Whether you’re too busy to be bothered with grocery shopping or could just use a little extra inspiration when planning your weekly menu (it’s me, hi), a meal kit is an excellent tool for taking the guesswork out of cooking. It becomes even more clutch when you’re following a plant-based or vegan diet and need to put a little more effort into making sure your dishes check off all your nutritional needs.
Enter Purple Carrot, a food delivery service that offers meal kits, ready-to-eat options, and even a grocery-ordering service that makes it easy to shop for vegan pantry items (talk about full service). To find out if it’s worth it in terms of taste, time, and price, I tested Purple Carrot for a week. Here’s how it went and what you need to know if you’re considering trying it too.
Heads up: Right now, you can get $50 off of your first Purple Carrot order and free shipping when you use the code SELF50 at checkout—but the deal only lasts until Monday, March 31 (so act fast).
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Purple Carrot review
For our review, we followed SELF’s meal kit buying guide, which was created using dietitian recommendations. Below, you can learn how Purple Carrot works and find out our thoughts on the service’s customizability, affordability, order and delivery process, ease of use, nutrition profile, and taste.
Can I customize my meals for my taste preferences, allergies, or eating style?
All Purple Carrot meals are vegan. Beyond that, there are a few ways to customize your experience: For each delivery, you can choose the specific meals you’d like from a menu of options. Each choice also lists any common allergens it contains, so you can easily avoid anything that’s off-limits for you.
When you sign up—before you select any specific meals—you’ll pick the type of plan that’s best for you (browse all of the options below). You can also select your preferences between less prep, gluten-free, and high-protein meals. If you ever forget or choose not to hand-select your upcoming meals, Purple Carrot will automatically pick for you using your saved preferences.
I went with the meal kit option and threw in a couple ready-to-eat meals to get a sense of how easy they are to make. As someone with no allergies or real preferences—I love food and will eat pretty much anything—I was excited to explore the offerings and lean into some new-to-me ingredient combos that would hopefully help me find a few new faves to cook again in the future. (Spoiler alert: That is, indeed, what happened!)
Purple Carrot meal types
Each week, the menu rotates to include a fresh selection of breakfast, lunch, and dinner meal options. Select the “less prep” filter for options that require you to do the absolute least in terms of prep work and actual cooking.
Choose between two and four servings per meal, and either three or four meals per week.
At the time of publication, Purple Carrot has 33 ready-to-eat meal options. These meals require zero prep work: Simply pull back the film partway and pop them in the microwave for a meal that’s hot and ready in just a few minutes.
Choose between 6, 8, or 10 single-serving meals per week.
The site also offers a grocery delivery section that allows you to add pantry items to your meal kit order. The selections include plant-based foods like black bean burgers, mac and cheese, tofu, juices, canned lattes, cheese, dips, snacks, sauces, and more.
Not sure where to start and want something that requires even less brain power? Choosing a program will set you up with a chef’s weekly selection of four ready-to-eat breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, so you don’t have to do any work up-front.
You’ll get four ready-to-eat breakfasts, four lunches, and four dinners.
Example recipes
By this point, you’re probably wondering the most important thing: What are some of the delicious dishes I’ll actually get to eat? Check out the recipe examples below to get a sense of the ingredients and instructions included with each meal.
How much does Purple Carrot cost?
The most popular meal plan option, which includes four meals of two servings each (so eight servings total) comes out to $13.25 per serving, or $106 per week. From now until the end of March, Purple Carrot is offering SELF readers a special deal—get $50 off your first order and free shipping when you use the code SELF50 at checkout. It’s a nice way to make sure you like the meals offered and the entire process for a pretty great price.
If you bump up your order to the four-servings option, the price per serving comes down to $11 (without the intro discount). Purple Carrot also charges a $12 shipping fee, but orders that are $100 and over ship free.
As someone who grocery shops regularly and cooks about 90% of my meals at home, I have always been a bit skeptical about meal delivery services. I assumed they wouldn’t feel worth it, price-wise. The thing is, if you’re someone who buys plant-based and mostly organic ingredients, those grocery costs add up—fast. So $11 to $13 per serving really isn’t too pricey when it comes down to it. That’s especially true if you’re only cooking for one or two people, and full sizes of certain ingredients would either go bad or just sit in your pantry unused for months.
It’s also a win compared to takeout: You’d be hard-pressed to find good vegan food from a restaurant that costs less. (And depending on where you live, it may not even be possible to get a decent vegan takeout meal, anyway!)
What is the order and delivery process like?
Each week, you log into your account to select your meals for the next week. All selections must be made by 11:59 p.m. ET on the Tuesday before delivery. If you miss your chance to choose, no worries: Purple Carrot will use your saved preferences to automatically pick your meals from the weekly menu. (You can also just let them do this every week to eliminate the mental task of having to decide.) And you can skip a week whenever you’d like, set up a longer pause for 6, 8, or 10 weeks, or cancel at any time.
Depending on your location, you’ll receive your weekly delivery on Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. Your account will tell you, though—it won’t be a surprise (no one needs that kind of chaos in their lives).
The meal kits arrive in a box stuffed with recyclable, temperature-controlling insulation and frozen, non-toxic gel ice packs, which you can reuse or drain and then recycle. Each meal’s ingredients come packaged in an individual bag, with a recipe card slipped into the front. The ready-to-eat meals are packaged in a container, and some also have a cardboard sleeve with recipe instructions.
How easy is Purple Carrot to use?
The recipe cards are really nicely laid out and easy to follow. Each one includes an estimated cook time, which I found to be pretty accurate, making it easy to select the meals you want to cook on certain days. The ingredients list breaks down what’s included in the bag and what you’ll need to grab from your own kitchen—they’re all super-simple staples, like vegetable oil and salt and pepper.
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