Purple Carrot vs Home Chef – Which Meal Kit is Better?

Meal kits, premade meals, plant-based meals, and whatnot are all the latest trends in the food industry – and for good reason and purpose. You don’t need a reason to adopt a healthy lifestyle (or even a vegan one for that matter) when options like Purple Carrot and Home Chef are just a subscription away.

Purple Carrot is for those cutting back on or eliminating meat completely from their diet since it’s a plant-based meal delivery service. Their arch-rival would be Blue Apron as that too is purely plant-based. But in this article, we’re going to be comparing Purple Carrot and Home Chef.

Why Home Chef then? Well, here’s a meal kit solution worth spending money on if you’re among the many who feel too tired or lazy to cook on busy weekdays or just generally. Home Chef offers an extensive weekly rotating menu with customization options.

So, let’s find out how Purple Carrot and Home Chef stack up against each other. There are a number of very important things you need to know about both healthy meal delivery services before you click the Subscribe button.

What Do Meal Kit Services Do That You Can’t Do So Well?

Is there something you would fail to achieve, by yourself, when compared with a meal delivery service?

1. Declutter Your Fridge

Meal subscription services let you streamline your food and declutter your diet plans easily. You end up spending the same amount of money on groceries plus you save time on meal planning and meal prep.

Your daily routine can be overwhelming when you have a bunch of things to do every day. At least with the help of a meal kit service, you don’t have to think about shopping for groceries or meal planning every week.

Meal subscription services suggest a better streamlined and simplified way of healthy eating. By offering pre-portioned meal kits centered around a specific recipe, you can make delicious food at home in a matter of half an hour or faster!

Most of the ingredients are pre-prepped like sauces, seasonings, mixes, spices, etc. All you have to do is add them to the recipe and you’re done. The only work you may have to do on your own is chopping the preportioned fruits and veggies.

2. No More Food Wastage

The meals are preportioned according to serving size, so you cut only what you need right away, nothing more. Even the sauces, spices, blends, and mixes are preportioned according to serving size to avoid leftovers.

Avoiding unnecessary food wastage is another thing meal kits do better. You don’t have to stock up on grocery items that end up not being completely used up during cooking. In meal kits, you receive what you have to cook right away. So, the food is fresher and tastes rich and well-textured with no leftovers or stale ingredients.

This also means that you don’t have to pay a lot for using a little bit of a gourmet ingredient. Everything you have gets used up immediately, which maximizes more space in your refrigerator and less food wastage overall.

3. New Recipes Every Day

When you cook food on your own, there are bound to be repetitive meals because cooking a new recipe every day is a lot of work. You’d rather meal prep for 2-3 new recipes every day and eat them throughout the week to save more time.

However, with meal kit subscriptions, you can select a new recipe for each day. Services like Purple Carrot and Home Chef really do think outside the box when it comes to prioritizing new cuisines.

You don’t have to eat the same salad or food bowl twice in a row. Meal services use interesting ingredients, and restaurant-inspired flavors, with fresh herbs, spices, veggies, nuts, seeds, and other healthy and delicious food pairings.

3 Mistakes to Avoid When Subscribing to a Meal Kit Delivery Service

Follow these tips to get more out of your time spent researching and comparing new meal kit delivery services and find the best meal kit subscriptions here with services like Purple Carrot and Home Chef.

Mistake #1 – Subscribing Without Checking the Menu

Services like Purple Carrot and Home Chef give you complete access to the current week’s menu no matter where you are. You can see how many meals are offered, as well as the various diet plans and filters.

You can also read the nutrition label of each meal recipe and count how many calories a meal has, including the carb, protein, fats, and sodium profile. Picking out meals that suit your lifestyle in this manner is essential.

You can compare a high-protein and low-carb meal and add both to your cart if they accommodate your diet plan. You can skip meals that are high in sodium and fats for a weight-loss diet.

The process of meal selection is quite fun when you can decide the specific nutrition of all the meals on the menu and find those that you are most compatible with.

Take the Home Chef menu as an example. It features three different filters that you can use to navigate the menu: Calorie-conscious, Under 30 min, and Carb-conscious meals. The menu of Purple Carrot does not offer filters, but you can see which recipe is high in protein, soy-free, gluten-free, nut-free, and quick and easy.

