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A few weeks ago I was scrolling through Facebook and I came across an ad for a healthy grocery and meal delivery service called Hungryroot. So, I decided to test it out, kind of like how I tested Daily Harvest a few months ago and share my experience with you.
Here is a video of what my week on Hungryroot was like if you’re not in the mood to read:
HOW HUNGRYROOT WORKS
When you first visit their website, you have to build your profile: you give them the amount of people that you want to feed with your plan and tell them about your diet and the types of foods you enjoy. You can also select how many days you want them to cover – the whole week or just a couple of days.
Then, based on the information you provided, they give you a list of suggested recipes and prepackaged snacks that you can approve or further customize a few days before your box ships.
My plan included five different recipes with four lunch servings and six dinner servings and I paid $104.91 with 30% off coupon and free shipping. Generally, the cheapest price you can get per serving on the two-person plan is $8.49.
MY WEEK ON HUNGRYROOT
The box arrived on Monday and everything was packaged nicely with ice all around the box, so it could stay cold for hours, in case I wasn’t home.
They sent me the ingredients for my five recipes, two breakfast options (muesli and granola bars), four prepackaged paleo brownies, edible chickpea cookie dough, and a bunch of prepackaged snacks like edamame, microwave popcorn, sweet potato cups, a beef stick, and an instant quinoa cup with lemon and artichoke.
For breakfast I usually ate the muesli with almond milk, fruit from my fridge and almond butter and it made for a very satisfying breakfast.
For lunch on Tuesday, I made the first actual recipe: Thai Chicken + Veggie Stir Fry. The meal was a breeze to cook – I only had to stir fry the veggies, warm up and cut the chicken, mix everything together and add the peanut sauce. It looked like a small portion, but it was really satisfying, and I felt full.
I had room for desert though, so I tried one of the prepackaged brownies, too. It wasn’t your standard brownie – it was incredibly moist and felt more like a cake, but it tasted really good.
I’m not going to talk too much about the prepackaged snacks because they were pretty standard (a lot of them are available at Whole Foods or the healthy section of the grocery store), so of course they tasted good.
For dinner on Tuesday, we cooked the turkey burgers with a few additions from my fridge (lettuce, tomato, and red onion). Again, the recipe was incredibly quick and easy to prepare – I had to warm up the turkey patties and toast the bread. This was one of our favorite recipes – it was really filling and super delicious, and I think we would’ve liked it even if we didn’t add the tomato, onion, and lettuce.
On the following day, I also tried the edible cookie dough. I’m generally not someone who enjoys eating raw cookie dough, but I was very curious about this one. It tasted really, really nice and I couldn’t taste the chickpeas at all. You could also bake it into cookies, which I wanted to do, but my husband liked it so much as it was that he pretty much finished it.
The next recipe we tried was for dinner on Wednesday and we had a grain bowl with chicken, snap peas, and the same peanut sauce from the first recipe. The recipe was just as simple to make as the previous ones and tasted really nice with one minor issue – some of the snap peas were mature and tough, so not really enjoyable to eat.
The next meal I tried was a salmon bowl with sweet baby broccoli and lentil rice mix. This was my absolute favorite recipe! The cooking process was super simple too – I only had to cook the broccoli for 6-7 minutes and microwave the rice mix. The salmon was hot smoked, so it only had to come to room temperature. This dish was pretty simple, but everything went really well together and tasted amazing.
And then on Friday, I only had one recipe left: a flatbread (corn tortilla) that was supposed to be topped with refried beans, crumbled Beyond Burger, and green chile sauce. For this recipe I only had to toast the tortillas in the oven for 7-9 minutes, cook the burger on the stove, and warm up the refried beans – that took me about 10 minutes in total. I really liked the final result – the flavors went really well together, and it was fun and delicious.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Honestly, I was pleasantly surprised by Hugryroot, I didn’t expect to enjoy the meals as much as I did. I loved how easy and quick it was to prepare the recipes. The protein in most of the recipes I tried was already cooked and needed just to be warmed up – the chicken, turkey burgers, and the salmon were all really well cooked and nicely seasoned. Some portions looked small, but they ended being satisfying and made me feel full.
I really like the convenience of Hungryroot and even though it’s not cheap, I think the price is reasonable. We usually spend about $150 a week on groceries for my husband and me, and eat out once or twice, so if I end up using this service and don’t eat out, I think it will be just slightly more expensive.
Now let’s talk about my not so favorite things:
- I thought that the meat in some of the recipes was a pretty small serving – the chicken that I used in two of my dishes didn’t seem enough for two servings – I’d usually use that amount for one person. But, in the end of the day, the meal was still filling since the grains added some protein, too.
- Most meals have a lot of carbs which is not necessarily a bad thing but makes this service not great for people who are trying to eat low carb or keto. I wish they had more low carb options to choose from.
- They show the calorie count of each dish online, but they don’t show the amounts of protein, carbs, fats, etc. which I would’ve wanted to see. I tried googling and came across a PDF with nutritional information but couldn’t find my recipes on there.
Overall, I like it enough to keep my subscription for a while to get a better idea of their offerings and try more stuff. I especially see the value of a service like that when we eventually return to the office – it will be great to have my dinner for the work week all planned out and be able to cook dinner in about 10 minutes when I get home.
Here are some DISCOUNT CODES in case you’re interested in trying Hungryroot for yourself:
Free Black Bean Brownie Batter for Life + 30% off First Delivery of $99+ with code: FREEBROWNIES: https://www.pntra.com/t/SUNISUpNSk9DSEdKSk1NQ0dNTExJRg
Evergreen – 15% Off 2 Boxes: HR15 https://www.gopjn.com/t/SUNIRkdOTkxDSEdKSk1NQ0dNTExJRg
Avocado on Everything 