Green Chef Review 2024: Is Organic Worth It?

Overview

Green Chef impressed me with its extensive menu options, quality ingredients, and flexibility for different dietary needs. It caters to a range of specialized diets, with plans tailored for keto, plant-based, Mediterranean, gluten-free, and more. Its gluten-free meals are also properly certified. When I first ordered from Green Chef, you couldn’t mix and match between plans, but this is no longer the case – so it’s a much more flexible service. There’s also a great range of add-ons available each week.

The globally inspired menu will suit adventurous tastes, and with over 45 recipe options each week, there’s ample choice (though certain diets may feel a bit limiting, for example, if you’re exclusively vegan). There’s no customization for individual recipes either, which may pose a challenge for those with multiple food sensitivities beyond gluten, although you can always make swaps at home. 

Each time I’ve tested this service, I’ve been impressed by the freshness and quality of the ingredients. Organic produce costs more, but I could taste the difference compared to similar, non-organic competitors. Green Chef’s recipe cards and detailed instructions make meal prep straightforward, though I found prep times occasionally exceeded the estimates. Some of the packaging is eco-conscious, though for a company with green in its name, I’d like to see less plastic overall, particularly around non-perishable items.

Overall, Green Chef is a premium service that justifies its price with high-quality ingredients, convenience, and some of the tastiest meals I’ve ever made from a meal kit service. While it costs more than budget options like HelloFresh, I found the investment worthwhile, especially for home cooks prioritizing top-quality ingredients.

Green Chef’s Menu: A Foodie’s Paradise!

Meal Options: Green Chef Covers a Wide Range of Dietary Needs 

Green Chef’s plans cover 8 categories catering to different dietary needs. 

These include:

• Keto: carb-conscious, high-protein recipes with less than 20 grams of net carbs

• Plant Based: meatless vegan and vegetarian recipes with plant-based proteins

• Mediterranean: Mediterranean flavors with lots of veggies and healthy fats

• Quick & Easy: recipes ready in 25 minutes or less

• Gluten Free: free from gluten with no wheat, barley, rye, or triticale

• Protein Packed: satisfying recipes with 40+ grams of protein

• Gut & Brain Health: nutrient-dense recipes with high-fiber and fresh ingredients

• Calorie Smart: meals with less than 650 calories

Most Green Chef meals require 30-40 minutes of cooking and preparation time, though Quick & Easy meal kits can be made in 25 minutes or less.  You can also find a few 10-minute lunch recipes for even faster preparation.

Green Chef’s minimum order is 3 meals for 2 people, but you can order up to 4 meals serving 6 people per week. While this is great for large families, Green Chef meals may be a tough sell for picky eaters. However, my picky daughter was brave enough to taste (and enjoy) the Creamy Mushroom Truffle Linguine dish.

Good Selection of Cuisines & Add-Ons

The recipes cover a lot of culinary ground with dishes inspired by global cuisines – from Asian noodle dishes and stir-fries to Middle-Eastern rice bowls and even classic American meatloaves. 

Green Chef also offers add-on items like breakfast entrees and bulk protein packs. While the selection is more modest than some other services, each item is carefully curated and the quality is uniformly excellent.

You can choose from all 45+ of the recipes on the menu, but your options are narrower if you need to stick rigidly to a specific plan. For example, the week I checked, there were 13 keto recipes but only 7 vegan recipes. However, you can make more recipes vegan with a few simple swaps. I made the Creamy Mushroom Truffle Linguine vegan by swapping creme fraiche for a vegan alternative.

Most Green Chef meals are certified gluten-free by the Gluten Intolerance Group (GIG). While Green Chef offers a few meals containing gluten, they’re prepared and packed separately to avoid cross-contamination.

Tags on each recipe let you see which plans they work with. The “Gluten Free” tag appears on most entrees. If you don’t see this tag, the meal includes pasta, bread, or another ingredient that contains gluten.

Unfortunately, Green Chef doesn’t offer filters to deselect meals with other allergens. Each recipe includes a complete ingredient list, but there’s no simple way to avoid problem ingredients like tree nuts and no guarantee against trace contamination, so this service might not be suitable for people with other allergies.

