Commerce writer Alaina Chou, initially skeptical, was won over by how much Marley Spoon felt like actual cooking—vegetables arrive whole, techniques are real, and ingredient pairings are thoughtful. It's the kit for people who love to cook but hate to grocery shop.

For home cooks who love being in the kitchen but struggle to find time for meal planning and grocery shopping, Marley Spoon is a natural fit. Chou found that cooking from it felt much like her normal cooking experience—as if some kind soul had collected all the ingredients and pre-portioned the spices beforehand. Vegetables arrive whole, not pre-chopped; a recipe might have you searing a steak or roasting a couple of chicken thighs. The boxes also introduced new techniques and clever recipe riffs (like chicken parm made simpler with meatballs instead of cutlets), the order of operations always made logical sense, and the ingredients were consistently well thought-out—if a recipe uses cilantro leaves as garnish, chances are it'll have you use the stems elsewhere in the dish.

While Marley Spoon does offer some heat-and-eat options that can be a good add if you’re in the market for an easy office lunch, that’s not necessarily where this service excels. It's best suited for people who are genuinely interested in cooking but want to make the process easier and more attainable.

What’s the ordering process like? Straightforward: select a dietary preference (options include Gluten-Free-Friendly, Low Calorie, Picky Eater Approved, Quick & Easy, and Vegetarian) or opt for Everyday Variety. From there, choose your serving size and cadence—two or four servings, anywhere from two to six meals per week—then pick from a rotating menu of close to 100 recipes. It's easy to adjust servings, scale meals up or down, or skip weeks when life gets busy.

How was the unboxing experience? Everything arrived in an insulated box with a large ice pack at the bottom and was still nice and cold, even after Chou left it sitting on her stoop for a few hours one time. The ingredients were well-packaged in a minimal amount of plastic, at least compared to many other meal kits: Whole vegetables were free from any plastic wrapping, though spices and sauces came in packet form.

Thanks to its variety of recipes and customization options (it's particularly great at catering to dietary restrictions), Home Chef is sure to please most palates—and lifestyles. You can easily select the proteins, number of deliveries, and portion amounts on a week-to-week basis. This flexibility makes Home Chef a fit for households where one or more people might not be home each night for dinner.

You can select the proteins, number of deliveries, and portion amounts on a week-to-week basis. “This flexibility makes Home Chef a fit for households where one or more people might not be home each night for dinner,” says Emily Johnson, former associate commerce director.

“Home Chef sent me recipes I wouldn’t have thought of myself, which taught me techniques I genuinely wouldn’t have tried on my own. Chicken breasts in premade pastry might feel a little ’90s, yes, but are also delicious—and cooking them reminded me there’s an arsenal of dated-but-delightful meals from mom worth resurrecting,” says Johnson.

For weeks when you’re particularly busy, Home Chef offers oven-ready meals that come with their own tin and grill-ready meals that arrive in a foil bag. Or, you could opt for the more traditional preportioned “express” 30-minute meal kits, prepped 15-minute meal kits, or the Fast & Fresh option, a fully prepared meal you just have to stick in the oven or microwave. Contributor Alexis Berger noted that she found the estimated cook times to be pretty accurate for each of the meals she tested, whether they were of the “express” or “classic” variety.

On weeks where you have more time to spare and are genuinely looking to gain recipe inspiration and even learn some new cooking skills, Home Chef’s “Culinary Collection” offers some more advanced recipes. “I liked pounding a pork chop thin and covering it in breadcrumbs—the result was crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, and the kind of thing I’d never think to make when cooking for one,” says Johnson. She also noted that she likes that Home Chef offers snack, dessert, and breakfast options like maple brown sugar oatmeal bites from GoOats.

What’s the ordering process like? Like many meal kits, with Home Chef, you take a quiz that outlines your dietary preferences, meal planning needs, and more to allow them to cater the right meals to you. It’s easy to sign up and easy to get the meals that fit your lifestyle delivered to you.