Mistake #2 – Not Paying Attention to the Cooking Process

Meal kits should be stored exactly right so that they can last the entire week (or maybe longer). Some meal kits need to be frozen or kept cold to prolong their shelf life.

Once it’s time to cook the meal, follow the instructions that are printed on the recipe card. Meal kits include preportioned ingredients. Some may be pre-prepped too, but overall, they’re easy to prepare and assemble.

Meal kits come with proper cooking instructions and a prescribed cooking time. Most meals adhere to this cooking window, while some take slightly longer, as is with the meal kits of Purple Carrot.

The cooking process of most people involves some chopping, mixing, and seasoning of the ingredients. You are required to have with you basic cooking equipment like a pan, pot, skillet, and microwave oven. Likewise, in some cases, pantry items like salt, pepper, cooking oil, and butter are not provided in the meal kits.

Everything you need to know about storage and meal prep will be mentioned on every meal kit’s recipe card.

Mistake #3 – Not Reading About Delivery and Customization

When and where does the meal service deliver? How quickly can you edit orders before the shipment is out for delivery? These questions are best answered before you sign up for a meal subscription service.

Even if you’re unavailable to receive the weekly parcel yourself, most meal kit services drop off the box at your doorstep with no signature necessary. You can also leave some special delivery instructions at the time of placing an order.

Speaking of placing an order, it’s important to check whether meal subscription services provide meal customization and edits before delivery. Can you add or remove meals at the last minute or change your delivery address?

Not finding out about the flexibility of delivery and order customization before subscribing to a service can cause problems in the future. Rest assured, with Purple Carrot and Home Chef, there is a feature to customize the delivery time and make edits to orders before the shipment is out for delivery. You can even skip weeks, reschedule, and change your delivery address easily.

Purple Carrot vs Home Chef – How Do They Work?

Purple Carrot

Setting up your account on Purple Carrot is pretty simple and quick – you pick how many meals you want to add to your weekly order and then choose the number of servings per meal (2 or 4).

For a family of four, Purple Carrot is perfect because of the 4-servings-per-meal option. But then how about for a family of three? In that case, you may have leftovers!

That said, options on Purple Carrot, a plant-based-only meal delivery service for meal kits and prepared meals, are few and limited. It’s a little inflexible for smaller or larger families.

Moving on, after you select how many meals and servings you want per week, you get on with the payment process. The price of your weekly order, needless to say, depends on the number of meals and servings.

Changing meals is something that can be done on Purple Carrot. Be sure to look beyond the recommended options to infuse your weekly diet with more variety of flavors and cuisines.

Home Chef

Easy and quick, just like Purple Carrot!

Home Chef presents you with two basic meal plans – one is for Home Chef meals and the other for Fresh and Easy already cooked meals. The latter doesn’t require too much time or effort for preparation – the most suitable for those with not enough interest in cooking or with a busy schedule.

As for the Home Chef meal kits, these are equipped with preportioned, fresh ingredients as well as simple-to-follow cooking instructions.

The most amazing part is that both have meal plans you can customize depending on your dietary preferences, for example, carb-conscious meals, calorie-conscious meals, under-30-minute meals, etc. Common food allergens can also be avoided!

You have to enter your email ID to get started with the sign-up process. Home Chef makes it a point to ask some really basic questions with regard to delivery preferences, the number of meals per week (between 2 and 6), and the number of servings per meal (2, 4, or 6).

After that, you have to put down your shipping address, choose your delivery date, and finally enter your payment details.

About making changes, even this procedure is very straightforward in case you want to skip or cancel Home Chef deliveries.

Purple Carrot vs Home Chef – Choosing Meals and Menu Variety

Purple Carrot: Choosing Meals

You get enough options in the case of Purple Carrot. The menu features weekly rotating meals that are filtered based on your diet plan, preferences, or previous orders. These meals, however, can be changed by choosing other options that seem more in sync with your dietary demands.

Purple Carrot has meal kits and prepared meals. The first lot requires a little bit of prepping yet quick cooking, whereas the latter consists of ready-to-eat meals you have to reheat. So, your weekly order can contain a combination of premade meals and meal kits.