Green Chef’s Menu at a Glance

My Unboxing Experience With Green Chef: Everything Was Great, Except the Plastic!

I was at home when my Green Chef order was delivered. When I went downstairs, the box had been placed directly outside my front door, and I took it straight inside to unpack. It was in good shape, and when I opened it, the inside was still cool, so the chill packs did their job well.

Green Chef’s packaging was extremely well-insulated and contained ice packs to keep things fresh. I liked that the ClimaCell lining that makes this possible is plant-based and curbside recyclable, too.

The 4 meals I ordered were each in a clearly labeled paper bag. The meat, dairy, and salad ingredients were packed separately with the ice packs. I put the steak, dairy products, and salad in the refrigerator. There were no signs of leakage with the steak or the other ingredients.

Green Chef recommends you prepare meal kits within 5 days, or 2 to 3 days if your meal contains seafood. There were no storage instructions in the box. However, you can find best-before dates on the packaging for each individual ingredient. Overall I was quite impressed with Green Chef’s delivery…save for a small problem.

I would love to see Green Chef dial back on the plastic. I understand chicken cutlets need to be sealed in plastic when shipped, and I appreciate the pre-portioned and clearly labeled ingredients. But I don’t think carrots need to be wrapped in plastic and would love to see the spice packets and vegetables arrive in recyclable paper.

On the other hand, organic ingredients can be particularly tricky to transport. The lack of preservatives means they tend to have a shorter shelf-life. The vegetables and herbs were fresh and colorful, apart from the green beans. However, this may be because I cooked this meal at the end of the week.

Plastic aside, Green Chef does a good job of being environmentally responsible. Its boxes are made of corrugated cardboard containing a minimum of 40% recycled content. And Green Chef also provides recycling instructions for all its packaging material. So I would give it a solid “B” for its environmental efforts.

Cooking (And Eating) With Green Chef: A Truly Enjoyable (And Easy) Experience

Green Chef’s detailed instructions made it easy for me to cook restaurant-quality meals at home. I started each recipe by setting out all the ingredients and equipment before I began cooking.

I found Green Chef’s estimated cooking times to be fairly accurate, although I spent around 5-10 extra minutes on food prep per recipe. I don’t consider myself a particularly slow cook, so based on my experience, I’d add an extra 5 minutes for prep and then some more for cleaning up.

The cards include any staples you may need to have on hand, like butter or olive oil. The list of required utensils was also thorough. Make sure you check these through at the start, so you can set up your food processor or get the colander from the back of the cupboard if needed.

Some meals provided ready-chopped veg, and others needed chopping or slicing. If you are a beginner chef, I’d recommend reading through all the instructions thoroughly before you start, it can be easy to miss things if you aren’t concentrating.

Shortlist of My Favorite Meals

Green Chef’s recipe cards helped me cook unfamiliar meals with confidence. When it comes to cooking, I’m much more of an intuitive chef and tend to throw things at a pot and see what happens. So it was an interesting change to see how things turn out with an accurate recipe.

I found that the organic ingredients made a big difference in all the Green Chef recipes I tried. The tastes were fresher and more intense, and the texture was superior as well. The portions were good-sized and left us full, with no leftovers. A single person could easily get both a lunch and a dinner out of a 2-serving meal.

Harissa and Zhoug Cauliflower

I took a chance on this dish from the Plant Based menu. After tasting what I can only describe as a delicious explosion of textures and flavors, I am very glad I did. The combination of sweet potato and cauliflower, the crunchy almonds, the heat of the spice, and the cooling coconut yogurt was simply divine. 

In terms of cooking skills, I’d say this is an easy enough dish to prepare. The most work involved chopping the sweet potato into small cubes. Although this is necessary so that it roasts at the same time as the cauliflower florets. 

While roasting the vegetables with olive oil and a sprinkle of turmeric, the next step was to prepare the bulgur wheat. This involved boiling it for a minute with the vegetable stock, then leaving it to the side until it was soft and ready to eat. 