How was the unboxing experience? Home Chef meals come in individual plastic bags that contain everything you need to make your meal; it’s satisfying and perfectly organized. However, the packaging can feel a bit wasteful.

With more than 100 recipes rotating onto its menu each week, HelloFresh makes it surprisingly easy to feed a household with different tastes. Its dedicated Family-Friendly recipes are designed to appeal to kids and picky eaters alike, while larger-format Big Batch meals can feed up to eight people or provide plenty of leftovers. Whether you're cooking for toddlers, teenagers, or adults with wildly different preferences, there's a good chance everyone can agree on something.

Multiple Bon Appétit staff and contributors have tried HelloFresh over the years, and our testers have all been happy with the large portion sizes, fresh ingredients, and the add-on options, which include stand-alone proteins (chicken breasts, steaks, etc), smoothies, snacks, and desserts. Most recently, we tried Hello Fresh in a home with two adults and two kids, including some Big Batch options for families. The recipes were crowd-pleasing and satisfying for every age.

Contributor Betty Gold Kider was struck by the sheer breadth of the menu when she tested the service. "There are over 100 [dinners to choose from], with dishes like coconut shrimp and cabbage curry, smashed black bean tostadas, and bavette steak with creamy truffle polenta," she writes. Each dish she tried was nicely balanced. The sweet and spicy shrimp lo mein, for instance, “tasted vibrant and saucy, and it hit the ideal balance of heat, sweet, and sour. The preparation was about as basic as it gets, too: Cook noodles, sear shrimp and veggies, stir in sauces and seasonings, then garnish. It was clear that the recipe itself had been developed and tested by professionals, because it actually worked (a relative rarity!).”

What's the ordering process like? The ordering process is straightforward and can be done from the HelloFresh website or app. First, you'll personalize your plan by selecting how many people you'd like to feed and how many meals you want per week. Then you choose from six dietary plans, selecting as many as you wish: Meat and Veggies, Veggies, Family-Friendly, Fit and Wholesome, Under 20 Minutes, and Pescatarian. After that, you can select your week's worth of meals from the extensive rotating menu.

How was the unboxing experience? Deliveries arrive in a well-insulated box with heavy-duty ice packs, so there's no need to stress if you're not home when it arrives—just refrigerate everything promptly once you're back. Ingredients are separated into labeled paper bags by recipe, making it easy to grab what you need when it's time to cook.

CookUnity isn’t your average prepared meal service. Its chef-crafted, ready-to-heat meals are designed to deliver restaurant-worthy dishes that you might not have the time or energy to make yourself on a weeknight. With over 350 options rotating weekly and plenty of culinary talent behind the recipes (such as chefs José Garces and Esther Choi), CookUnity is the prepared meal delivery service for people who have high standards but low bandwidth.

Senior commerce editor Olivia Tarantino, who reviewed the service, was skeptical going in. As a food editor, she didn’t think she would like a prepared meal delivery service, but CookUnity changed her mind. “If you properly plated some of my CookUnity meals, they could pass as something I’d order at a restaurant,” she says. “The quality, cook, and flavor of each dish make it clear that they’re developed by real chefs.”

The meals arrive fresh, not frozen, and can be eaten straight from the fridge (like Tarantino did with a tofu poke bowl) or heated in the microwave in about two minutes. Modified atmosphere packaging keeps everything fresh for four to seven days, so you can have a spontaneous dinner out and your meals won’t go bad. Portion sizes also impressed Tarantino, particularly the amount of protein per dish, which she found more generous than most other services she’s tried.

Tarantino ordered two shrimp dishes to see how CookUnity’s seafood would hold up to microwaving: “I peeled back the plastic film and was met with the hypnotizing scent of coconut curry smothering perfectly cooked shrimp,” she says. “The shrimp were plump with just the right amount of snap. Even fried dishes like crab cakes held up in the microwave (although she says air-frying had better results).

