and grocery shopping out of the equation so I could turn my brain off and just follow the recipe card. I got to enjoy all my favorite parts of cooking and skip the rest, which was so relaxing and a reason I would definitely order Green Chef again.

For anyone who only cooks for themselves, Green Chef might not be the option that makes the most sense, unless you would be happy with leftovers. Because the recipes are portioned for two, four, and six people, the service is best for folks who are typically cooking for more than one.

At the end of the day, the food is great, the service is convenient, and it allows you to easily prioritize your health without having to put all the work in. Green Chef is a great option you should try if you’re looking to prep a little less and still cook delicious meals.

Related:

• Does Home Chef Deserve the Hype? Editors Dish on Its Cost, Taste, and Convenience
• Is Purple Carrot Worth It? I Reviewed the Vegan Meal Kit Service
• The Best Meal Delivery Services, Tested and Reviewed

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