When the veggies were nicely roasted (which took a bit longer than expected), I mixed half the zhoug style paste and the rocket into the bulgur then spooned it onto my plate. After topping this with the roasted veggies, you simply drizzle with coconut yogurt, harissa paste, and remaining zhoug, then sprinkle with almonds. Such a simple dish, but utterly delicious.

21 Day Aged Rump Steak and Pumpkin Seed Pesto

This steak-based dish is from Green Chef’s keto menu. It contained a whopping 47.1 g of protein and only 16 g of carbs. It also featured 3 portions of veg in the meal, so you know you’re getting a good range of vitamins and other good stuff. The cooking process was pretty quick, and if you aren’t accustomed to cooking steak, the recipe explained timings and safety instructions. 

If you can fry some meat, mix a salad, and chop and roast veggies, then this is a straightforward recipe to try. The hardest part is making the pesto – if you don’t have a food processor that is. Although the recipe stated you can chop the pumpkin seeds by hand, I don’t fancy that job. Plus, you wouldn’t get the classic pesto texture either.

Overall, this was a tasty dish and it certainly packed in the flavors. I also forgot about the pesto and lemon wedges and had to head back to the kitchen. I recommend easing off on the garlic in the pesto and reducing the Greek salad cheese, as these were pretty overpowering flavors.

Miso Mushroom and Udon Noodle Soup

This is another Plant Based recipe from the Green Chef menu. I don’t often cook with specialty mushrooms, as they can be hard to source, so I thought it would be a tasty dish. I have to say, I was quite disappointed. It was the only dish I didn’t finish eating, which is rare for me.

However, in an interesting turn of events, my (usually picky) daughter tried it and polished the rest off (minus the “weird” mushrooms). She enjoyed the salty umami flavors of the broth and liked the noodles. This recipe also had a substitution of green beans for sugar snap peas, which I didn’t know about until I opened the box. 

The recipe starts off with peeling the carrot into ribbons, which took quite a while. My peeler is very sharp, so to avoid slicing my fingers, I shaved half the carrot at a time. This also produced shorter ribbons that were easier to eat. 

There are a lot of ingredients and packets that need opening and adding at the right time, so it was easy to get mixed up. I added the wrong amount of miso paste, as I didn’t realize the total amount was split into 2 packets. Another reason I’d recommend a thorough check of ingredients and equipment before you start cooking.  

Recipes Summary

Prices: Green Chef Isn’t Cheap, but It’s Totally Worth It!

Green Chef is a premium meal kit company, and this is reflected in its price tag. In my opinion, Green Chef’s higher-quality ingredients and delicious meals are worth the additional price if you can afford it.

No matter which plan you choose, the per-serving price is the same. Your shipping fee is a flat $10.99 regardless of your box size or delivery location.

Shipping & Delivery: Super Easy, No Issues

Your Green Chef order can arrive any day between Monday and Saturday, depending on where you live. Some areas are eligible for delivery 6 days a week, but when I tested other zip codes, there were only 3 days to choose from.

When you sign up, you’re automatically enrolled in a weekly delivery service, but you can pause or cancel at any time should you need to skip a week. 

Green Chef also only delivers to the contiguous 48 states. It gives you a delivery window between 8 am and 9 pm. But you will receive email or text updates, so you know when you can expect your box to arrive. 

Green Chef also has a useful app that can give you access to shipping information. You can also manage your subscription from the app. It’s easy to make any changes to your order via the app or on Green Chef’s website, but be aware of the cutoff date. You only have until 12.59 PST, 5 days before your scheduled delivery to make changes.

How Green Chef Works: Step by Step Guide

Green Chef’s signup process is quick and easy. Here’s how you can sign up for a Green Chef subscription in just a few steps:

How to Sign Up for Green Chef (Just 5 Simple Steps)

1. Visit the website and click Start Eating Clean. You can also accept prompts to Sign Up or click on Our Plans.

2. Select your plan and box size. Choose from 8 different categories and a range of order sizes.

3. Enter your delivery address. This is used to give you your first possible delivery date. You can also leave delivery instructions at this step.