What’s the ordering process like? The hardest part, according to Tarantino, is “narrowing down what you want to eat.” As of her testing, there were more than 400 meals available in a given week, spanning breakfast, lunch, dinner, sides, snacks, and even protein-only options. The menu touches six continents’ worth of cuisines, from Ghanaian to Italian to Indian to Mexican. Most meals are regularly available, with new ones rotating in and out so you can branch out or return to favorites. A handful of premium options—like Maryland-Style Crab Cakes or Lobster Tail & Steak Surf & Turf—cost a few dollars more. Each dish also carries a user star rating and customer comments, a feature Tarantino found useful. If you miss the weekly cutoff, CookUnity will autofill your box based on your preferences or past orders.

How was the unboxing experience? You can select your preferred delivery day and choose between an a.m. or p.m. window—though more specific time options would be a welcome addition. Everything arrives securely packed in a reusable cooler bag with ice packs, fresh and ready to go straight into the fridge.

Owned by the same company as Martha Stewart’s Marley Spoon, Dinnerly is marketed as a budget-friendly meal kit service for unfussy weeknight dinners. Where Marley Spoon meals average $11 per serving, Dinnerly’s come in at just $8—and selecting the “saver” recipes can reduce the price a bit more. It's the best cheap meal kit for intermediate home cooks who don’t mind chopping and prep, couples, and small households. The brand also has an extensive marketplace full of prepared meals, cook-and-eat options, and “meal shortcuts,” which consist of a couple of ingredients easily combined into a meal or snack without the need for a recipe.

Each recipe comes with core ingredients—proteins, produce, and unique spices—along with a recipe card. Basics like cooking oil, vinegars, and garlic are not included, so having a stocked pantry is key. According to tester Elise Portale, contributing social media manager, Dinnerly's instructions were generally easy to follow, though some recipes were more labor-intensive than they appeared. One standout example was the Chicken and Stuffing Waffles—a recipe that required a waffle maker, which caught Portale off guard, given that Dinnerly tends to market itself toward beginner cooks. For the record, the dish itself (pan-seared chicken breast, stuffing, cranberry relish, and pan gravy) was delicious, “though it probably used half the pans in my kitchen to make,” Portale lamented.

Overall, Portale found Dinnerly's recipes hit or miss—one of the main trade-offs for the low price tag. The Cheesy Ravioli Enchilada Bake delivered on the one-pan promise but not on flavor, its enchilada-inspired sauce amounting to "a gloppy and flavorless concoction of tomato paste, water, and Tex-Mex spices thickened with flour." But there were real winners too. Her favorite, to her own surprise, was a spinach salad with lentils and roasted carrots. The takeaway: Dinnerly can absolutely work as an affordable weeknight solution, but recipe selection matters. "I'd just recommend choosing your weekly recipes wisely and metering your expectations," she says. "A basic sense of cooking intuition will also help you get the most out of your meals."

Where Dinnerly truly shines, Portale found, is its marketplace, which sits somewhere between a meal kit and a grocery delivery in the best way. She describes it as perfect for "the busy professional on a budget." Highlights included a Mediterranean Falafel Wrap that was cheap, flavorful, and oven-ready; a Bacon and Egg Breakfast Sandwich Meal Shortcut that came together with minimal effort; and a prepackaged apple kouign-amann from KRMA Foods that held up nicely alongside an afternoon coffee.

What was the ordering process like? Like most meal kit services, Dinnerly prepacks a box with a trio of meals that can be edited. The selection is vast: recipes geared toward kids, vegetarians, the calorie-conscious, and allergy-sensitive eaters, all clearly labeled with cost-per-serving and dietary info. Delivery reliability was another story. Over three weeks of testing, Portale encountered more hiccups than expected—a delayed box around Thanksgiving with no clear timeline, and an accidental extra week charged due to unclear cutoff communication. "My third week was actually an accident: I ended up committing to an extra week of this service during testing purely because there was little to no communication about the deadline to skip/edit my next box, a date that was different than the week before."

