At A Glance – Intro To The Green Chef Service
Green Chef is the first USDA-certified organic meal kit delivery service on the market. It offers a weekly menu of recipes using healthy, fresh ingredients. Customers can choose a specific plan to receive weekly recipe recommendations for a particular diet, including plant-based, gluten-free, keto, and more.
The Meal Kit Review has years of experience with Green Chef’s offerings, and we re-tested every aspect of the service, including tasting two weekly boxes in 2024, to ensure our review has the most current and helpful information for you.
Pros and Cons
Green Chef Pros
- Fresh, USDA-certified ingredients
- Options to suit many diets, including Mediterranean, Plant-Based, and Calorie Smart
- The weekly menu offers 50+ recipes with a wide variety of styles and tastes
- Unique add-on offerings include vitamins, breakfasts, snacks, and quick meals
- Full-page recipe cards with step-by-step instructions for each recipe
Green Chef Cons
- Some meals have a higher calorie count
- Since it’s organic, It’s more pricey than other meal kits
- No pre-made meal options
Who is Green Chef For?
Green Chef is an excellent choice for people looking for a meal kit company that supplies USDA-certified organic, healthy, delicious, creative food. They offer plans for two, four, or six people, making them a good fit for both smaller households and families.
The Green Chef service is also an excellent alternative for people who follow a specific diet, such as keto, vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, and more.
Meal Plans & Diet Support
When signing up for Green Chef, you can choose a plan with recipes catered to the following dietary preferences:
- Mediterranean Diet
- Gut & Brain Health
- Calorie Smart
- Plant-Based
- Protein Packed
- Keto
- Gluten-Free
You can select one or more options and receive weekly recipe recommendations tailored to that specific diet. Even with these options selected, you can still browse the full menu every week and choose other recipes that satisfy your dietary needs if you want to swap out one of the suggestions.
In addition to swapping out recommended recipes, you can switch up your plan week-to-week as needed, changing the number of servings or meals per week (for two, four, or six people). Moreover, like with most meal delivery services, Green Chef allows you to skip weeks when needed and cancel at any time online with no hidden commitments.
Green Chef Variety & Style of Meal Kits
Green Chef offers a list of 50 dinner recipes per week, with menus catering to different lifestyles, including high protein, vegan, keto, vegetarian, and gluten-free options. When you choose one of these diets, you’ll get three recipe recommendations to suit your preference each week, with the option to swap for any other tempting meals from the entire catalog.
We love the style and convenience of the Green Chef meals – everything is super fresh, pre-measured, and often pre-peeled and pre-cut for super easy prep work and cooking.
You’ll receive Green Chef’s delicious and unique sauces, dressings, and spice blends in each chef-crafted recipe. Some of these include mint, cilantro, Mojito-style marinade, cilantro-scallion sauce, and flavorful spice blends like Mexican-style spice blend or cumin & fennel blend, just to name a few.
Green Chef is also appealing because the dishes are usually simple enough. The instructions on the full-page recipe cards are easy to follow and include photos of each step, resulting in an easy and fun cooking experience at home.
Quality of Ingredients
Green Chef is a USDA-certified company, meaning that every meal kit includes organic and sustainably sourced ingredients. All their ingredients are fresh, sustainable, and of the highest quality – many we received looked better than you could find at a grocery store! In terms of convenience, many items also come pre-peeled and chopped.
The bottom line is that you get restaurant-quality food with healthy, organic ingredients when ordering Green Chef.
Is It Tasty? Our Experience With Green Chef
The team at Meal Kit Review has six years of experience with the Green Chef service. In 2024, we re-tested this meal kit for two weeks to ensure our review stays up-to-date and current regarding its offerings and quality. We have consistently found the ingredients fresh and high-quality, with delicious recipes that are well-portioned and easy to make.
Thai Red Curry With Chicken – Green Chef
Thai curry is a street Asian food favorite for many, and this simple and healthy recipe from Green Chef was also one of our favorite dishes.
What made us like this recipe even more was its ease. It took only 20 minutes to cook from start to finish and included five simple steps—not bad for a fast home dinner!
The recipe involved a prepped green pepper, cabbage, carrot mix, chicken breast strips, delicious roasted red peppers, coconut milk, red curry paste with lime juice, and some roasted cashews for a last-touch topping. The result was colorful and super tasty! It’s a good dish for followers of low-carb, low-calorie, and gluten-free diets!
Pecan-Crusted Chicken – Green Chef
This Pecan-crusted chicken is a simple and classic meal with a twist. It replaces traditional breaded chicken with a crunchy and nutritious topping that gives it a gourmet feel.
Alongside the chicken, this Keto and low-carb dish includes creamy mashed butternut squash and fresh sauteed green beans.
We were impressed by the excellent quality of the butternut squash and green beans we received, which were vibrant and delicious-looking right out of the box. This recipe comes together in six simple steps and is easy to follow with an impressive, chef-level result. It’s delicious and a great fit for anyone looking for a low-carb, low-calorie meal suited to the Keto diet.
