Green Chef Review 2021

Green Chef is an organic meal kit delivery service focusing on healthy, balanced meals.

Their recipes are creative yet relatively simple, with easy-to-follow recipe cards and pre-portioned ingredients to make cooking a breeze.

They offer a variety of meal plans for many different dietary lifestyles, and you can change yours at any time.

Whether you eat keto, paleo, plant-powered, or a mix of different diets, you’ll be able to find something that works for you.

How Green Chef Works

Green Chef meal delivery is a traditional meal kit, and they operate like many other traditional kits in the sense that you choose your meals, then they send you what you need to make them.

First, you choose the number of portions you’d like to receive along with the number of recipes you’d like per delivery.

You decide how often you’d like to receive a delivery (default is weekly) next, then you choose which type of meals you’d like to receive.

Once you’ve done this, you simply pick your meals, then they ship the ingredients – along with recipe cards – directly to your doorstep so you don’t have to worry about meal planning or prep.

Let’s take a look at what happened when we tried Green Chef for a week.

Review of Green Chef

We’ve already done an overview via a Green Chef review video, but now this review will dive deeper and we’ll explore our experience as a whole versus just the initial tasting.

We’ll go over the process to get started, their meal options, how it works for various dietary lifestyles, information about their portion choices and packaging, a recipe card overview, taste & creativity, and much more.

If you’re wondering whether or not this delivery service would fit into your lifestyle, take a scroll through our Green Chef review (and peek at the video if you haven’t yet) to look at the ins and outs of what makes them tick.

Simple Ordering Process

Setting up your Green Chef meal delivery is surprisingly easy, which is refreshing.

Too often, the process is lengthy and cumbersome, but they make it simple.

You start with choosing your delivery frequency, meal plan type, number of meals, and number of portions.

Then you scroll through the menu and make your weekly selections.

Easy peasy.

Good Variety of Meal Selection

Within each of their meal plan categories, they offer a variety of meals to choose from each week.

There are 9 rotating options each week to choose from within each category, so you always have plenty to choose from.

Also worth noting is that you can swap meal plans week-to-week if desired.

So, for example, if you choose balanced living as your default meal plan, you can change to the balanced living plan any week you choose if you want recipes from that category.

You can make this swap whenever you’d like, there are no limits on it.

The one thing to remember with this, though, is that you cannot mix & match meals between the different meal plans.

Great for Various Dietary Lifestyles

Green Chef meal plans focus on being healthy, yet balanced.

They offer 3 different meal plans: Keto + Paleo, Balanced Living, and Plant-Powered.

These meal options include recipes that cover many dietary lifestyles, so whether you’re living a paleo, keto, omnivore, pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan, Mediterranean lifestyle, or something different, the odds are that you’ll be able to find meals that work well for you.

Good Portion Flexibility

Green Chef offers more portion flexibility than a lot of other meal kits, which is great to see.

They offer a 2, 4, or 6 serving plan with a choice of 2, 3, or 4 recipes.

Many meal kits only offer 2 or 4 servings and not as many recipe choices either.

Responsible, Sustainable Packaging

Green Chef is one of the most environmentally responsible meal delivery brands out there.

In fact, they’re the only meal kit delivery company that offsets 100% of its carbon emissions and plastic packaging.

That’s pretty impressive.

Their packaging is fully recyclable, and their carbon footprint is actually smaller than if you shopped at the grocery store instead (most meal delivery services are, actually).

Taste & Creativity

The Green Chef meals that we tried were all very good.

The recipes themselves were creative, with fun flavors such as chimichurri and a delicious dijonnaise sauce.

The flavors were good, and for most people, it could be a convenient way to add new flavors and eating experiences into the regular repertoire.

Personally, I felt that the taste fell just a touch flat, but we were being purposefully critical as we were reviewing, and I also have a culinary background so I approach it more critically than someone else might.

I think these flavors would be perfect for anyone looking to brighten up their weekly dinners with some new meals that the whole family will enjoy.

Easy-to-Understand Recipe Cards

Green Chef recipe cards are some of the best I’ve seen, and we’ve tried a lot of meal kits.

They’re so easy to follow, with photos at every step, intuitive organization, and even boxes to check off your progress as you go.

Whether you’re a beginner cook or a professional chef, these recipes are great, and they make cooking so much more enjoyable.

Freshness, Quality & Sustainability of Ingredients

Green Chef ingredients are highly sustainable, this we know due to their certified organic status.

Being USDA-certified, you’d expect these ingredients to be of higher quality when compared with other non-organic meal kits.

I’d have to say, their produce was definitely high-quality, as were their other ingredients.

Everything looked, felt, and smelled fresh.

We even waited quite a few days to make a couple of the meals, and the ingredients were still great once they were used, which tells me they must’ve been quite fresh when they were packed up & shipped out.

Higher Price for Higher Quality, Organic Ingredients

Are Green Chef prices expensive?

Well, they aren’t the most expensive meal kit out there, but they definitely aren’t a budget kit either.

Their prices are towards the higher end, but that’s because of their organic ingredients; you’re getting what you pay for with that type of clean eating & quality.

Not to mention they are incredibly green and environmentally-friendly, which tends to drive prices up a bit as well.

Green Chef Customer Service

While we didn’t have a need to contact Green Chef customer service with our order, we did look into it to give you an idea of what to expect should you need them.

Using Green Chef customer service is simple, as it should be.

They’re available via email, phone, and chat.

They also have a well-organized FAQ section so that you can help yourself in the quickest manner possible as well as many self-serve options such as changing your meal plan and even canceling your account through their online interface.

What We Liked

There was a lot to like about Green Chef. It’s a long list, so I’ll keep it to just a few items.

Firstly, I love that they have a great selection of meals; it’s frustrating when you want the convenience of a meal kit but can’t find anything that appeals to you because there just aren’t enough options. This is not the case with Green Chef.

Second, I like that they offer more of a variety of delivery days.

Most meal kit services only deliver late in the week such as Thursdays and Fridays, which isn’t ideal if you’re looking for meals throughout the week.

I was able to choose a Tuesday for our delivery day, which I thought was pretty cool.

Lastly, I love that you can choose a delivery frequency; this isn’t a common feature with meal kits.

You can choose weekly delivery (standard), every 2 weeks, or every 4 weeks.

This is a great option for those of us who like to cook something special every now and then but don’t want the commitment of a weekly delivery.

What We Didn’t Like

There isn’t a whole lot we didn’t enjoy about Green Chef, but there are a couple of small things that would make the experience better.

Firstly, I would’ve loved a couple of add-on options.

One of my favorite things about meal delivery services is being able to fill in holes in my weekly meal plan, so it’s great when a service offers breakfast, lunch, snack, or dessert add-ons of some sort.

Green Chef doesn’t have any of these options.

Secondly, while their food is creative and tasty, it felt a little bit lacking.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but their flavors fell just a touch short for me.

This may not be the case for everyone, and yes I’m trying to be extra critical because this is a review, but it is something to consider.

Lastly, I would’ve liked to have the option of choosing menu options from each category.

A mix & match option would be great for people like me who don’t necessarily have a specific diet they follow, but just enjoy healthy food in general.

They have it set up so that you have to choose meals within a specific meal plan category. While you can change your category easily (great feature!), you cannot mix & match.