My Sunbasket Review: Was It Worth It?

I’ve been cooking up a STORM this week thanks to Sunbasket. If you know me, you know this is a very, very, rare occurrence. Cooking is not something I do all that often. I’m legit on a first name basis with everyone that works at my favorite sushi restaurant. That’s how well they know me.

I have one dish that I make daily, sauteed kale with chickpeas over rice. I make it for lunch 4 days a week. And rely on takeout for all other meals I consume. NYC living for ya.

BUT I’ve been wanting to cook more for myself. In theory I enjoy cooking. I’m not great at it, but [most of the time] I find it fun and relaxing. Even though I want to cook for myself more than I currently do, there’s been a few things stopping me:

One: I live alone. A LOT of food I make goes to waste. How many times can ya eat the same turkey chili in one week?

Two: I suck at cooking. Many of the things I cook don’t come out great.

Three: Sometimes I ain’t got the time to cook. I teach fitness classe at night which means I’m scarfing down dinner FAST at 5:30PM.

Four: My kitchen is small. Legit smaller than my closet. It’s hard to maneuver around when you only got 1 foot of spare counter space to prepare your food on.

and Five: The whole process is daunting. Picking out the recipes. Praying that Whole Foods has the right kind of brussel sprouts to make that one dish I want to make. Chopping and preparing everything. And so on.

Dudes, I’m full of excuses for why I don’t cook. Last week Jeremy received some Blue Apron freebies from a friend. This inspired me to try a meal delivery service myself.

Why I Chose Sunbasket

Researching all the different meal delivery services available overwhelmed me. There’s Blue Apron and HelloFresh and GreenChef, Purple Carrot, Sunbasket… the list legit goes on and on.

Ultimately I decided to go with Sunbasket for one main reason:

There were lots of “Kayla Friendly” options.

I don’t eat red meat (or pork) and I’m also lactose intolerant. Because of this the options available to me that are both dairy-free and also “meat” free are super limited. I was impressed to learn that Sunbasket always has a number of vegan options and also clearly labels which meals are dairy-free.

I also decided on Sunbasket versus the other options because they appeared to be the most “healthy” and focused on sustainability and organic products.

But obviously my first priority was finding food I can eat.

 

Here’s how it works:

After signing up I got to pick my three meals for the week — every dish makes two full servings.

Everything was delivered Sunday afternoon to my building in an insulated box. I ended up being away when the package arrived, I was coming home from spending the night in Westchester, so I was a bit worried everything had spoiled. Going forward I’d want to be home when the package arrives so I can refrigerate everything immediately.

Each meal came it it’s own brown bag filled with all the ingredients, perfectly portioned for the two servings. In the box there was also the recipe booklets and some helpful hints for getting started.

 

What I ate this week:

I decided to do a mixture of poultry, fish and vegan meals:

Apologies these photos are mediocre. Most were taken at night in my dark kitchen!

Shrimp Curry

Served over kale in a thick, creamy curry sauce.

 

Ecuadorian Chicken Stew

Served over brown rice in a slightly spicy red sauce

 

Tempeh Teriyaki 

Served over white rice. Def my faaaavorite of the meals hands down. The teriyaki sauce was SO good.

 

Here’s what I liked about Sunbasket:

▶︎ everything was super easy to make. My cooking skills are limited but I can confirm that all of the above dishes were easy to create. If I can do it, so can YOU.

▶︎ things came together pretty fast. I’d say at most it took me 35-45 minutes from start to finish cooking. I’m a bit slow and timid in the kitchen so it might’ve taken me a bit longer than those more confident in their cooking abilities.

▶︎ all packaging was recyclable. I’m impressed with how little waste my cooking experienced produced.

▶︎ each dish was good. Some were better than others, which might be my own personal palate mixed with my cooking skills. But I happily ate each dishes leftovers a second time.

▶︎ perfectly portioned. It’s great if you’re cooking for one like me.

▶︎ forced me out of my  cooking comfort zone. I never would have thought to make tempeh teriyaki, even though I know I love both tempeh and teriyaki. I learned how to make tempeh and will definitely be adding it to dishes going forward.

▶︎ convenience. No doubt this makes cooking super convenient. It takes the thought process out of figuring out what the heck you’re going to make. You don’t have to walk around Whole Foods trying to find that one obscure ingredient.

▶︎ it got me excited to cook. No really, it did. Every night I looked forward to trying out a new recipe and was excited to share the final product with my mom, Jeremy and instagram 😂

 

And here’s what I didn’t like about Sunbasket:

▶︎ price point. I used a referral code this week (psssst use this link to get $40 off your first week too!) which brought the cost down. Going forward each weekly delivery costs $71.94 or $11.99 per dish. Yes, that’s cheaper than my favorite salad at Sweetgreen or my go-to vegan panini at Peacefood Cafe. But in general, it’s still cheaper to cook your meals the old fashion way rather than using a meal delivery service.

Of course what you’re paying extra for is the “convenience” of the whole experience. In the end I saved money this week because I wasn’t ordering $18 ramen every night and instead was eating these meals for dinner.

▶︎ ingredients aren’t guaranteed. This is nit-picky but the shrimp curry was supposed to come with collard greens but instead came with kale. Which is fine, a leafy green is a leafy green, but I was excited to have a different green in my life because I eat a lot of kale. Luckily it was swapped for another green I like, but just know an ingredient might get swapped for sourcing issues.

▶︎ some dishes are “healthier” than others. I’m SO not one to calorie count, but in my head I have a rough guesstimate of what my daily calorie consumption is. Some of the meals seemed a bit high to me per serving — over 600 calories, whereas others were much lower. A friend of mine had asked if this is a good option for weight loss. I do think there are some great options if that’s your goal, but know that while these meals are healthy and often times dense in veggies, some of them are a bit higher in calorie count.

I’m also not a trained nutrition expert so take any advice I give about food with a grain of salt.

 

Would I do it again?

Yes. I already picked out my menu for next week and I’m pretty pumped for the tempeh tikka masala. Yummmm.

Going forward I’ll continue to use Sunbasket for weeks I don’t have a ton of dinner plans and my schedule is more chill. This week it worked well and I was able to cook each dish without feeling rushed for time. But if my schedule is more jam packed or I know I have lots of dinner plans throughout the week, it’s not worth it for me.

Ready to try it for yourself? Here is my referral code for Sunbasket — you’ll get $40 off your first Sunbasket order by using this link*. Let me know what meals you’re ordering!

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*This post contains referral links: You’ll get $40 off your first Sunbasket order and I’ll receive $40 towards my next order. Thank you for supporting Kayla in the City.