Feelings on meal-prep boxes? Personally, I've never understood the appeal...

[Anonymous]

During a very rough patch in my personal life, I stopped cooking and ordered a lot of takeout. As food became more expensive, I decided I needed to cut back on restaurants and cook more. I started ordering Home Chef meals to help me transition back to cooking without having to take on all of the planning, shopping and prep work right off the bat. The packaging waste is a real bummer, but most of it is recyclable.

The meals use a wide variety of spices and sauces and it’s nice not to have to buy the whole bottle. The meals tend to be very family friendly. Some are just a little spicy, but nothing is very spicy. There are tons of choices. You can substitute different proteins. The items that are really popular are in frequent rotation, but you can get different variations, so it’s not like eating the same thing all the time. One week there might be old fashioned meatloaf, the next it might be Italian meatloaf, the week after that it might be a pork meatloaf. Tacos might be traditional or vegetarian or Asian fusion. They offer super quick meals that already have some of the prep work done (you’re warming precooked mashed potatoes and adding a few ingredients or the vegetables are precut or the brisket is precooked and you’re just reheating it). They also have more deluxe meals using more expensive proteins or using more advanced (but still not difficult) culinary techniques.

The portions are a good size and you can order meals in increments of 2. There are 3 members in our household, so I’d order 4 of a given meal and then I’d eat one portion for lunch the next day. The meals are really for 2-4 portions. More than that and you might have trouble fitting everything in one pan/pot/baking sheet.

These meals were a good intermediate step back into the world of cooking. It felt too overwhelming to jump back into making everything from scratch. The kits helped me get comfortable in the kitchen again.

[Anonymous]

I love the variety it offers. I cook a lot. I love grocery shopping dearly, I really do. But the fun variety that I occasionally (about once per month) get from Blue Apron? Love love love. Next month I’m getting a spicy pasta dish for 2, for me and my husband. I’ll make boring gnocchi for my kids that night. I’m also getting a charcuterie board that we’ll share with neighbors one night. And I’m getting 2 of their new 15-minute meals that I’m loving for lunches.

[Anonymous]

I have never ordered them for a lot of the reasons you list OP. But I do struggle with meal ideas so every few weeks I go read through the green chef weekly menu and grab a recipe card or two to try — although admittedly in don’t follow the recipes strictly; if I don’t have fig jam I’ll just sub cranberry or something and I’ll just totally make up replacements for the custom sauces and spice mixes. But I can see the appeal for someone with less slapdash confidence in their cooking skills; it’s a nice well-balanced meal that will be done in 30-45 minutes very consistently. And while I usually have 1/2-3/4ths of the ingredients for any recipe card I choose I can see how in a family that cooks less having exact amounts would be convenient and pleasant.

[Anonymous]

When my husband was first diagnosed with cancer, we were encouraged to try a vegan diet. Not knowing where to even start with cooking tasty vegan meals, I ordered Green Chef so that I could learn to make some good, well thought out dishes that we'd enjoy. It was worth it for us at that time.

[Anonymous]

Many people don’t know how to cook anymore. They want easy to follow directions and pre-cut ingredients. This is so lazy compared to the people of the past decades. I remember my MIL coming home from a double shift at the hospital and she still made a home-cooked meal from scratch 6 days a week(1 day they went out). This was for a large family, too!

[Anonymous]

I think these work better for people who cook occasionally for 1-2 persons and are not picky eaters.

I ordered it once for 1 week, but then didn’t have the motivation to follow through with the recipe, and ended up using the ingredients for other meals I prepared. For us, family with kids, also some picky eaters, It works better for our family to cook extra & freeze.

[Anonymous]

For us, it has expanded our horizons and introduced us to recipes we might not have tried on our own. Its expanded my kids palates. It gives me ideas when I’ve run out of steam for thinking about what to have for dinner. Some of the recipes have been incorporated into our regular rotation now.