Review: Purple Carrot

Purple Carrot is a completely vegan meal subscription service that offers both meal kits and ready-to-eat meals. The meal kits use inventive plant-based ingredients for various cuisines, although the prep time is lengthy (often around an hour) and requires sometimes involved preparation and active cooking. During my week of testing, the standouts were the meal kits that you needed to prepare—specifically, a delicious Mediterranean rice salad with roasted vegetables and stuffed grape leaves, and a labor-intensive butternut squash dumpling dish.

Purple Carrot has choices with the type of vegan meals you get. There are fresh meal kits, which use flavorful, varied plant-based recipes with pre-portioned ingredients that require prep and cooking. These were by far my favorite. They also have ready-to-eat meals, which were premade, refrigerated meals that just required a pop in the microwave or oven (or skillet). These were surprisingly tasty for being frozen, but needed an extra pop of salt and citrus. (I also may be biased because I’ve been testing a lot of frozen meal kits and I miss fresh, living plants.) Purple Carrot also has a Jumpstart Program to help ease people into plant-based, healthy eating with a full-day meal plan, including 12 ready-to-eat meals per week for four weeks ($130 per week).

Of all the meal kits I’ve tested, I was most excited for Purple Carrot. My algorithm has me pinned perfectly as a vegan millennial often in a cooking rut. That, and due to what I can only assume to be a very aggressive marketing department, I was seeing ads for Purple Carrot meal delivery plans every time I opened my phone. And I was getting excited. And Purple Carrot (mostly) didn’t disappoint.

(Trust) the Process

The meal kits came in an insulated cardboard box with ice packs, and each meal was conveniently in its own clear plastic bag with the necessary ingredients and a thick, dare I say beautifully designed, recipe booklet in the front pocket. There’s also the plastic of it all—although Purple Carrot isn’t as reliant on plastic as other meal kits I’ve tested, each meal is packaged in plastic, which can be tricky with recycling, so you'll need to check your local guidelines. I reused some of the larger jars for food storage.

Most other meal kits that I’ve tested with fresh ingredients come jumbled together, and it takes some time to sort through and separate. Not to mention, all of the recipes are usually on a piece of paper together or point you to find more information online. Call me Type A, but I loved seeing the meals pre-organized and easily visible from my fridge when it was time to choose which to make.

The kits have fresh produce and prepackaged ingredients, like tofu, instant rice, and spices. Although produce isn’t guaranteed organic, most of the ingredients were (and importantly, they were all vegan). The only ingredients you need to provide are salt, pepper, and cooking oil (although I also liked adding a squeeze of lemon to some of the dishes).

Although this has been one of my favorite kits taste-wise, Purple Carrot isn’t the best for solo eaters, unlike a vegan meal service like Thistle (8/10, WIRED Recommends). You can choose from two- or four-serving plans, along with how many meals per week (one to four). Because I was eating on my own, most of these ended up being two or more meals that I ate for leftovers. For my week of testing, I had the two-serving, four-meals-a-week portion, which costs $13.25 per portion or $106 a week. However, meal kits often run heavy discounts, especially for new customers. At the time of writing, the first week for all meal kits is discounted 50 percent off, making it $56 total.

Once that first week is over, Purple Carrot shows you your next seven weeks of upcoming orders. But if you don’t like its selections, you can switch any for the dozen or so meal choices up to a week before your next meal shipment, or skip upcoming weeks’ orders. Each meal has an icon next to it, noting things like less prep work, high-protein, low-calorie, gluten- or soy-free—although there’s no way to filter these things when you choose your next meal, so make sure you’re paying attention to those tiny green icons. For my week of testing, I let the algorithm gods do their thang and was given a wide selection, ranging from family-friendly sloppy joes to sophisticated squash potstickers.

Long Prep Times, Mostly Big Payoff

I’m a natural cook. Most of my gripes with vegan meal delivery services is that I miss the fun of sautéeing, searing, mixing, and spicing. Purple Carrot said, I see that complaint and raise you a 100-minute-long dinner prep time. Most of these meals claimed to take around half an hour, but in reality averaged around an hour. I loved this meal service, but I recommend it with a caveat: Be prepared to throw down in the kitchen. If you don’t want to expand your culinary skills, or simply don’t have enough time to prepare dinner yourself, then I’d opt for the premade meals, which are still solid, nutrient-balanced, and vegan.

The recipes don’t hold your hand and often require some base knowledge or inference, which is why I'd caution novice cooks with this kit. I had to reread most of the recipes several times, and they don’t detail timing with preparation, especially with several elements that need to be cooked separately. This is mostly what accounted for my long prep times, and my very burnt sesame seeds and hazelnuts (more on that below).

One of my favorite meals was a labor-intensive dumpling-potsticker-type dish that took about an hour and a half to prepare and cook. It was slightly annoying to make alone at lunchtime, but would’ve been a fun activity to do with a partner or dinner guest. After boiling the squash, I pureed it (you'll need a food processor or blender for this one), and combined with fresh parsley, a Chinese five-spice blend, and vegan cream cheese. The meal came with premade dumpling wrappers, but I had to hand-fill the dumplings, which took over half an hour before frying in oil and steaming with a bit of water. This also required you to flash-fry the nuts and sesame seeds in oil to get the fragrance and flavor, which I accidentally badly burned because of timing issues with other ingredients.

One of my biggest gripes with meal kits generally is not accounting for varying prep and cook times of several ingredients, especially when many elements are being prepared at once. This meal came with a simple arugula salad with apples and a punchy Champagne vinaigrette. The dumplings were a mix between a potsticker and a pierogi, and the acidic vinaigrette salad worked well to break up the richness of the dumpling, although it would’ve been even better if it had its own acidic, salty dipping sauce.

My other favorite dish, a Mediterranean rice salad with dolmas, was very easy and took the actual suggested prep time of 30 minutes. This recipe just required me to roast radishes, grape tomatoes, and zucchini on a sheet pan with oil and za'atar seasoning. I warmed up the instant rice, and the dolmas were premade (and delicious). I combined all ingredients and topped with mint leaves and walnuts, along with the most delicious vegan tzatziki sauce that came with the dish. It was simple to make but had great variety of textures and tasted restaurant-quality (and vegan!).

I also made barbecue-esque tofu sloppy joes on pretzel buns with pickles and a side of hand-cut fries that were solid and tasty, but nothing too earth-shattering. Except for the vegan ranch; like the tzatziki, it was super creamy and a perfect addition. (Purple Carrot people, if you’re reading this right now, loop me in with your vegan condiment supplier!) For premade meals that just needed to be microwaved, I had a yummy Middle Eastern–inspired cauliflower shakshuka with tofu “ricotta” and mint lemon rice that was made a lot better with a heavy sprinkling of freshly ground S&P and a generous squeeze of lemon. There was also an average premade artichoke and mushroom ravioli that lacked flavor depth.

I love cooking and trying new recipes, so I loved this vegan meal kit service that always delivered tasty and inventive new plant-based recipes. Although if you’re a picky eater, or don’t want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, this may not be the service for you.