Purple Carrot – Plant Based Meal Prep Subscription Review
I tried Purple Carrot, another meal prep / meal kit (similar to Hello Fresh), but is completely plant based, and here’s my Purple Carrot review.
How I Heard About Purple Carrot
Honestly, I had no idea Purple Carrot was entirely plant based until after I paid. I got so excited when I got a $50 cash back offer from Ibotta if I purchased / subscribed to Purple Carrot. So yes, thank you Ibotta for referring me to Purple Carrot!
How Purple Carrot Works
Very similar to the other meal preps / meal kit subscription thingys. Select how any meals/servings you want, pay a lot of $$, get the ingredients, and cook. Repeat and such. Now below are the recipes I received during my first week –
Meal 1 – Minted Spinach Soup
Recipe found here. This was a completely new experience for us! We decided to make this one first because the bag of spinach was broken upon arrival. The soup itself was rather interesting, but like Hello Fresh, it didn’t keep us full. We ended up eating another dinner along with this, so this was more of an appetizer. The crispy chickpeas and carrots were pretty good, and the soup itself was alright.
Meal 2 – Roasted Roots Salad
Recipe can be found here. This one contains Spicy Pumpkin Seeds & Orange Vinaigrette. It also has some kind of rice too, so it’s more of a gain and salad bowl. It’s a pretty good salad, but the orange bothered me a bit because of my aversion toward certain citrus tastes and smells during my pregnancies. Everything else went pretty well together and we definitely ate a lot of colors during this meal! We also had some chicken wings and hummus with pita chips with our salad, so oops… ruined the plant based meal LOL. The carrots were pretty good. I’d definitely have this salad again, but with a different dressing / vinaigrette.
Meal 3 – Mushroom Fried Rice
Recipe can be found here. My first impression was, ugh, another rice dish… I’ve had enough rice and fried rice all these years, and now there’s more. It was actually pretty decent since it was a different style than the fried rices I’ve had growing up. Rice with nearly every meal really made me dislike rice with exception for kimchi fried rice, but oh well. Purple Carrot’s mushroom fried rice recipe was good. I really like mushrooms, and the peanuts in there gave it some texture. The rice itself was eh, but everything else around it made it pretty good. It could have used some sriracha or something.
Overall / Worth It?
I’m pretty happy with my first week of Purple Carrot. A meal doesn’t always need meat for it to taste good, and I enjoy my veggies here and there. I’m even more happy that I got to try because of Ibotta; otherwise, I wouldn’t be so thrilled with paying $51 for this ($71 without Purple Carrot’s own discount). Overall these meals cost me around a dollar since I got $50 back from Ibotta. I’d definitely will re-activate my subscription if money wasn’t an issue though… and also the portion sizes. The husband and I really need to learn portion sizes. Sigh!