4. Input your payment details. You can pay by credit card or PayPal.

5. Choose your Green Chef meals. Your menu will be ordered with your preferred meals first, but you can always choose from the full menu. If you want to add any extras, your final cost will be adjusted accordingly.

Managing Your Subscription

Green Chef requires you to make any changes to your shipments at least 5 days in advance. You have until 11.59 PST 5 days before your order is expected. You can easily skip weeks up to 4 weeks at a time, and you can do this online, as well as via the app.

If you want to cancel your subscription, you can do so easily via the Green Chef website. Simply log in, go to your account settings, and scroll down to Deactivate Your Plan.

Customer Service: Okay, but Nothing Special

Green Chef offers fairly standard customer support, featuring a detailed FAQ section, a phone line available 7 days a week, and a live chat function.

Green Chef offers a live chat service available daily from 9 am to 7 pm Eastern time. Additionally, it provides a customer support line at +1 (888) 236-7295. The call center operates from Monday to Friday between 6 am to 11 pm ET, and on weekends from 7 am to 7 pm ET.

I contacted Green Chef’s customer service via live chat with a question about filtering for allergens when selecting meals. Olive, though a bot, responded in a matter of seconds and provided the information I required. Based on my live chat and FAQ experiences, I award Green Chef high marks for customer service.

How Green Chef Compares to Other Meal Delivery Services

• Green Chef vs. HelloFresh: HelloFresh, Green Chef’s parent company, offers meals that are around 20% cheaper. But HelloFresh doesn’t use organic ingredients and has fewer items that are suitable for those on specialized diets.
  

• Green Chef vs. EveryPlate: EveryPlate, HelloFresh’s budget line, is around 50% cheaper per serving than Green Chef. But EveryPlate’s menu tends more toward filling comfort food and is considerably less adventurous than Green Chef’s recipes.
  

• Green Chef vs. Factor: Factor, HelloFresh’s line of prepared meals, comes in at a similar price tag and also has a good line of keto meals, but its selection of vegetarian and vegan entrees is considerably smaller.

The Bottom Line: Is Green Chef Worth It?

Green Chef is one of the priciest meal delivery services I’ve researched and reviewed. The premium cost makes sense, though, when you consider the quality of the ingredients and the healthy recipes that make cooking restaurant-level meals easy. Plus, I will definitely be cooking the Harissa and Zhoug Cauliflower recipe again.

For me, Green Chef’s quality is good enough to back up its higher price tag. It’s up to you to decide if these features are worth the added cost over less expensive services. If the cost is too steep for you, there are several excellent budget meal kits on the market.

If you’re on a specialized diet or if eating organic is important to you, you'll love Green Chef. It may cost a little more, but it’s a great investment in your health. The meals are easy to prepare, and you’ll pick up new skills and recipe ideas along the way.

FAQ

Where does Green Chef deliver?

Green Chef delivers almost everywhere in the contiguous US states. Like most meal delivery services, it, unfortunately, doesn’t deliver to Alaska or Hawaii. You can check your zip code during the sign-up process.

Is Green Chef good for weight loss?

Green Chef could work for weight loss, but it doesn’t advertise itself as a weight-loss meal delivery service. On the menu, you can find a low-carb Keto plan as well as a Calorie Smart plan. In general, Green Chef’s meals are designed for those who want to enjoy a healthy, balanced diet.

Who owns Green Chef?

Since 2018, Green Chef has been owned by HelloFresh, the world’s largest meal delivery service. Green Chef serves as the premium offering of this massive German company, with organic produce and sophisticated recipes.

Is Green Chef worth it?

I could taste the difference in Green Chef’s high-quality, organic ingredients, and that makes it worth the price in my opinion. Green Chef is one of the more expensive meal delivery services out there, but you get what you pay for.

Can Green Chef meals be frozen?

Many, but not all, Green Chef meals can be frozen. Green Chef’s FAQ provides instructions on which meals can be frozen and an estimated amount of time they’ll keep in the freezer.