Finding the best prepared meal delivery service is, of course, different from looking for the best meal delivery service, period. Meal kits live on a spectrum. Some arrive simply as big boxes of groceries with accompanying recipes. Some include partially prepped ingredients, like premade sauces and chopped vegetables, but still require you to stir and cook your food. Others are more of a “just add water, heat, and stir” situation.
Read our review of the best meal kits overall, which includes options for the best meal kits you cook yourself.
Our top picks for the best prepared meal kits:
- The best prepared meal kit overall: CookUnity, starts at $11/serving
- The best healthy prepared meal service: Factor, starts at $12/serving
- The best sustainable prepared meal service: Sunbasket, starts at $10/serving
- The bougie option: Sakara, starts at $26/serving
Regardless of the meal kit company you’re looking at, it likely claims to save you time and energy in the meal prep area. But in many cases, the kits require just as much time and effort, and just as many pans, to prepare meals from scratch. You will save time in the form of avoiding the errand of going to the grocery store or thinking about what you want to cook. But the reality of prepping the meal and cleaning up after it likely requires just as much effort (sometimes even more) than anything you’d regularly cook.
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We like these more labor-intensive kits like—HelloFresh, Purple Carrot, or Blue Apron—because we like to cook. They give us recipe inspo and they can be great for teaching newer home cooks techniques and flavor combinations (and if that’s your speed, then make sure to read our full review of all the best meal delivery services). But if you’re really looking for the quickest, easiest meal delivery options, consider opting for fully prepared meal kits.
This category has grown a lot in recent years—moving far beyond the territory of airplane food or frozen TV dinners you might associate it with, and into a robust selection of high-quality weekly meal options. We’re talking spicy rigatoni alla vodka and beef birria tacos that are actually worth their salt, but that you simply reheat in the oven or microwave for a few minutes before serving. It might not be restaurant-quality and we’ll be the first to say nothing beats a home-cooked meal, but these options can certainly help flesh out your weekly meal plan for when you don’t want to just get takeout again. Below, we dive into what we believe is the best prepared meal kit, CookUnity, and share a few other options we’ve enjoyed using.
Best overall: CookUnity
To me, CookUnity isn’t just the best prepared meal delivery service. It’s the best meal delivery service, period. This food company focuses solely on premade, oven-ready meals, and all of its recipes are developed by award-winning chefs (many of whom we’ve featured here at Bon Appétit, including Teranga’s Pierre Thiam, Mokbar’s Esther Choi, and FieldTrip’s J.J. Johnson). With over 100 options to choose from, CookUnity has the largest weekly menu selection I’ve come across in this category, and I like that you can read ratings and reviews for every single dish—something I haven’t seen while browsing many other meal kit menus (and that I could see being useful for especially picky eaters).