What Are Purple Carrot Meals Like?

100% plant-based and 100% healthy – the perfect way to describe Purple Carrot meals. They’re mostly centered around fresh vegetables and whole foods, without dairy, meat, or any animal by-products.

At the same time, Purple Carrot does not incorporate any “plant-based” meat substitutes into their recipes and dishes. Proteins like tofu, tempeh, lentils, and beans are part of the meals instead of unhealthy processed, packaged meat replacements.

On the Purple Carrot menu, you’ll come across very healthy and hearty bowls comprised of fresh veggies, grains, and nuts. Filling portion sizes of soups and stews, vegan and delicious pasta, and taco recipes along with sandwiches – Purple Carrot meals are big on flavors, spices, sauces, etc. to make a plant-based diet more appealing and satisfying.

Unfortunately, you can’t swap ingredients or even upgrade them. You cannot add meat alternatives either, as I said before. But as long as you know this, you shouldn’t be surprised because that’s how Purple Carrot works – everything is fresh, vegan, and 100% natural.

Keeping that in mind, Purple Carrot’s produce is the freshest, thus making this meal delivery service a huge hit for clean and healthy-eating and fitness-oriented individuals. Portion sizes are quite substantial too!

Purple Carrot Meal Add-Ons

Purple Carrot may not allow you to customize meals, swap ingredients, or the like, but they sure make up for this particular kind of setback by including add-ons on their menu – add-ons such as snacks and breakfasts. They have a Plantry section as well for à la carte food items that you can include in your weekly orders.

So, the Purple Carrot menu is divided into the following categories:

• Lunches (2 servings per meal)
• Dinners (2 servings per meal)
• Breakfasts (4 servings per meal)
• Plantry (snacks priced individually – vegan chocolate, pumpkin spice cookies, and more)

Home Chef: Choosing Meals

Home Chef presents us with quite a large menu, and you can select your meals up to 5 weeks prior. These are all weeklyrotating menus as a new menu comes up every Friday. You don’t even have to subscribe to view the meals – even those on upcoming menus.

Despite the extensive menu, everything is pretty simple to follow. Each week’s menu consists of around 25 different recipes. Each recipe has its own tag, such as the following:

• Meal Kit
• Culinary Collection
• Family Meal
• Express
• Express Plus
• Fast & Fresh
• Fast & Fresh Plus
• Fast & Fresh Family
• Oven-Ready
• Oven-Ready Plus
• Oven-Ready Family

As for menu categories, you can filter the meals through the following options:

• Calorie-conscious
• Carb-conscious
• < 30min

Apart from all this, the Home Chef menu also includes Breakfast, Snack, Beverages, Bread, Soup, Salad, Pizza, Dessert, Protein, Protein Pack, and a lot more. These are all à la carte food items.

What Are Home Chef Meals Like?

As a whole, preparing the meals is a cakewalk even if you don’t have much kitchen experience (no technical skills required, thankfully). The menu is quite a crowd-pleaser! It has plenty of traditional, comfort food options mostly suitable for an American diet. Classic dinners are the most popular, so don’t expect unfamiliar flavors.

A few examples are baked chicken, pasta dishes, pork tenderloin, chicken tacos, teriyaki steak, etc., along with some creative or world cuisine-inspired recipes like creamy shrimp pasta.

The Culinary Collection meals, in particular, are the most delicious and also a little “experimental.” These are priced differently. Some examples are the following:

• Steakhouse Filets Mignon and Herb Butter
• Mahi-Mahi with Honey Mostarda
• Haystack Burger with Comeback Sauce

Likewise, there are premium-quality or higher-end cuts of meat that you can pop into your weekly order if you’re in the mood for something fancy (extra cost per portion).

Home Chef Lets You Change or Swap Proteins and Portions

One of the most beckoning features of Home Chef is its customizability. Meal plans and kits can be customized to suit your dietary preferences or restrictions, such as upgrading or swapping proteins.

As long as the meal has a “Customize It” option, you get to replace ingredients, for instance, pork for chicken or chicken for pork. There’s steak, salmon, and plant-based proteins too.

Moreover, you can double the portion size of the meal kits you like. Once again, there’s an upcharge of $3 per portion.