How was the unboxing experience? Boxes were well-insulated, with produce, spice packets, and dry ingredients on top and proteins closest to the ice pack below. Most ingredients traveled well, though one bag of peas arrived squished and spilled. On the plus side, packaging was minimal and recyclable—just the box, cardboard-based insulation, and ice pack.

Hungryroot sits somewhere between a grocery delivery service and a meal kit—and that’s precisely what makes it work. If you add “recipes” to your weekly order, your box will include a recipe card with suggestions for combining the provided ingredients into quick, easy meals. Thanks to its semi-homemade nature, a Hungryroot dinner can go from fridge to table in about 10 minutes, and it feels like you’ve cooked even though you’ve really just dumped some precut veggies in a pan and microwaved some parcooked rice.

Senior commerce editor Olivia Tarantino found Hungryroot’s flexibility to be its biggest strength. Unlike services with fixed weekly menus, Hungryroot lets you mix and match across three categories: recipe kits (like a Southwest Chopped Salad with Beyond Patties and Cheddar or a Craveable Chorizo Street Corn Grain Bowl), prepared meals (microwave-friendly bowls, soups, sandwiches, and salads), and à la carte grocery items (snacks, yogurt, juices, bread, and more). Your weekly plan determines how many credits you receive, which you then spend however you like—recipe kits run around 11 credits, while snacks cost one to three. “I appreciated being able to pick exactly what I wanted without feeling locked into a specific meal plan,” Tarantino says. Individual recipes can also be edited: “If you already have cheddar cheese at home, you can remove it from your order and spend those credits elsewhere.” She also found herself repurposing ingredients freely—ordering a Marinara Ricotta Ravioli with Baby Mushroom dish, for instance, and using the mushrooms in an omelet instead.

That looseness extends to timing too. “If I couldn’t cook one night, I wasn’t frantically worrying about my meal kit expiring before I could get to it,” Tarantino notes. Because most recipes are essentially collections of grocery staples, there’s no pressure to cook on any particular schedule—a meaningful distinction from traditional meal kits.

What’s the ordering process like? When you sign up for Hungryroot, you have to complete a pretty lengthy survey to help the system learn your dietary preferences and quantity/nutrition needs. Your answers also help determine the amount you’ll spend each week (a.k.a. your specific plan). That plan fee is translated into credits, and each grocery item has an assigned credit value. So when you make your weekly food selections, you’re shopping with credits, not dollar values—though you can always adjust, pause, or add to your plan, as well as roll over unused credits. It sounds a little convoluted, but it will make sense as soon as you sign up and start filling your cart.

How was the unboxing experience? Everything is packaged really securely and layered by temperature—with the coldest/frozen food on the bottom.

Green Chef, owned by Hello Fresh, offers (mostly) organic, seasonal produce, with an emphasis on sustainably sourced protein, whole grains, whole fruits and vegetables, healthy fats, and low to no-added sugars. It’s the kit to try if buying organic is important to you, and/or if you want to incorporate recipes that meet the criteria for certain diets (keto, Mediterranean, high-protein, etc.). To streamline prep, Green Chef ships all sauces, stocks, and herb blends premixed, with some vegetables precut. Add-ons are plentiful too, from meat and seafood sampler packs to smoothie kits, frozen desserts, packaged ramen, and dumplings.

Senior service editor Kelsey Jane Youngman found the meals easy to cook. Each labeled bag comes with a full-color recipe card with clear instructions and photos of every major step. Green Chef is upfront about what's not included (salt, pepper, sugar, butter, and oil), but everything else you need is in the box. Youngman felt confident a beginner cook could follow along, though cook times may vary by experience. Most meals required at least two pans and leaned into smart, simultaneous cooking techniques: boiling bulgur while squash roasts, and a pork fillet sears on the stovetop. These are not one-pan meals.

