Hungryroot Meal Kits
Last updated: April 8, 2021
This site focuses on stocking your refrigerator with groceries you can enjoy in a variety of ways. You'll take a brief quiz and get a customized list of groceries and plan suggestions. Recipe cards will help you put meals together using the items in your box. This gives you the freedom to mix up various ingredients to fit your own personal tastes.
We looked at the top Meal Delivery Kits and dug through the reviews from some of the most popular review sites. Through this analysis, we've determined the best Meal Delivery Kit you should buy.
Product Details
Key Takeaway: This meal kit service doesn't just provide meals — you can shop a selection of healthy groceries, too.
In our analysis of 177 expert reviews, the Hungryroot Meal Kits placed 13th when we looked at the top 24 products in the category. For the full ranking, see below.Expert Reviews
What reviewers liked
Hungryroot also offers a nice selection of wild-caught fish, lunch meats, chicken sausage, patties, and more. Other notable add-ons include a pantry section filled with Pukka teas, Purely Elizabeth granola, and pancake mixes—they really do have everything!
- Self
While this particular meal was on the easy side, while browsing the site I was happy to see a whole range of options, including groceries to have in the fridge, which I found to be super unique and well-needed in the meal kit and grocery delivery space. This company is great for those who have a culinary mind and like cooking their own recipes but also like trying new ones, especially with healthy ingredients and fun new products.
You'll take a quiz about what you like to eat, and the service ships groceries to your door, along with recipes based on whatever is in the week's box. For example, one of my boxes contained chickpea pasta shells and a superfood tomato sauce, but I was free to dress it up with whatever I wanted or use the ingredients separately.
- Wired
After trying it, I can easily say the picks are top-notch. It's a lot of fun to try if you're looking for inspiration or a challenge in the kitchen. Hungryroot is a PCMag Editors' Choice for not only being a great subscription service, but for also filling a unique niche in the market.
Its highly customizable meals require just two or three ingredients, no prep work, and only a few minutes on the stove to heat up. Whether it’s a bowl or a flatbread, they all follow a similar formula—flavorful sauce + vegetables + something to serve them on. Predictable? Yes, but the meals are super healthy, packed with vegetables, and take well to mixing and matching, so they’re easy to customize.
It is EXTREMELY time-saving. You can compose meals by combining two of the ingredients, as opposed to having to cook an hour-long, 7-step recipe that usually results in you eating at like, 9:30pm. It's so easy even your kids could do it. And if you're out of ideas, Hungryroot includes a list of combo suggestions tailored to whatever you ordered that week. M
- BuzzFeed
Hungryroot is all about whole, nutritious ingredients, and I was super impressed by their offerings. All the ingredients are free of artificial preservatives, artificial sweeteners, and high-fructose corn syrup. Many of the ingredients you find in the boxes are made and prepared in house, which I thought was very cool. If they used outside products, they were things I already loved like Banza and Beyond Meat.
You can select “pairings” of items that are meant to be eaten together, so if you’re used to thinking in terms of recipes, it is possible to shop Hungryroot in that way. The product catalog is very flexible, and the ingredients are meant to be combined in different ways. The ingredients can also work well with food you already have on hand from your regular grocery shopping. You can easily see the nutritional information and cooking instructions for each item online, as well as recommended pairings.
What reviewers didn't like
Recipe card is found on the back of your order receipt and not too colorful.
If I hadn't been given this assignment to write about Hungryroot, I don't know if I would have gotten over the hurdle of ordering a box. When you aren't picking out groceries for yourself, $75 to $100 is a lot to spend.
You have the option to customize or skip an order up until noon EST (9 A.M. PST) the Thursday before your scheduled delivery. There is no grace period. If you miss the cutoff, there is no way to cancel or change the order—or even change the shipping address. Big-time meat-eaters, or those who like traditional “meat and three”-style plates, will likely be dissatisfied.
Above all, this stuff is EXPENSIVE. For the cheapest pack, which is $70, I can buy almost two weeks worth of groceries. This all means that I'll consider this more as a luxury.
- BuzzFeed
Besides cost, the only other drawback to Hungryroot is the lack of variety. All of the dishes you can make are kind of comprised of the same things. Most of the meals are just four ingredients: a starch-y thing, a vegetable, a protein, and a sauce, and there’s only about a handful of options for each of these categories.
I was initially disappointed that some of the more unusual options like Beet Pesto and Mango Cultured Coconut Cream (a vegan yogurt substitute) were unavailable to me. For me, part of the draw of Hungryroot was that it offered items that I couldn’t find easily in stores! (It looks like Hungryroot’s selection can vary seasonally, so their whole catalog isn’t available all the time.)
View our Meal Delivery Kit buying guide for in-depth advice and recommendations.