Lastly, skipping a whole week’s order is also an option, just like in Purple Carrot. You’re allowed to skip a week, edit meals, swap ingredients, and more on Home Chef, which is what makes the whole experience so flexible (i.e., customizable).

Purple Carrot vs Home Chef – How Much Do Their Meal Plans Cost?

Purple Carrot Pricing

Here’s how it works:

• 2 servings per meal: $12 per serving (weekly cost of total 3 meals = $72)
• 4 servings per meal: $9 per serving (weekly cost of total 3 meals = $108)

So, you pay $72 per week for 6 servings and $108 per week for 12 servings.

Delivery cost: free shipping!

Home Chef Pricing

Home Chef is a very affordable meal delivery service where the starting price of a meal is $6.99 (per serving). These are mainly entrée salads and easy lunches. The meal kits, on the other hand, are $9 per serving. There are also a few expensive or “premium” choices from the Culinary Collection that is priced from $11 to $18 per serving.

You can also purchase add-ons like protein packs (seafood, beef, etc.), breakfast, snacks, desserts, and more (you have to pay extra for these of course), although shipping cost is waived if your weekly order amount exceeds $45:

• 3 meals of 4 servings each: $120 total weekly price
• Protein packs: between $60 and $75 per box (2 servings per box)

Purple Carrot vs Home Chef – How Easy Is Meal Prepping?

Between Purple Carrot and Home Chef, Home Chef’s meals are designed to be more straightforward to prepare at home.

However, this also depends on your experience with different types of ingredients and cuisines. If you’re a beginner who hasn’t spent a lot of time cooking recipes from scratch, Home Chef is the ideal pick for you.

But if you have little experience making different dishes before, Purple Carrot meals shouldn’t feel so overbearing. Even if you encounter some dishes that you’ve never cooked before, Purple Carrot makes the process easier with limited steps and a smoother cooking time of between 30 and 45 minutes.

Home Chef’s meals are foolproof beginner-friendly meals. Some meals you’ll find take less than 20 minutes to prepare, while there are some, depending on the recipe you select, which take anywhere from 30-45 minutes.

Home Chef is a mix of easy and slightly complicated recipes to follow. It’s up to you which meal kit you select based on the cooking time. Home Chef also gives you the option to leave the meal selection process up to them if you can’t decide for yourself. Home Chef will automatically select from a few easy-to-prepare meals and some complicated 45-minute meal kits as well.

Both Purple Carrot and Home Chef also deliver prepared meals that you simply have to heat and eat – Oven-ready meals, as Home Chef calls them, and Fast-Forward prepared meals on Purple Carrot.

Home Chef’s oven-ready meals need a little preparation, but it’s less than 5 minutes. You simply have to assemble all the ingredients with no chopping necessary. The ingredients are pre-prepped and preportioned for quick assembly.

The Prepared Meals on Purple Carrot come in single-serving containers. They don’t require any prepping or assembly. Simply remove the plastic cover, and heat the meal for 2-3 minutes or until the food is steaming hot.

Purple Carrot vs Home Chef – Nutrition Value and Taste of Meals

Purple Carrot

Meals full of flavor and new, interesting ingredients that you prepare using techniques inspired from around the globe – now that’s the Purple Carrot experience.

Be it an under-30-minute recipe or one that requires a slightly longer preparation or cooking time, the results turn out to be as promised. For meal kits, unlike already cooked meals offered by Purple Carrot, you have to be willing to put in a little bit of extra effort, such as peeling potatoes, grating carrots, mincing ginger and garlic, and the like.

Using basic cookware and minimal cleanup after cooking is a part of the meal kit deal. But all of this is worth it when the dish ends up tasting very yummy. After putting together all the ingredients provided, the food holds well together. For example, the veggie and potato patties are mouthwateringly crispy and delicious.

The nutritional profile, much the same way, is impressive rather than disappointing. So, let’s have a look at the nutritional value of some of Purple Carrot’s plant-based meals.

Home Chef

Every Home Chef meal kit comes with complete, accurate, and simple instructions and helpful labels, so you also know their use-by dates. For instance, a recipe like tacos will have the shortest lifespan, which means you need to cook that first.

Generally, the meals take no more than 25-35 minutes and some even less.