“The food was, in general, good,” says Youngman. Her favorite was the Italian Turkey Stuffed Squash Boats, well-seasoned ground turkey bulked up with nutty bulgur and tender kale, spooned over golden-brown roasted zucchini and topped with a creamy pesto riff. The geometry was a little off (one zucchini was tiny, one enormous), but the taste more than made up for it. Her least favorite, the Spiced Salmon with Mango Salsa, came down to ratios and personal preference rather than any fundamental flaw. The salmon itself was fresh, well-seasoned, and perfectly cooked, but the accompanying hash skewed heavily toward purple sweet potato with barely any bell pepper, and the Cotija felt like an odd pairing with the fish. Overall, the recipes were reliable if occasionally repetitive, and the ingredients were consistently fresh, making it a solid pick for people who want to cook without spending hours in the kitchen or at the grocery store.

What was the ordering experience like? Signing up is simple, and new customers are typically offered a first-time discount. After entering payment information, you'll select a dietary preference (options include Protein Packed, Plant-Based, Mediterranean, Gluten-Free, Keto, Calorie Smart, Quick & Easy, and Gut & Brain Health), which filters your top recipe picks, though you can browse all 80-plus weekly options regardless. Skipping a week or adjusting a delivery date is easy and won't disrupt your subscription.

How was the unboxing experience? Everything arrived properly packaged and cold, with each meal's ingredients grouped together in a labeled brown paper bag. Individual items, down to half a bell pepper or a single diced onion, came in their own plastic bags, and premade sauces and flavor bases added to the plastic count. Proteins were stored separately at the bottom of the box, directly on top of the ice packs, to prevent cross-contamination. The ice packs are commercially recyclable (not curbside), and the rest of the packaging is recyclable cardboard. Youngman would have liked to see less plastic overall, though she notes Green Chef offsets 100% of delivery emissions and has partnered with Plastic Bank to address ocean-bound plastic.

Purple Carrot is one of the few meal kit services that’s entirely vegan—and one of the best arguments for plant-based cooking, whether or not you follow a vegan diet. The weekly menu spans around 20 meal kit options, covering a wide range of cuisines and dish types, plus ready-to-eat meals and a grocery section stocked with snacks, dips, and pantry staples. It’s a strong pick for anyone looking to cut down on meal planning, explore plant-based cooking, or simply break out of a weeknight dinner rut.

Commerce writer Alaina Chou, a self-described lifelong meat and dairy eater who has tested over 10 meal delivery services, came away genuinely impressed. She appreciated the variety on offer and found herself struggling to narrow down her choices each week. “I had a pretty outdated perception of what vegan food could be,” she says, “and Purple Carrot helped squash that stereotype.” The meals weren’t lightning-fast—most took 30 to 40 minutes, in line with the listed cook times—but they were well-composed, balanced, and packed with flavor. Standouts included a Winter Squash Soup spiced with shichimi togarashi and served over quinoa-speckled rice, a light and refreshing Zaru Soba, and BBQ Burnt Ends made from a mushroom-based protein that Chou says “could’ve fooled me into thinking it was meat.” Many dishes introduced her to new ingredients and techniques she plans to carry into her regular cooking.

A few caveats worth noting. Chou found that more than half the meal kit options were sold out when she went to place her first order on the cutoff date, so selecting meals well in advance is advisable. Both weeks she tested the service, she also received an email notifying her that one of her chosen meals had been replaced due to ingredient quality issues, with no input on the substitute. One week she received a premade meze platter instead of the falafel bowl she’d selected; another week, a pesto risotto that would have taken 60 minutes to make. Some recipes also could have been more streamlined—a Winter Squash Soup that dirtied three cooking vessels instead of two, for instance—and a few prep steps were listed in the ingredient section rather than the instructions, making it worth reading each recipe thoroughly before starting.

