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Ethically sourced meal kit deliveries straight to your door offering a vast range of recipes for a nutritionally balanced diet that are delicious to eat.
Visit Mindful ChefMindful Chef is a meal kit and prepared meal delivery service that targets customers who want the freshest of ingredients and the healthiest of recipes. While heavily designed to be nutritionally beneficial, the company manages to offer a wide selection of delicious meals each week. Plus, it has a big emphasis on only ever using the best produce, so you’ll find ethically sourced beef, poultry and fish for example. Additionally, it is one of the few meal delivery companies that offer a single-person subscription. Finally, it runs a One Feeds Two charity which means for every meal it sells, it provides a school meal to a child living in poverty.
Signing up to Mindful Chef is pretty straightforward. The website has been designed to be as intuitive as possible. You choose a date that you want to start your deliveries and work through the process from there. You choose the recipes you want from the beginning and can pick up to 5 a week as a single person or a couple. As a family, you can choose up to three. A family box will serve 4 adults or 2 adults with 2-3 children.
Picking recipes that are suitable is simple through the filters that the site adds at the top of its recipe page. From there you can choose to double up on any recipes that really catch your eye. Plus the website highlights how many calories are in each meal and how long that meal takes to cook, as well as how much fat, protein or carbohydrate is in each dish.
Meal boxes are then delivered on your chosen day each week. You need to pick your recipes each week or they will be chosen for you. The company will send you email reminders so that you do not miss the cut-off time for making your choices. You can also choose to pause or skip deliveries so while this is a subscription service, it is also fully flexible. There is no commitment which is a big plus. Food is delivered in insulated boxes so that you do not have to be in to take delivery. Instead, your food will be left in a safe, designated space and will stay fresh in there for up to 48 hours.
One of the best things about Mindful Chef is its dedicated approach to providing recipes for those with the strictest of dietary requirements. It actively tries to provide a varied menu for those who are Vegan, Pescatarian, Gluten Free or trying to lose weight. Plus it flags up any allergens on its recipe cards so it’s easy to choose recipes for any other dietary requirements too. So if you are looking for a low-carb meal for a Paleo diet, it is simple to pick and choose meals suitable for you. Plus the company are big on trying to reduce the amount of ‘filler’ items in their meal kits. That means they tend to have a lot more protein than many other delivery kits as well as upping the veg. For those that want to reduce the number of refined carbs in their diet, this is therefore a good option.
Like with many other meal kit delivery services, what’s great about Mindful Chef is that all food is pre-portioned. It, therefore, helps reduce waste in your home. A lot of the packaging is recyclable but not all - which is a big drawback to trying to reduce plastic usage. However, the recipes themselves are easy to follow and offer a big convenience to customers who are short on time. By not needing to go to the supermarket or draw up their own weekly meal plan, Mindful Chef does take out a lot of the mundane surrounding food preparation.
MindfulChef is a subscription-based plan that can be stopped or cancelled at any time. You pay per box with free nationwide delivery. For one person, a box of three recipes (the smallest box possible), costs around £9 per serving. The exact cost of the box will depend on what recipes you choose. If you choose recipes that include steak or other expensive meat items, the box will be dearer than a week of vegetarian meals. For a family of 4, portion costs go down to around £6 - though the same rules apply. The recipes you choose can either increase the amount you spend or reduce it. In all, Mindful Chef is probably at the more expensive end of the meal kit delivery market - but it’s easy to spend less by choosing specific recipes. Plus, it’s comforting to know that the company does not use ‘fillers’.
The menu itself is very diverse. It is great that it changes each week so that even if you have a strict diet, you’ll still see a lot of variety. Many cuisines are used as inspiration for final recipe cards so you’ll see a lot of Asian influence, Indian food as well as hearty British menus like stews and pies. An added bonus that comes from using recipe boxes like Mindful Chef, therefore, is improving your own cooking skill and repertoire.
However, if you don’t want to cook, the company offers healthy frozen ready meals offering the ultimate convenience to time-strapped individuals. There’s a pretty wide selection that includes plenty of veggie and vegan options which is great to see. An individual portion will set you back around £7. It is also possible to add smoothie pouches and kits specifically designed with making healthy broths and soups in mind. A broth kit will cost around £5 a serving. Additionally, it’s a big bonus that customers can add fruit boxes to their order thus reducing the need to shop elsewhere for groceries. Fruit boxes include 11 pieces of fruit, so they’re sizable and cost around £10 a week to a weekly Mindful Chef bill.
Browse MenusGetting in touch with Mindful Chef is easy, plus they have a huge number of FAQs on its website which will likely answer any queries a customer may have. It’s possible to email them or talk to them over the phone. Responses were found to be timely and helpful so that resolutions to any issues were quickly rectified. Plus, it’s a big bonus that the company offers its money-back guarantee if you are not 100% happy.
Mindful Chef is one of the more expensive meal kit delivery services out there, but you do get what you pay for with it. While it may be more extravagant than other delivery services, the quality of the ingredients is excellent (for example it always uses free-range chicken) and it doesn’t build up portion sizes with lots of bread or pasta. The menu selection is broad so it never gets too samey. Perhaps the biggest problem with Mindful Chef is the fact that even though much of its packaging is recyclable, some of the preportioned ingredients like herbs or spices, do end up using a lot of single-use plastic. Ultimately, however, this is an excellent service that provides its customers with hearty, healthy meals that are a pleasure to prepare and eat.