Home Chef goes one step further and provides basic items such as a foil baking tray for when you have to roast certain ingredients. Furthermore, the ingredients of meal kits are pre-sliced, so you just dump everything together and get on with the roasting. In the end, it all tastes perfectly appetizing with delicious flavors, sauces, salad dressings, etc.

The lightest meals and even the slightly heavier ones don’t ever feel overly filling. There are beginner and intermediate-level recipes – all of which are flavor-packed, super healthy, and satisfying.

Time to get to know the macronutrient breakdown of some of them below.

Meat-Based Meals

Plant-Based Meals

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About These Meal Delivery Services

1. How Are Purple Carrot and Home Chef Meals Packed?

Purple Carrot’s packaging is durable and efficient. It packs all its meal kits and heat-and-serve meals with recyclable materials. The plastics used for packaging are also effectively recyclable for either curbside pickup or drop-off at a proper recycling facility.

The meal kits are divided and organized inside the weekly box according to their recipes. Meal kits generally have more ingredients packed in tiny containers than heat-and-serve meals, so picking out the ingredients according to the recipe, on your own, may be difficult.

Thankfully, Purple Carrot wraps all the ingredients for a specific recipe in a recyclable plastic bag. So, you can tell which is which without getting confused about the ingredients. Grouped according to the recipe, it unpacks very quickly and efficiently.

The packaging includes plastic, cardboard, small pieces of plastic film, and liners. The majority of the packaging is recyclable, including cardboard trays, liners, and seals. You may have to drop some packaging off at a proper recyclable facility.

But don’t worry, the packaging is labeled accordingly so you know right away which packaging to set aside during unpacking.

Sometimes, to hold liquid ingredients like oils, sauces, seasonings, etc., reusable containers are used instead of plastic seal bags. You can easily wash them thoroughly and reuse them for storing dry or wet ingredients in your pantry.

Home Chef has the same sort of packaging – all the meal kits are packed in a cardboard box with recyclable items. Home Chef also makes use of recycled denim and cotton for insulation that you can easily recycle for curbside pickup.

The box all the meals come in – insulation, plastic liners, and bags – are recyclable. Some plastic containers can be reused after thorough washing. You can empty the ice packs and reuse them too for storing basic pantry ingredients.

For packing ingredients that leak, Home Chef double-wraps to avoid leakage that you can easily cut open and recycle, so there should be no excess plastic wastage.

Just like Purple Carrot, Home Chef groups all of its ingredients together in a resealable plastic bag to make sure you can easily remove the meal kit from the cardboard box and store it as is in the fridge. The resealable plastic bag comes with a handle for better accessibility so you can remove each meal kit without dropping anything.

The meal kits are labeled with the correct recipe name with stickers indicating the name of the ingredient and any other handy information regarding the meal kit.

2. Are Purple Carrot and Home Chef Meals Diet-Friendly?

Purple Carrot is a very diet-friendly and nutritious meal service. All the snacks and meals available on their website are vegan. They also cater to other specific diet plans like gluten-free, nut-free, low-calorie, and high-protein.

For someone with specific food choices and/or dietary restrictions, you can navigate Purple Carrot’s menu very easily and profitably.

Since Purple Carrot is a vegan meal kit service, it does not serve animal proteins. This may be a problem for people who are meat eaters and follow a meat-specific diet like keto or paleo.

For weight loss and boosting health, the plant-based diet plan of Purple Carrot works and can help you lose weight and stay fit. Purple Carrot’s meals are varied and have a caloric range of about 400-600 calories per serving. The meals are packed with plant-focused nutrition and a healthy balance of fiber, carbs, and fats.

When it comes to basic diet-friendliness, Home Chef is a dependable meal kit delivery service. They have meals that are high in protein, which may appeal to some people. But, overall, the meals are higher in calories – not the most ideal choice for weight loss.

I also found that some meals have high sodium, plus there are no foolproof health parameters to their meals, which are generally high in fats as well. So, if you’re looking for carb-conscious and low-calorie meals, Home Chef may not be the ideal choice for you. They do have some health-conscious meals, but overall, their meals are high in calories, fats, and sodium and have little fiber.

