I’ve been cooking with Mindful Chef for about two years. For those who don’t know, it’s sort of yet another meal kit service — you can probably think of similar names — but with a focus on nutrition and balanced meals.
If you’ve been thinking about trying it out, I can heartily recommend it, but it’s not going to suit everyone. Read my (too extensive?) thoughts to see if it’s right for you.
My Mindful Chef setup
Mindful Chef is a recipe box delivery service that focuses on healthy, nutritious meals. I was initially introduced to them via a family member who had been using it a little while - and they still do, so that’s two of us who’ve been doing it multiple years.
You can dip in and out of Mindful Chef (henceforth: MC) as you like. That’s not what I do, though: I have consistently had a box every week over this time. You can adjust how many meals you have in each box; I typically go for three or four two-person meals, and if I’m eating alone I split each meal.
This means, in my routine, that I’m rarely without an MC meal for dinner. It’s also worth noting that I’m a vegetarian, so most of my boxes are from the vegan options. I don’t get meat or fish, so my review here isn’t going to cover those types of meals.
Lastly: there are no referral links or similar in this post. In theory I do get some benefit if you use my referral code, but I’m not sharing it. The point of this review is to tell you what I think not get me free meals.
The basics
Each meal kit is basically a paper bag with all the ingredients, plus there may be some chilled items elsewhere in your box. These are delivered with reusable ice packs. I tend to be at home when it arrives, so I open the box and the bags/other items just go straight into the fridge on a dedicated shelf.
This brings me to the first benefit, and the main reason I subscribe to this service: it has really simplified shopping. I like cooking, and I like eating a variety of meals. I don’t like the planning, or working out which sauces, etc., I have in the cupboards, and what’s still good.
You also get a weekly recipe book, which contains the instructions for each dish. This has changed a little bit over the last two years: each recipe is on a single page, but the layout in terms of identification of ingredients and steps in the process gets continually updated. Slight shock: I don’t really like the current format, the previous format was better for me. But it’s not difficult to follow.
The level of difficulty in terms of preparation, and the time it takes, will vary a bit. The quickest meals might be done in 15-20 minutes; the longest might be 45 minutes to an hour. You only need basic skills:
- you will be preparing vegetables, so washing / peeling / cutting is always necessary. Occasionally fine chopping is required - for example, dicing red onion to go into salsa. You will want to have sharp knives, and if you’re not confident at it, the prep will take longer. If you keep doing it, though, your skills will naturally sharpen (!) too.
- there may be fiddly prep. The bane of my meals is pulling the kale leaves off the woody stalks; you can’t do this much quicker than a few minutes.
- you will definitely need to know (or learn) how to control the heat of your pans. I cook with a relatively slow electric hob, so you don’t need anything fancy. Beginner home cooks don’t let the pans warm long enough before using, and don’t naturally know the right heat.
In terms of cooking meals, there aren’t really any other skills required: every meal is pretty straightforward. For me, some are too easy - depending on the kits you’ll often find pre-cooked rice (which I’m fine with!) or pre-made sauces (which are nice but take away most of the work).
If you’re not confident as a cook, you will not make the meals as quickly as the recipe suggests. You will want to prep everything in advance, and you will do less work in parallel. Honestly, though, it does not take long to get confident — there are many similar patterns in the meals, and once you’ve done a few of the same pattern, it’s quick to get up to speed. I find the target times are achievable with no prior prep; but my oven/hob does heat up pretty quickly.
Occasionally, I do prepare parts of a meal earlier in the day. Some meals come with a salsa or pickle; these work much better if you give them a few hours to marinade. MC naturally leans towards “quick and easy”.
Lastly, if you’ve made a two-person meal and want to serve over two sittings - this works great. Virtually every meal can be reheated with minimal loss of quality to the meal, even in the microwave - the main exceptions being gnocchi and last-minute herb/juice add-ins. I’ve often found I can part cook most of the meal, then separate into two halves, and just do the finishing steps twice.
