Best Meal Kit Delivery Services To Try During The Coronavirus Pandemic

Working from home? Me too. Like many of you, I’ve suddenly become intimately acquainted with what’s in my fridge—and what’s not. While this seems like the perfect time to get cozy in the kitchen and whip up some home-cooked meals, a trip to the grocery store presents its own set of problems. Not ready to abandon my dreams of culinary grandeur, I wondered if now might be the right moment to try a meal delivery kit service. But is that even safe? Turns out, the answer is yes. Dr. Kathryn Jacobsen, Yahoo Lifestyle’s Public Health Contributor, assured me, “Getting a meal kit delivered to your home is probably safer than going to a grocery store, since you’ll have fewer contacts with other people and the packages and foods you touch are likely to have been handled by fewer people.” Makes sense. The FDA states that there is no evidence of food or food packaging transmitting the novel coronavirus to consumers. “Ask that your boxes be left outside your home, so that you can maintain physical distance from the person making the delivery,” Dr. Jacobsen recommends. “After receiving the package, remove the food from its packaging, dispose of the packing materials, and then wash your hands and sanitize any surfaces that the packaging has touched.” Fears assuaged, now all that remains is choosing the right kit. Simple, right? Wrong. In the U.S. alone, there are well over 100 different meal kit delivery options including favorites like Hello Fresh and EveryPlate, healthy options like Sun Basket and Daily Harvest and options for different diets like Purple Carrot. How do you know which one is best for you? I can’t be the only one facing this particular conundrum. So armed with my iPhone and plenty of extra hours in the day, I set out to find some answers. With the help of the Yahoo Lifestyle team, I whittled down the online options to the best three kits to put to the test: Gobble, which touts meals that can be prepared in just 15 minutes, often using just one pan; Dinnerly, which costs just $4.49 per serving, making it the best affordable option on the market; and Blue Apron, one of the first and most well-known meal kit services available. I ordered a 2-serving, 3 meal kit from each company, and sharpened my knives. After a lot of leftovers, dirty dishes, and the perpetual struggle to find natural light in my apartment, here’s what I learned.

Video transcript

BECKY HORVATH: Hey! You working from home? Me too. So I figured right now is the perfect time to try a meal delivery kit, or kits.

[GRUNTING]

Can you get the door for me? Thank you.

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With a meal kit delivery, you're not only avoiding contact with other people at the grocery store, but your food was likely to have been handled by less people. But with over 100 meal delivery kits available, how do you know which one's right for you? We narrowed down our test list to three-- a classic option, a quick and easy option, and an affordable option. Well, let's get cooking. So if meal delivery kits were a "Family Feud" category, Blue Apron would probably be the top survey answer.

Scrolling through the meal options, I felt like I opened a Pandora's box of really exciting new culinary adventures, a way to travel without leaving the house. So I went for the Middle Eastern-styled chicken, vegetable and freekeh fried rice, and a classic seared steaks. First thing out of the box, we have our bag of knickknacks. We've got our veggies. Ah, we have our protein. Really nice-looking grass-fed beef sirloin steaks. Now freekeh something I have never cooked with before. I love ingredients like this. You're getting a little bit of it. You can see if you like it.

Oh, I wish you could smell this. It smells so good. I was starting to feel pretty accomplished in the kitchen. Sounds like dinner's gonna be good. Maybe not "Top Chef" ready, but I'm getting close. I did have a little issue with the potato cakes. But in the end, all of these recipes were flavorful, they were filling, and they came together in the time allotted. I'm going to go jump on a work call, and this is going to be my lunch, and everybody else is going to be jealous. So if you're ready to channel your inner Martha Stewart, Blue Apron is a very good thing.

[DING]

Gobble promises a home-cooked meal in 15 minutes or less, sometimes using just one pan. So I was a little skeptical of this one. When I looked at the meal options, they looked every bit as complicated as Blue Apron. I went with the cacio e pepe, a Yankee pot roast, and a Mandarin orange-glazed pork tenderloin. If you're working from home and you got little ones running around simultaneously, this guy could be a lifesaver. This is nice. All the ingredients are already sorted and all together in one bag, along with the recipe card. 15 minutes or less, we're going to put some time on the clock and see how long these take.

So while I still felt like I was cooking because I had to do the occasional veggie chop, the more complicated components came already prepared. Fried garlic. Cutting corners a little bit, adding some flavor really quick and easy. So as promised, all of these meals actually came together in 15 minutes or less. The Yankee pot roast under 10 minutes and one pan. So the biggest surprise with Gobble was how flavorful all of the recipes were. You might say I gobbled them right up.

The quality of the overall meals and the ingredients was right on par with Blue Apron, but everything came together in half the time. This tastes like I put so much more time into it than I actually did. So much flavor. It looks beautiful, super colorful, delicious. So while quick and easy definitely comes with a higher price point, if you're working from home and you've got kids running around, Gobble could be your new best friend.

[DING]

At just 4.49 per serving, Dinnerly is by far the most affordable meal kit option on the market. The Dinnerly meal options didn't exactly transport me to an exotic location, but they did take me back to my childhood. I went with the lasagna roll-ups, the pan-roasted chicken, and steak tacos. Because who isn't missing Taco Tuesday right now? We have some baby spinach, which, even at the-- the lower price point, looks nice and fresh. Lasagna cheese, which means there's lasagna. You download your recipes, so the recipes are not actually in the box.

So the Dinnerly recipes came with less ingredients than their counterparts, but they do require you to have some basics on hand. For example, for this one, there was sugar, salt, pepper, oil, and apple cider vinegar, which was thankfully in my cabinet. Time-wise, Dinnerly was pretty much on par with Blue Apron, and the recipes could be just as complex. What I really couldn't get past, though, was the fact that I had to put cream cheese in the tomato sauce for the lasagna. Thankfully, the roll-ups were kind of cute. This is a recipe that kids are going to really love too. You're getting them some veggies in there, and it's fun. You can have them help you do the roll-ups and everything.

So while the finished dishes were probably not my personal favorites, I will admit that selling lasagna roll-ups to a toddler is probably a lot easier than her recent roasted vegetables. So if you happen to have some picky eaters and you're on a budget, dinner with Dinnerly is a good way to go. Meal kits may not be for everybody all of the time, but right now they're a pretty good option. So whether you're channeling your inner chef, trying to get a meal on the table in a hurry, or you need dinner on a dime, there's definitely a meal kit out there for you. Now if they could just figure out how to send the dishwasher in the box, we'd really be on to something.

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