Other Recommended Green Chef Healthy Meals To Try
- Creamy Paprika Shrimp with Green Beans with Pecans, Cabbage Slaw
- Teriyaki Tofu Tacos with Spicy Sriracha Slaw, Candied Peanuts, Cilantro
- Chili-spiced Tilapia & Black Bean Rice with Avocado Crema, Spicy Toasted Corn & Pepitas
- Peanut Lime Chicken with Sesame Rice with Sauteed Baby Bok Choy & Rainbow Carrots, Scallion
- Creamy Tomato Cavatappi with Cauliflower, Peas, Parmesan, Chives
- Blackened Tilapia with Dirty Rice with Tomato, Corn & Celery, Paprika Aioli, Pecans
Is It Easy To Use?
Green Chef meals come with easy-to-follow recipes that include simple, step-by-step instructions. The ingredients are packaged per recipe, so it’s easy to open up your box and know which items you need for every meal that week.
Meals are designed to be ready in about half an hour, and in our experience, the estimated times on the recipe card were very accurate. Green Chef also offers recipes with shorter prep times, around 20 minutes, or quick 10-minute lunches.
What’s Inside The Green Chef Delivery Box
We continue to be impressed with how the Green Chef box is organized, making the unpacking process easy and fast.
First, it is delivered in a well-insulated box with several large ice packs inside to keep everything cold. All the meats are packed at the bottom of the box to ensure proteins stay at the appropriate temperature.
Second, each meal’s organic ingredients are grouped in a clearly marked paper bag, making unpacking easy and taking only a few seconds to store in the fridge. Every ingredient is clearly labeled, with many pre-peeled and prepped, so finding and preparing your foods is quick and easy.
With each box, you will also get detailed color-printed recipe cards with all the cooking steps. We appreciate the large size of the recipe cards, making it very easy to read and review each step.
Are The Green Chef Packaging Materials Eco-Friendly?
Green Chef is going green all the way with their efforts to ensure the packaging is eco-friendly! All packaging materials are recyclable, reusable, or compostable, except when they can’t be for food safety reasons. For example, tofu, meats, and other proteins arrive vacuum-packed in plastic wrap to ensure freshness.
The cardboard boxes your meal kit arrives in are made of corrugated cardboard, with at least 40% recycled materials. In addition, the ClimaCell insulation is made of plant-based insulating material that is certified for curbside recycling. The meal kit’s paper bags are made of 100% post-consumer recycled paper and can also be recycled.
While most ingredients come individually bagged in plastic, Green Chef uses only recyclable plastics so that you can recycle almost everything in your meal kit!
Green Chef Website and Ordering Process
Green Chef offers a user-friendly website and a mobile app for managing your subscription. Using the app or website, you can register, select your plan, pick each week’s recipe, change your payment method, and cancel your account.
Our team changed their order on the website, swapping out one of the recipes for another more suited to our tastes. It was effortless and straightforward. You can also find all the information you need on each dish, including the list of ingredients, nutritional facts, cooking process, and more.
The app is very similar to the website, making it easy to switch between the two to manage your account and shipments on the go.
What Do Customers Think Of Green Chef?
Overall, Green Chef customers appreciate the delicious flavors of the boxes, especially the sauces and spice mixes. They also understand the variety of healthy options and easy-to-follow recipes. Another commonly praised perk of Green Chef is the ease of adding additional protein to tweak recipes each week.
When listing out the pros of Green Chef, Reddit user @ArtOwn1431 said the service offers “great quality meat and fish, tasty sauces, clever recipes.”
Another user said, “We have really enjoyed Green Chef” and that the kit has “Very tasty meals” that are easier to prepare than many other services.
@Talaron compares Green Chef favorably with other companies they’ve tried, saying that the “recipes are fancier and come with more premium ingredients.”
Customer Support
Getting support with your Green Chef subscription is easy, with many options to get the answers you need. Their website has a robust FAQ section with information on many common questions about meal kit deliveries, including delivery windows and sustainability.
Green Chef also offers support via phone Monday through Friday, plus select hours on Saturday and Sunday. You can use their website’s built-in chat feature to speak with a customer service representative Monday through Sunday between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m.
Delivery Areas
Green Chef can deliver your meal kit almost everywhere in the continental US but currently does not deliver to Alaska and Hawaii. Boxes are delivered Monday through Saturday, based on your address and preference.
The Bottom Line Of Our Green Chef Review
We loved our experience with Green Chef and consider it one of the healthiest meal kit options available.
Green Chef delivers organic, delicious, and nutritious food to your table with sustainable and thoughtful shipping methods to keep items fresh. They specialize in providing meal options for many lifestyles, including vegan, keto, vegetarian, and many more.
Green Chef also prioritizes effortless meal preparation. Many ingredients are pre-cut for you, and all the spices and sauces are pre-mixed. With these prep steps removed and the clear instructions on the recipe cards, dinner can usually be served within 30 minutes!
