Curating a delicious, balanced, and satisfying plant-based meal can feel daunting, but it’s a feat that truly pays off. Including more plants in your diet benefits cardiovascular health, the gut microbiome1, and metabolic health2. Thankfully, there are a number of vegan meal delivery services focused on helping people add more plants to their diet with convenient, easy-to-prepare recipes. I’ve put a lot of them to the test, and I’m sharing my full Purple Carrot review below. 

As a registered dietitian, I am always looking for tasty ways to increase my vegetable intake. I do cook vegetarian (and even vegan-friendly!) dishes sometimes, but I tend to rely on animal protein more often than not. After testing a few animal-protein-heavy meal kit delivery services, I was excited to try Purple Carrot, a service designed specifically to expand your plant palate. 

Available in the United States and Japan, Purple Carrot is a plant-based meal kit delivery service that provides a variety of vegan recipes and the ingredients to make the meal at home. The company was founded in 2014 with the goal to encourage people to eat more plants for their own health and the health of the planet—that’s something we can certainly get behind.

Each week, you can choose from eight rotating dinner recipes as well as a handful of lunch, breakfast, and snack options, with new recipes added each week. If meal kits aren’t your thing, Purple Carrot recently added prepared meals to its menu. These single-serve dinners just need to be heated in the microwave and you’ll have a chef-curated vegan meal within minutes. 

The cost of Purple Carrot depends on the number of meals per week, servings per meal, and whether you opt for the Meal Kit or Prepared Meals subscription. Typically, meals range from $11 to $14, with no additional charge for shipping. 

Adding on a Purple Carrot breakfast recipe costs about $4.50 per serving and lunch costs around $9 per serving. 

Once your plan and preference are in place, you’ll be prompted to select the meals you want for your box, with the option to add extras such as breakfast and lunch recipes, or Plantry™ items—plant-based pantry staples.  

My Purple Carrot box arrived on a Monday. Although it was delivered when I was out, the ice packs kept everything properly chilled. The box contained ingredients for each recipe, packaged together and well-labeled. Compared to other meal kits I’ve tried (most recently: Hello Fresh and Green Chef), Purple Carrot used the least amount of packaging for the actual food. Produce such as tomatoes, peppers, onions, and garlic were not individually wrapped, and instead were grouped in the ingredient bag. A recipe booklet was tucked into the box, outlining information for each meal.  

Okay, onto the good stuff. Here’s a full review of each Purple Carrot meal I tried. Note: The serving sizes were appropriate for me, but may not be satiating enough for someone with higher energy needs.

Tofu Peanut Stir-Fry with Charred Broccoli + Midnight Grains (Less Prep) (540 calories, 16 g fat, 63 g carbohydrate, 36 g protein per serving) 

I don't often cook with tofu, and I always appreciate recipes that bring me outside my habitual cooking routine. This “Less Prep” Tofu Peanut Stir-Fry did just that. 

The crispy tofu was surprisingly easy to whip up, as was the charred broccoli. I was most surprised by how much I enjoyed the Midnight Grains blend—especially because I was initially taken aback by the blend’s dark hue. The grains added a great contrasting flavor to the tofu and brought a delicious texture to the dish. Immediately after tasting it, I found myself searching for a copycat blend online. 

The peanut sauce arrived already prepared and ready to pour over the finished plates, cutting the prep time down significantly and earning this dish its “Less-Prep” sticker. It also packed a hefty punch of flavorful plant-based protein. My only note on this meal is that the tofu and the broccoli could have used more seasoning to supplement and further enhance the flavor of the peanut sauce—but this is something that can easily be remedied at home by digging into your own spice rack.

Romesco Chickpea Sandwiches (720 calories, 26 g fat, 93 g carbohydrates, 27 g protein per serving) 

The Romesco Chickpea Sandwiches was another simple, low-prep meal. The veggies only needed a quick roast in the oven, during which I was able to mash the chickpeas with the provided vegan mayo and ready-made Romesco sauce. 

I’m a big fan of sandwiches when they’re prepared well, and this sandwich truly held its own as a main dish. Pro tip: Instead of using the arugula for a side salad as intended, I added it to the sandwich—and its peppery bitterness balanced the sweetness from the tomatoes and onions well. 

Purple Carrot is tailored to those following a plant-based, vegetarian, or vegan diet. Meals may help support weight maintenance, or even weight loss. Many recipes range between 500 to 800 calories. The high-plant, and therefore high fiber content of Purple Carrot meals can also support healthy cholesterol levels3. The brand’s website cites that its meals have been clinically proven to help people lose weight and lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL) in just four weeks. 

I was impressed with the quality of the ingredients I received from Purple Carrot. Not only was the produce fresh, but I appreciated that I only received the exact amount of an ingredient that I needed. It helped food prep run smoothly, and I think it helped reduce the amount of food waste (which I had none of after these meals). 

Purple Carrot does provide some organic ingredients, but not everything in a Purple Carrot box is necessarily organic. The website specifies that most of its non-produce items (like chickpeas and tofu) are organic, but produce may be variable. 

Purple Carrot is worth it for people who want a convenient way to eat more plant-based, vegan meals at a pretty reasonable cost (especially compared to restaurants or takeout) of $11 to just over $13 per serving. The recipes are unique, globally inspired, and offer enough variety of protein, produce, grains and sauces, that you’re not likely to be bored. If you have no dietary restrictions, you’ll have eight vegan recipes to choose from, which is likely a more robust offering than the vegan plan options from other services. However, options may be more limited if you follow a gluten, soy, or nut-free eating pattern.