The Food
Here are some of the meals I’ve made with Mindful Chef, to give you an idea of what they actually look like when done at home:
You get to pick from a selection of meals each week, and although there are quite a few consistent patterns in the recipes, there’s a decent amount of choice. This is one of the key benefits for me: while some of the options are quite formulaic, they are inevitably more variable than what I would shop for myself given little time to plan.
I’ve rarely had a meal I haven’t liked, although occasionally I’ve had one that has seemed pretty bland. This is generally not the problem — most of them are very flavourful, and on the vegan menu at least, you will need to be comfortable with a reasonable level of spice (you can withhold chillies and add less spice, but that will also reduce flavour).
Certain ingredients can be a pain. I’m not a massive fan of the thin rice noodles; they inevitably go sticky for me no matter how I try to cook them. The black rice, if sent dried, will stain anything it touches while you’re cooking it. Many dishes come with parsley, which I can’t stand, but that’s typically garnish and easily withheld.
The meals are typically a kind of fusion-based menu of European or Asian dishes, with carbs mainly coming from rice and grains and more emphasis on curries, stews, and salad bowls. This suits me very well, but if you’re a “meat and two veg” type cook it might not be great.
The calorie count is also typically fairly low — honestly, for me, some of them are a bit too low, between 600–700 calories in some meals. This means you won’t see high-fat content items on the menu, like macaroni cheese, and sometimes this is going to leave you feeling slightly hungry.
The tie-ins
Every once in a while, there are meals from another brand. I’ve enjoyed some of the offerings from Leon (a UK food chain) and The Roasting Tin (a popular cookbook series). They’re not for everyone — I don’t often like the Gymkhana options — but they also don’t dominate the menu.
There are also inevitably offers in the meal box itself. Sometimes these are just leaflets with related or interesting products and a discount; occasionally you get a sample of something to try.
I appreciate the samples a lot and the companies that put them in, even when I don’t particularly like the product. They’re often smaller brands or things you wouldn’t try otherwise, and again I like branching out a bit.
What works well
- if, like me, you enjoy cooking but dislike the planning, it’s great. I enjoy the variety, I can just pick meals without having to shop for all the ingredients, and I eat a broader diet than I otherwise would.
- it will improve your skills in the kitchen, even for the basic meals. I don’t think you could do this consistently and not get faster, and I have a broader repertoire of basic meals that are just in my head now.
- the meals are fundamentally pretty tasty, and even if you get something wrong, it’s difficult to mess up entirely.
- I have much less food waste than I used to. My shopping now is more consistently kitchen staples, and I use up less cupboard space.
- it claims to be quick, easy, and healthy, and with a bit of practice, it entirely lives up to this
What you might not like
- there are small pouches of ingredients, and this inevitably generates waste — much of it in little plastic bags. Some things can be recycled; some can’t. I know MC are constantly trying to find ways to reduce this. My feeling is that I generate less waste with MC — both food and packaging — than I would otherwise. But it will bother some people.
- getting the timing right to start with can be tough, and putting in the effort to cook each night will be a pain if that’s not something you initially enjoy. I suspect there’s an initial few‑month period where you just have to commit to doing it; after a while, it feels very easy.
- on the vegan menu, it’s not easy to get lots of protein. You will probably need to find ways to supplement this if it matters to you (I don’t do this, but I can imagine some will want to).
- for my taste, the menus consistently undercook some vegetables, particularly green beans and broccoli. You can adjust for this over time, but initially I was eating things more raw than I would like. The menus typically don’t describe the different levels to which you might cook things, or what choices you might want to make.
- a few more meal options would be nice. In particular, I would be happy doing a bit more complex prep, or meals with more complex steps. The menu is quite accessible — I understand why they might not want to do this — but I would appreciate more advanced meals.
Summary
So there you go: a two-year-plus happy customer. While I’ve spent a bunch of time talking about the meals, I can also say the customer service is excellent. I rarely get the wrong thing in the box; in fact, I can only remember one time a meal was completely missing, and they sent it to me separately the very next day.
I’m continuing to use MC, and if it sounds like it would suit you, I would definitely recommend it.
