Mindful Chef review: Could this recipe box help us eat healthier at home?

How we shop for food is changing. The height of the pandemic saw us making fewer trips to the supermarket, and Google searches for “food delivery” hit an all-time high in April 2020 as Covid-19 fears grew and home felt a much safer place to be.

When restaurants shut during lockdowns, people wanted to recreate the same delicious foods they used to enjoy out, but from the comfort of their own kitchens. This triggered a doubling in spending on at-home recipe boxes in April last year, compared with 2019.

LIke everyone else, we got into a bit of a food rut. Even by the end of 2021 we were still running low on healthy meal ideas, which meant we were ordering too many takeaways, eating too many processed foods and frequently making the same meals. So we were curious as to whether Mindful Chef could offer that much-needed injection of inspiration to help us eat better and avoid diet monotony.

Started in the summer of 2015, co-founder Giles Humphries tells us that the name embodies all that the brand aspires to be: mindful of the healthy ingredients it uses, mindful of the suppliers it works with and mindful of its impact on the environment. “We worked on a fishing boat off the coast of Devon, bringing in the day’s fresh catch to the locals,” he says. “The catch was always so fresh there’d be queues along the quayside. We thought, what if everyone in the UK had access to such brilliant local healthy produce? A few months later, Mindful Chef was born.”

We explored the Mindful Chef experience from start, from visiting the website to selecting our recipes, cooking and eating. We noted the clarity of the instructions, length of cooking time and ease of plating up.

Read more:

We looked at the quality of the ingredients, how long they lasted, portion sizes, and we put the packaging under the spotlight to see how its eco-credentials stacked up. Most importantly, we taste-tested everything we ordered, including vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options.

open image in gallery

As we’ve said, we were in the middle of a food rut when we trialled Mindful Chef, so we were thrilled to find that there are 20 changing recipes on the menu each week, including meat, fish and plant-based dishes. This abundance of options is the perfect remedy to diet boredom.

The website itself is colourful, clear and easy to use. Signing up is quick and straightforward, and we love that all the recipe boxes available that week have photographs – we eat with our eyes, after all. The information on calorie content, macros, cook time, ingredients and whether they are low-carbon recipes helps when choosing too.

Read more: 9 best vegan subscription boxes for plant-based goodness delivered straight to your door

Filtering the recipes suitable for your dietary needs is simple: you can show only meat and fish, pescetarian or vegan meals (people avoiding gluten and dairy need not worry, because all the recipes are free of both). You can also select the delivery date to suit you from the interactive calendar – just remember that you need to be home to take your delivery or have a safe place where the driver can leave your box until you return. Delivery is free across the UK.

Prices start from £4.50 per meal, especially if you go for the best-value-for-money option for four people. As an example, the three dishes we had for two people, consisting of 37 fresh ingredients, came to £49 – working out at just over £8 per head for each meal. It’s not cheap, but it’s considerably cheaper than eating out or getting a takeaway, and the food quality is outstanding.

There are also often discounts, including £10 off the first and second recipe boxes right now, which is automatically applied for people trying Mindful Chef for the first time. Signing up doesn’t tie you into a contract, and you can cancel anytime.

Besides the recipe boxes, there is a massive range of healthy frozen ready meals to choose from, as well as breakfast cereals, soups and broths, smoothies and desserts. You could shop here and hardly ever need to step foot in a supermarket for food again – it’s the ideal solution for busy people looking for convenience without compromising their health.

open image in gallery

We tested a recipe box of three meals for two adults, a frozen ready meal, some cereals, smoothies, soups and puddings. Our recipes were king prawns with Cajun roasted squash and dill yoghurt, a traditional turkey roast, and a vegan west African sweet potato and peanut curry. Everything arrived packaged securely and in perfect condition, with the meals in their own numbered paper bags to avoid any confusion about what ingredients go in what dish. The boxes came insulated in fleece to protect from bumps and maintain freshness, and there were ice packs too.

We also got a magazine with 20 excellent recipe ideas, which we’ll be using again for inspiration with our own ingredients, even when we haven’t ordered in a Mindful Chef box. It also contains comprehensive information about each recipe, including nutritional content, how many people it serves, cooking time and guidance on mindful eating.

