GoKawiilAs a vegetarian of 21 years who often eats and cooks vegan recipes, it can be difficult to find restaurants that cater to my dietary restrictions. So when it came to meal kits, especially as a skeptic, I just assumed those were off the table. But when I started testing vegan meal delivery services for CNET, I was pleasantly surprised to find that most have a selection of vegan dishes.
Purple Carrot, for instance, only sells vegan meal kits, ready-to-eat dishes and grocery items. Over the last year, I’ve tried the service twice, and while I thought the meal kits were good, they weren’t my favorite. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by another service: USDA-certified organic Green Chef, which offers plenty of plant-based meal kits and add-ons.
While Green Chef isn’t 100% vegan like Purple Carrot, its weekly vegan kits did blow me away. This is why.
Green Chef’s thoughtful vegan flavors
Choosing Green Chef over Purple Carrot as my favorite vegan meal kit service came down to taste and the thoughtfulness of recipes. Over the two decades I’ve been preparing and chowing down on vegan meals, I’ve noticed that some recipes tend to equate “vegan” with “flavorless,” either overcompensating on spice or salt or undercompensating by simply throwing tofu in a dish with barely any preparation.
I found that Green Chef’s meals incorporated a lovely blend of veggies, greens, grains, seeds and beans while still ensuring that each layer of its dishes was packed with the right amount of flavor. Even though Green Chef doesn’t solely focus on vegan recipes, each one I tried didn’t feel like an afterthought.
Roasted squash and bell pepper sandwiches, creamy tomato pasta with roasted veggies and black bean burritos and spiced cauliflower are the three Green Chef meals I tried, and I would gladly make them all again.
Green Chef's creamy tomato pasta with roasted veggies, which was packed with flavor. Anna Gragert/CNET
A protein predicament
From Purple Carrot, I’ve tried eight different meals and some I liked better than others, but overall, it felt like the brand was struggling to find the right balance of flavors -- especially when it came to how its vegan proteins were prepared. For example, two of the proteins I tried, crispy lemon chick'n and adobo-roasted tofu, lacked tasty, well-rounded flavors, and I wasn’t able to finish eating them.
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