What’s the ordering process like? You’ll start by choosing between Meal Kit, Ready-to-Eat, and Mix & Match options, then select dietary preferences, serving size, and number of meals per week. Purple Carrot autofills your first box based on your preferences, but you can swap meals freely before the order cutoff, which falls six days before delivery. Skipping a week or changing your delivery date is easy from your account page, and you can even redirect a skipped week’s box to another address if you’d like to pass it along to someone else. The weekly menu page is clean and easy to navigate, with filtering options for gluten-free, high-protein, low-calorie, sodium-smart, and less-prep preferences.

How was the unboxing experience? Orders arrived on time in insulated cardboard boxes with ice packs at the bottom. Most ingredients were packed in clear plastic bags grouped by recipe, with each bag’s outer pocket holding the corresponding recipe card—a small but useful organizational detail. Larger loose items like kale and Chinese broccoli were packed separately at the top of the box. Produce arrived in great shape across both weeks of testing with nothing wilted or blemished.

In the world of meal kits, Tovala is sort of an anomaly. Its premier product isn’t just a meal delivery service, but rather a smart oven that pairs with a meal delivery service. Each meal consists of raw proteins and uncooked produce on a tray that only needs to be popped into the Tovala oven for cooking.

Preparing a Tovala meal is as easy as assembling some preportioned ingredients in trays and scanning a QR code, after which the oven will take care of the rest. There are no standard cooking instructions for Tovala meals, which means you will need that special oven to make this service worthwhile—but, while not free, it comes at a 77% discount ($69) if you order meals six times over the course of six months.

While Noah Kaufman, senior commerce editor, usually takes issue with prepared meals, citing their tendency to “fall somewhere between a better-than-normal Lean Cuisine and an "it’s edible, I suppose MRE,” Tovala’s semi-prepared fare impressed him in testing. “Using a mixture of steam baking, convection roasting, and broiling, the Tovala oven turned out delicious meals in 20 minutes (including cooking time) with juicy chicken, flaky salmon or creamy sweet potatoes time after time,” writes Kaufman.

What’s the ordering process like? To place your first Tovala order, you’ll need to sign up and order your smart oven. Then it’s time to pick your meals: “Whatever plan you sign up for (a minimum of four meals a week) will come with a preset menu, but if you log in to to the Tovala app, the UX makes it easy to swap something on the preset menu with one of more than 30 options, all of which come labeled with any dietary specifications like ‘vegetarian,’ ‘high protein,’ or ‘GLP-1 balanced,’” writes Kaufman.

How was the unboxing experience? Tovala orders arrive in insulated, ice-pack-lined cardboard boxes. Most meal components (like single-serve condiments, small plastic bags of breadcrumbs or sauces, and aluminum trays filled with prepared ingredients) are separated into small cardboard boxes for each meal, save for the proteins, which are packed separately in vacuum-sealed bags.

Founded by Danielle DuBoise and Whitney Tingle, who were seeking solutions to their own health issues, Sakara specializes in plant-based, gluten-free prepared meals that prioritize nutrient-rich foods. The brand is all about wellness, touting "9 Pillars of Nutrition" that range from "eat the rainbow" and "eat your water" to "leafy greens" and "good fats." The brand's Signature Nutrition Program allows you to choose between three or five days of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, or just lunches and dinners.

All of the meals Emma Laperruque, director of cooking, received were “straightforward and quick to prepare.” Many required no heating at all (a parfait for breakfast, a salad for lunch), and those that did could often be microwaved instead of following the suggested oven instructions, with perfectly good results. “There were a few heating recommendations that I adjusted to speed things up; for example, instead of reheating a taco in a 350° oven for five minutes as suggested (my oven takes forever to get to temperature), I just zapped it in the microwave for a minute, and that worked great,” said Laperruque.