With regard to meal customization and boosting proteins in a meal, the add-on to swap proteins and change portions is very helpful. Meals with a “Customize It” option let you swap and upgrade proteins easily.

3. How to Edit and/or Cancel Purple Carrot and Home Chef Orders?

With Purple Carrot, managing the account and order details is a breeze. You have specific deadlines for every order you place. Once you place an order, the cutoff time is displayed alongside the active orders so you can make all your edits and changes before the cutoff time.

You can skip, modify, pause, and cancel an order easily without paying anything extra. Purple Carrot has a very accessible and user-friendly interface that allows you to modify all your orders effectively.

Editing and making changes are as straightforward as setting up an account for the first time. Changing and switching meals, skipping a few weeks or as many weeks as you like, plus canceling an order or your account – all this is possible without a problem.

You can always reactivate your account in Purple Carrot and update some of your details like your email address, name, and preferences. So, it’s like picking up where you left off from.

With Home Chef, you can do more than simply change your meals and cancel an order. You can also easily make substitutions, modify meal sizes, change delivery dates, and skip around a few weeks if you like.

Home Chef has all the necessary features in place to help you streamline the editing process more effectively. The cutoff time to do so is before noon CT every Friday. So, if your order is scheduled for next week, you have until the current week’s Friday to make changes to the order.

In case it’s a matter of urgency or emergency, you can contact Customer Care to finalize any last-minute changes to the order after the cutoff. But everything you need to know about their recipes, ingredients, placing and editing orders, and managing accounts is listed on their insightful FAQs page.

Skip a meal, modify meals, add or remove substitutions, and change the delivery address – you don’t have to pay any extra charges to do so either.

4. Where Do Purple Carrot and Home Chef Deliver?

Thankfully, Purple Carrot delivers to all contiguous states in the USA,so Hawaii and Alaska are not included. If you’re still in doubt, you can quickly enter your zip code on their website. You don’t have to sign up to do so.

Click on the chat bubble on the site and mention your zip code. Purple Carrot lets you know right away whether or not they deliver to your location.

When it comes to changing the delivery date, you can easily do that before the delivery week. Purple Carrot allows you to skip your weekly deliveries for up to 10 weeks without any charges.

Home Chef delivers from Sunday to Friday of every week, and presently, they deliver to 98% of the United States. To know whether you stay in the remaining 2% where Home Chef does not deliver, you can enter your zip code on their website.

Entering the zip code is not optional during the sign-up process, so you will know instantly whether they deliver to you or not.

Just in case you have additional questions about the delivery, you have to submit a form on their Requests page. Just add your name and email address linked to your Home Chef account and fill in the rest of the details regarding any order or a delivery query.

5. How Is the Customer Service of Purple Carrot and Home Chef?

Purple Carrot’s customer service and interface are very efficient and responsive. They offer different features and options for you to get in touch with them. You can contact them via chat, phone, or email. The response is fast and informative.

Even though Home Chef has its FAQ page, its answers are not always 100% accurate or informative. For example, they deliver to 98% of the United States, but what constitutes the 2% where they do not deliver is not mentioned.

However, they do have a section on their website where you have to put in your zip code and you’ll know right away if the delivery is eligible in your area.

After further research, I found that the 2% constitutes Alaska and Hawaii as the non-eligible areas in the United States for delivery.

You can contact customer care via email and phone. They do not have a live chat support feature like Purple Carrot.

Final Verdict – Purple Carrot or Home Chef?

Both Purple Carrot and Home Chef make it easy to order customized and healthy meal kits from home. You can enjoy a nutritious meal that suits your diet and lifestyle needs.

I realize that there are many meal kit delivery services to pick from, but it’s important to find the one that caters to your dietary and food preferences.

In addition to that, you need to find a service that delivers right on time, offers amazing discounts and benefits, and is up to date on sustainability and packaging.

With that in mind, Purple Carrot is a plant-based meal kit delivery service that offers a blend of healthy and varied meals. Plus, they have “fast-forward” prepared meals as well for those who don’t have the time to cook themselves.

Home Chef, on the flip side, is both plant-based and nonvegetarian, so the number of meals it offers is greater than Purple Carrot for meat lovers and foodies. Another benefit of Home Chef is that their meals are relatively easier to prepare with a quick meal prep time.