Each meal is developed by chefs and prepared using only ethical, sustainable, high-quality healthy ingredients, including 100 per cent British meat, free-range chicken and pork, grass-fed beef, and MSC-certified sustainably caught fish. Most of the ingredients arrived with about a week on their use-by dates, giving plenty of time to use them all.

Read more: 10 best gluten-free cookbooks to kick coeliac disease in the gut

The brand’s recipes are gluten free and contain “no dairy ingredients, refined carbs, refined sugars, preservatives or cheap fillers”, says Humphries. “Each recipe contains pre-portioned ingredients, so there’s no food waste.”

Everything needed for each recipe is measured and ready to go, apart from the chopping and slicing of some ingredients. Our tester used to enjoy cooking before the pandemic, and found all three recipes super simple to make. We think even novice cooks could cope because the instructions are clear and straightforward.

It was also a lot of fun to try out new recipes – they sparked the imagination for new takes on the dishes in future. We also love that we used everything up when preparing the dishes, meaning there was zero food waste, but there was some plastic rubbish, such as the packaging the herbs came in.

Now we get to our favourite part of all: the eating. After months of scoffing convenience foods, tasting the Mindful Chef meals reminded us of the importance of fresh, high-quality ingredients and adding flair with plenty of herbs and spices.

open image in gallery

Each dish we made was delightful, with flavour combinations we’d not ventured to try before – it surprised us to know we were able to put together such fantastic creations. Plus, the portions were generous, and we were left feeling satisfied but not bloated or sluggish after each meal.

The ready-prepared options are just as delicious and require zero effort and time. The breakfast boxes went down a storm in our tester’s house – the pecan, coconut and chia granola is sublime and super satisfying, while the frozen smoothies meant we were able to get more fruit and veg into our diet. These arrive pre-chopped and ready for blitzing with a splash of coconut water (although we used only regular tap water), and our favourite is the refreshing orange energiser, consisting of mandarin, mango, carrot, turmeric and ginger.

The frozen ready meals are also brilliant for popping in the microwave on those nights when you want to eat well and avoid opening the Uber Eats app but just don’t have time to cook – this is fast food. Meanwhile, the puddings are to die for and perfect for rounding off a special occasion dinner or when you fancy something sweet at the end of your meal.

Mindful Chef has been a B Corp-certified business since 2018, which means its operation meets specific criteria in terms of its impact on its workers, community, environment and customers. It also produces an annual sustainability report.

The business is climate neutral and aims to be net zero by 2030, which is an impressive commitment considering food production accounts for more than a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. And it’s the first recipe box company to label its recipes according to their carbon footprint. Those meals carrying the “low carbon impact” label generate less than 1.6kg CO2e from field to fork and even to disposal, which is in line with the World Wide Fund for Nature’s target of reducing diet-related emissions.

Read more: 9 best eco-friendly coffee capsules for barista quality joe that helps the planet

Looking specifically at the recipe box we were sent, the packaging was predominantly made from materials that can be recycled at home using your standard household waste collection service. This included the outer box, brown bags, the magazine, tins, spice pods and the ingenious cardboard cool boxes. The ice packs can be recycled at your local supermarket in the carrier bag bin after you’ve poured the melted, non-toxic liquid down the sink at home.

Beyond its efforts to reduce its impact on the planet, Mindful Chef takes social responsibility seriously and is working to help end food poverty. Its partnership with the charity One Feeds Two means that for every meal a customer buys, Mindful Chef donates a nutritious school meal to a child living in poverty in Malawi. Through this scheme, it has so far donated more than 10 million meals since 2017.

We’re immensely impressed with everything Mindful Chef does, from creating delicious recipe boxes to its ethos and commitment to the environment and charitable causes. The nutritious meal boxes are excellent, with high-quality ingredients, exciting recipes and easy-to-follow instructions. It removes most of the hassle involved in eating healthily, and we especially love how it caters for people following different diets. The flavours are out of this world, and they cured this tester of their pandemic food boredom by providing heaps of inspiration.

Buy now