I FIRST did a Mindful Chef review over two years ago, and quickly decided it's the best meal delivery service on the market.
However, it now faces more competition than ever, so I decided to re-test its healthy, filling and creative meals to see if they're still the best around.
One of the only issues I had with Mindful Chef the first time round is that it's expensive; meals started from around £6.25 per person and went up to around £9 for recipes including fancy ingredients like steak or salmon.
Thanks to inflation, it's now more like £7.50 for one of its cheaper meals, and a swanky steak supper will run you closer to £10.
That means that, to impress, Mindful Chef needs to be better than ever.
Thankfully, after re-testing it, my conclusion remains the same: Mindful Chef is doing the meal-delivery thing better than anyone else.
- Get 25% off your first four Mindful Chef boxes – here
Pros
- Great-quality ingredients
- Interesting, seasonal and wide-ranging recipe selection that introduces you to new dishes and cuisines
- Portion for two ACTUALLY serves two
- B-Corp certified
Cons
- Expensive, even compared to other meal delivery services — especially if you're only feeding one person
- Introductory offers aren't as good as competitors'
Rating: 9.5/10
How I tested Mindful Chef
I'm an enthusiastic home chef, and spend a good portion of my free time turning my kitchen into a complete bomb site in the pursuit of creating nice food.
However, I don't always have the time to whip up something from scratch, and meal delivery services are a great way to ensure you're getting a good meal without resorting to Deliveroo.
Recently, I've been reassessing our reviews of meal delivery services to make sure they still, well… deliver.
That means that, in the last few months, I've tested services including Hello Fresh, Gousto, Green Chef and Field Doctor.
I used the same test process for Mindful Chef, choosing, cooking and eating three meals and assessing how easy they were to make and clean up, how tasty they were, and whether the service generally provides value for money.
I also mentally compared it to when I tested it out a couple of years ago, to see if the service has got any better or worse.
Mindful Chef review: Quickfire Q&A
What is Mindful Chef?The idea for Mindful Chef isn't unusual, and it isn't the first of its kind; it's a meal delivery service with a fairly vanilla mission statement to send customers well-sourced, healthy ingredients that combine to create tasty meals.
How much is Mindful Chef? Unlike other recipe boxes, there isn't a base price for a Mindful Chef box — it depends on the meals you choose. If you're feeding two, meals start at £7.50 per person and go up to around £10. However, you can get 25% off your first four boxes.
Who's it best for?Frankly, people who have a bit of money to spend, and who want to cook tasty, seasonal food without putting in too much effort.
What we loved:The food — quality ingredients, generous portions and thoughtfully-designed recipes come together to make a delicious dinner.
What we didn't: It's undeniably expensive, and its introductory offer isn't as good as the ones from, say, Hello Fresh or Gousto.
Who founded Mindful Chef? It was founded by school friends Giles Humphries, Myles Hopper and Robert Grieg-Gran. Early investors in the brand included Sir Andy Murray and Victoria Pendleton. In 2020, five years after the brand was founded, Nestlé, the biggest food company in the world, acquired a majority stake in the company.
Mindful Chef review: The Nitty Gritty
First impressions
Mindful Chef works largely in the same way as other recipe boxes; you go onto the website, select the meals you'd like to eat that week (and the number of people you're feeding), choose a day for delivery, and enjoy your food.
Each week, Mindful Chef gives you 20 to 25 recipes to choose from, which is admittedly a lot fewer than its two main competitors; at the time of writing, Gousto has a staggering 180 available recipes (though many don't change week by week), while Hello Fresh has 50.
However, Mindful Chef's recipe selection focuses more on quality than quantity; each recipe is extremely well thought through and makes use of seasonal ingredients. The menu this week (in late April ) includes:
- Seared Wild Venison Steak and Harissa Carrots with Creamy Feta
- Vibrant Trout, Courgette & Cannellini Bean Spring Stew
- Speedy Vegan Sunflower Mince Dan Dan Noodles with Chilli Oil
Honestly, it reads like a restaurant menu, and I have one rule when I go to a restaurant: the smaller the menu, the better the food.
