Green Chef

A few weeks ago, a friend emailed me a coupon to try out Green Chef.

It's right in the name: Green Chef is all about eating and living green. As a USDA-certified organic meal kit company, we work with farmers to source sustainable, non-GMO ingredients. We use more organic ingredients than any other meal kit service, and each dinner is packed with veggies.

Source: https://greenchef.com/home

I liked that there was a keto offering (gluten-free, dairy-free) so I zipped over to the website and placed an order for three recipes for two people.

The box arrived - I was home at the time of delivery so I whisked it into the house.

Inside were three recipe sheets (8.5 x 11 inch size).

The food items were securely-packaged and each one was marked with a colored label that corresponded to the recipe sheet (brown, dark grey, and purple).  Everything looked fresh.

The egg was very securely packaged!

The pantry ingredients needed were olive oil, salt, and pepper.  No fancy utensils were required - knife, cutting board, saucepan, cooking sheet, spatula, measuring cups, etc. - all pretty standard.

On Friday, we prepared the Shichimi-Broiled Sole.

I think they piled all the food on one plate and in one bowl for the photo on the recipe sheet as ours below, looked significantly less abundant.  The fish was sole so very thin and even with the seasoning, pretty bland.  The salad was very good.

I don't like egg so I skipped the egg in my soup.

Saturday's dinner was the Steak Fajita Wraps.  The meat was a little less than lean, as you can see by the fat at the bottom of my plate.  The recipe said to cook steak until fully cooked, remove from heat, spoon steak and veggies onto leaves.  No mention of draining or blotting.  It made eating very messy so we resorted to knives and forks.  The salad was tart - it said to add sweetener of your choice to cut the tartness of the vinegar but since we're sugar-free as well as gluten-free and dairy-free, we did not.

On Sunday, we prepared Balsamic-Glazed Chicken which was our favorite.  Everything about it was delicious.

Overall, not bad.  My concerns were:

• The price - $98 for three meals was high especially since the portions did not allow for dinner and some leftovers for Vic's lunch the next day - it was dinner only.
• The delivery and temperature of the package - printed on the outside of the box was "Perishable, Open Promptly and Refrigerate".  I was lucky that I was home and was able to bring the box inside right away.  Even so, the ice packs inside were completely melted.  I wish I had one of those instant-read thermometers I could have held over the ingredients to see the real temperature.  For a working couple, the box could have sat on their porch/doorstep for several hours.
• The ingredients in each item are not listed on the item nor are they on the recipe sheets.  The information is sparse - "Contains: (E) egg" or "Contains: (F) fish, (TN) tree nut, (E) egg".  I wanted to know what else was in the Teriyaki-style amino sauce or the Dairy-free parsley-basil pesto.  I emailed the company and received a prompt answer when I asked, but I would have preferred to see that information on the label.
• My delivery day was Friday so I was required to notify Green Chef by "12pm ET (9am PT), 7 days before your delivery day" if I wanted to skip a week or cancel my service.  I didn't get my delivery until after 12pm ET on Friday so that was impossible.  After debating the temperature issue and the first recipe, we decided to cancel and at first, Green Chef said that we would have to accept and be billed for the next delivery.  When I pointed out the time of my delivery, they agreed to extend a one time courtesy and cancel the upcoming shipment.

I won't give them a complete thumbs down because we did enjoy cooking together and sampling some new recipes that we didn't have to research or really think about ahead of time.  The temperature issue, however, means that we won't be subscribing again.