Breakfasts skew sweet, with muffins, scones, parfaits, and granola making up most of the offerings. These aren't cloyingly sweet, though; Laperruque found them well-balanced. “I especially enjoyed the pumpkin pie parfait with a maple-cinnamon granola and the coconut praline granola with cacao mylk,” she said.

“Sakara’s salads are excellent—a reliable delight to dig into in the middle of a busy workday. They’re generously portioned, so you have enough fuel to power you through the afternoon. And they’re thoughtfully designed with a range of textures (so many leafy greens and crunchy veg!) and colors (Would I ever dye quinoa with turmeric and blue spirulina myself? No! That’s why it’s so thrilling when someone else does it for you). Just about every dressing I wished I had a full bottle of to keep in the fridge for future meals,” Laperruque raved. She especially enjoyed the beet salad with cashews and carrot-ginger dressing, and the Technicolor quinoa salad with pumpkin-seed tofu and cashew-tamari dressing.

Dinners were enjoyable on the whole ("I’m still thinking about Sakara’s ‘chile-kissed’ pinto beans and wishing I had them canned," says Laperruque), though portion sizes leaned small for bigger eaters. The gluten-free baked goods—such as a “chocolate love muffin”—were more hit or miss; creatively conceived but sometimes a significant departure from their inspiration, they'll appeal most to those who are actually gluten-free.

The main downside to Sakara is the price. At $140–$465 per week (per person!), depending on your plan, it’s the priciest option on this list. But if you’re someone who prioritizes wellness and sees food as a source of nourishment and healing, you’ll like what you get. It’s also a great option for people who are gluten-free or vegan.

What's the ordering process like? Sakara rolls out set menus each week, and as part of the Signature Nutrition Program, you choose a plan that includes lunch and dinner, or breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The five lunches for the week are the five lunches for the week, with no substitutions. But for a service designed to simplify your life, that's more feature than flaw: all the planning and curation is handled for you. You can order on a weekly subscription or prepay for one, four, eight, or twelve weeks at a time.

How was the unboxing experience? The kits were packaged securely. Everything arrived fresh and cold.

Forkful is a prepared meal delivery service with a focus on healthy eating. It uses organic ingredients and caters to eight different diets, including gluten-free, plant-based, keto, and high-protein. All meals are cooked by chefs without seed oils (although, you should know, the research on the impact of seed oils on your health is dubious) and delivered to you fresh, not frozen. In a nutshell, Forkful provides a tasty solution for busy folks looking to get a nutritious meal with no time or effort.

Forkful checks a lot of boxes that health-conscious folks look for in a food delivery service: You can filter by dietary preference, there's an opportunity to input your allergies, and the labels makes it easy to see the nutritional information for each meal, including the amount of calories, carbs, and other macros.

Abbey Stone, senior commerce director, tried Forkful specifically with plant-based eating in mind and said, “Forkful meals provide easy, fully vegan options for things like office lunches that will leave you feeling full without need to constantly order out.”

The quality of Forkful's meals varied from dish to dish; some featured flavorful sauces and were well seasoned, while others were bland (like a side of under-salted broccoli) or texturally unappealing (chicken, in particular, didn't fare well to microwave heating). And while Forkful offers dozens of meals to choose from each week, many of them are of a similar ilk—pastas, protein with a side of rice or potatoes, kids-menu favorites like chicken nuggets. Like the above reviewer, I found that these types of meals work best for lunch; and the fact that they are microwavable makes them easy to heat up in an office nuke. However, because the full menu shares a similar flavor profile, I found I tired of them after eating a couple in one week.

What's the ordering process like? Ordering is straightforward: You select the eating plan you follow and the number of meals you'd like each week (from six to 20). Then you enter your payment information, select the Monday you'd like your first box delivered (deliveries are only made on Mondays), and pick your meals. You have until Wednesday each week to select your meals for the following week.

How was the unboxing experience? Forkful's meals are packaged in a plastic tray and covered with plastic film. They are stacked into a cardboard box with recyclable cardboard padding and cool packs.