Once you've placed an order, you'll be enrolled on a weekly subscription, which can be cancelled at any time.
Helpfully, the ingredients arrive organised into separate bags, with one corresponding to each recipe.
An issue I've run into in the past is that I can eat a portion for two people from most meal delivery services without breaking a sweat.
Occasionally, I can stretch it to a dinner portion and a meagre lunch portion for the next day, but if I cook it for me and another person, chances are I'm going to bed hungry.
Some meal delivery services (I'm looking at you, Hello Fresh) get around this by bulking portions out with hefty portions of carbs and veg.
However, Mindful Chef is the first service I've tried that sends enough protein for two big portions. One of the first meals it sent me was a Valentine's Day steak dinner, and the beautiful slab of ribeye left my girlfriend and I stuffed.
Meanwhile, a portion of tofu for two includes a full 280g block of Tofoo Naked Tofu; a portion of salmon for two is 300g; a pork loin recipe included two thick, butcher-sourced pork steaks. I was nothing short of astounded by the generosity of the portions.
Does it deliver?
I've tried three boxes for this Mindful Chef review, and I've now tried several meat, fish and veg recipes.
On all occasions, I was taken aback by three things: the quality of the ingredients, the inventiveness of the recipes and the generosity of the portions.
A small gesture I like is that, in your box, you get a full booklet of that week's recipes, rather than the individual recipe cards you get with most services; you're essentially receiving a mini cookbook with every order.
Pretty much every recipe I sent was extremely healthy, but none of them were boring; a standout was the Salmon Okonomiyaki, which is a Japanese savoury pancake made with batter and cabbage.
It's not something I'd made before, but it's something I'll definitely be making again. And as you can see, the amount of salmon Mindful Chef sent to top the pancake was liberal (that's half of the two-person portion).
As I mentioned earlier, some recipe boxes bulk out meals with simple carbs like white rice or pasta. However, Mindful Chef has made things difficult for itself by swearing off them completely.
One of my recipes included black rice, while others contained butterbeans or interesting salads.
What I'm trying to convey here is that Mindful Chef doesn't phone it in — every element of a recipe is well-considered, and the brand doesn't cut corners.
And if you do fancy something more indulgent, you're certain to find something; there's an array of fakeaway favourites available, from Pad Thai to burgers.
- Get 25% off your first four Mindful Chef boxes – here
How much is Mindful Chef?
While Mindful Chef is excellent, it comes with a hefty price tag.
If you're feeding two people, veggie meals, which contain cheaper ingredients, start from around £7.50 per portion.
Cheaper meat meals containing chicken, turkey, pork or mince usually cost somewhere between £8 and £9, and if you want steak, lamb, duck or fish, you're looking at up to £10 per person.
If you're feeding just one person, you can expect those prices to go as high as £14.50. To be honest, I'd get the one for two and have the leftovers for lunch.
However, if you're feeding a family of four, those prices go down a bit, to £5.25 per person for cheaper meals to £7.50 for fancier ones.
Without discounts, if you're a couple receiving three recipes per week at a range of price points, you're looking at a weekly cost of somewhere around £50.
Comparatively, you can get three meals for around £31.75 from Gousto and £36.48 from Hello Fresh.
However, it is still cheaper than getting a takeaway or going out for dinner, and you are paying for quality.
Like most recipe boxes, there is an introductory offer that makes it cheaper: you can get 25% off your first four recipe boxes.
That does take the sting out of the price, but it's also not blowing its competitors out of the water: Hello Fresh offers 50% off your first box and 20% off the following month (as well as free dessert for life), while Gousto does a similar deal; 50% off your first order, 40% off your second order and 20% off the rest of the first two months.
- Get 25% off your first four Mindful Chef boxes – here
Mindful Chef alternatives
There's a buffet of meal delivery services to pick and choose from these days, but Mindful Chef does occupy its own corner of the market; a premium service more concerned with quality than affordability.
The closest comparison I've encountered is probably Green Chef, which I tested for my ; it has the same focus on healthy ingredients and has a slightly higher-than-average price point.
If you're looking for a full list of alternatives, I'd recommend you read our tried-and-tested list of the .
