I’m working my way through all the best vegan recipe boxes to find out which ones are worth your money and which ones you should steer clear of.
This week I’ve cooked and eaten my way through a Mindful Chef vegan food box.
Mindful Chef has outstanding reviews online, with over 10,000 positive reviews on Trustpilot plus a string of celebrity endorsements. So, it’s fair to say that my expectations were high.
But does Mindful Chef live up to the hype? Or was I left hungry? Read on to find out what I loved and what I hated about Mindful Chef.
How is Mindful Chef different from other meal delivery boxes?
If you’ve tried recipes from Hello Fresh or Gousto, you’ll be familiar with the concept of a recipe box that contains ingredients and recipes.
However, Mindful Chef is a little different. Here’s why…
- Mindful Chef is super healthy – You’ll find no white pasta, bread or white rice
- Mindful Chef is gluten-free – Perfect for celiacs or anyone wanting to avoid gluten
- Mindful Chef is low-calorie – With 450 to 650 cals in every serving, you can’t overeat
- Mindful Chef is a certified B-Corp – This means the company meets the highest levels of social and environmental performance
- Mindful Chef helps charities – For every meal you buy, a child living in poverty gets one too
So far, so good, right? Now let’s take a look at how I got on with cooking my Mindful Chef meals at home.
Mindful Chef Vegan Recipes
I tried three of Mindful Ched’s vegan recipes – Sweet potato and lentil burgers, charred cauliflower steak and roasted squash with mushrooms and lentils.
As my Mindful Chef box was gifted to me, I didn’t get to choose the recipes. Some of them had ingredients that I didn’t like, (there’s just no place for olives in my life!), but I bit the bullet and took it as the perfect opportunity to try some new vegan recipes.
Here’s what I made…
Sweet Potato & Lentil Burgers with Avocado
✅ Calories: 601 kcal ✅ Fat: 20g ✅ Carbs: 84g ✅ Protein: 18g
These have to be the world’s healthiest burgers. There’s no bread – instead, the sweet potato and lentil patties rest on top of portobello mushrooms.
I’ve never made burgers from scratch before. Unless you count one time in a food technology class at high school when everyone made burgers from beef mince. I was instructed to bring in some frozen Quorn mince and fashion it into a burger shape. When it (obviously) wouldn’t stick together, the teacher came over to help and immediately plunged her blood-stained hands into my veggie mince. That was enough to put me off for life.
Anyway, these burgers were really fun to make. While I’ll probably opt for frozen bean burgers most of the time, I love the idea of using a portobello mushroom instead of a bun and that’s something I’ll definitely do again.
That’s the great thing about recipe boxes like these – they inspire you to improve your cookery skills.
Cumin-Roasted Squash, Mushrooms and Lentils
✅ Calories: 480 kcal ✅ Fat: 24g ✅ Carbs: 53g ✅ Protein: 14g
Next up was roasted squash, mushrooms and lentils. Confession time – I’d never cooked squash before!
I love how Mindful Chef lets you try new ingredients that you wouldn’t normally use. Honestly, I’d shied away from buying a butternut squash as I just didn’t know how to cook it.
The Mindful Chef recipe tells you not just how to roast the squash, but also how to cut it up. There’s a QR code in the recipe booklet that you can scan if you need extra help with things like removing thyme leaves from stalks or prepping an avocado.
Unfortunately, my (lack of) cooking skills in the squash department must have let me down as my squash was still hard. Perhaps my ‘bite-sized pieces’ were too chunky. Perhaps my oven was playing up. I’m not sure, but my squash was a little tough.
The rest of the dish was really tasty and so healthy – I could almost feel it nourishing my body as I ate it!
Charred Cauliflower Steak & Hazelnut Pesto
✅ Calories: 564 kcal ✅ Fat: 35g ✅ Carbs: 47g ✅ Protein: 19g
My final Mindful Chef meal was the cauliflower steak.
Honestly, I can’t say that I enjoyed this dish because I can’t stand cauliflower, olives or capers. But, I can appreciate that it was a healthy, well-thought-out dish that most vegans would love.
It was really fresh and flavourful so if you like these ingredients I’m sure you’d find it delicious. The instructions were really easy to follow and the whole thing was ready in under 30 minutes.
The Mindful Chef Mindful Recipe Book
When you order from Mindful Chef, you get a recipe book with all of the dishes for that week, not just the ones that you have requested.
I think that a lot of people would love this as you could save it and then go out and buy the ingredients for some of the dishes that aren’t in your box if you wish.
As a vegan, the problem I found with having all of the recipes is that you can’t help but see pictures of meat dishes. While you’re cooking your vegan recipe from one page, there may be a picture of a bloody steak on your kitchen counter. This probably won’t bother many people, but I found it a little off-putting to see.
Mindful Chef Packaging
As an eco-conscious vegan, I was very impressed with Mindful Chef’s packaging.
Each meal comes in its own numbered bag, so you can pop it straight onto their fridge without the ingredients getting mixed up with the rest of your food.
Mindful Chef tries to make as much of the packaging recyclable as possible. The box includes a booklet that tells you what to do with each item of packaging including the box, paper bags, tins, pots, sachets, film and ice packs.
Remember to check what can actually be recycled as this differs by area. While the Mindful Chef booklet states that pots, punnets and trays can be recycled, my local council won’t accept low-grade plastics like these in my bin.
Mindful Chef is still working to improve the sustainability of the packaging and I’d love to see an alternative to the unrecyclable plastic that’s currently used.
What I do love is that all of the inks and glues that are used to make the box are vegan-friendly.
Free extras
My Mindful Chef box came with some free drinks which was totally unexpected. I love when you order products and you get free samples from other companies. It’s a great way to try things that you wouldn’t usually buy.
What is the cost of Mindful Chef?
Mindful Chef vegan meals cost around £6 per person when you buy meals for two people. Some meals are a little more, some a little less.
If you order Mindful Chef meals for one you can expect to pay around £9 each. Some of these can be reheated the next day, so even if you live alone you may wish to consider ordering for two people and microwaving half of the food for tomorrow’s lunch or dinner.
Mindful Chef offers a great value family box that serves four adults or two adults and three children. This brings the cost down to around £4.50 per person (£18 per recipe).
If you’d like to try Mindful Chef for yourself, you can use my discount code ‘VEGANISM’ to get £10 off.
Get £10 OFF Mindful Chef
When you use discount code ‘VEGANISM’
The Bottom Line
I would recommend Mindful Chef to anyone who’s looking to try new plant-based recipes that they haven’t cooked before. All of the dishes are really healthy and calorie-controlled. You won’t find any processed foods or empty carbs.
If you feel that the price of Mindful Chef is a little high, I’d suggest that you also look into Gousto. Their boxes aren’t quite as health-focused as Mindful Chef, but they are quite a bit cheaper.
Click here to visit Gousto.co.uk.
Mindful Chef vegan recipe box review
Summary
Mindful Chef recipe boxes are great for anyone looking for healthy vegan recipes with zero food waste. The dishes are colourful and lots of fun to make.