Does Green Chef offer vegan options?

Best answer: Green Chef offers a "plant-powered" meal plan with many vegan options and some vegetarian landmines.

• Green Chef Plant-Powered: Green Chef ($13 at Green Chef)
• Sun Basket vegan kits: Sun Basket ($13 at Sun Basket)
• Purple Carrot vegan kits: Purple Carrot ($12 at Purple Carrot)

Respecting the Vegan

Plant-focused eating is a popular trend, and many meal kits have jumped on board with plant-forward, vegetarian, and even vegan meal kit options. Unfortunately, very few of them are reliably strict in their adherence to vegan principles against using any animal products. Recipes may include cheese powders that contain milk products, or the occasional egg in some bread-y component.

Thankfully, most meal kit services will let you peruse the ingredients and recipes before you pick your weekly menu. However, it would be nice if more meal kits distinguished between vegan, vegetarian, and plain-old healthy plant-eating.

Green Chef kind of mostly vegan

Green Chef doesn't advertise its plan as "vegan," but a vegan eater can certainly fill a box every week with a selection of recipes that contain no animal products. Unfortunately, these come mixed in with the "vegetarian" recipes, but Green Chef calls out dairy in its ingredient list. So, it isn't too hard to spot the foods you'll want to avoid.

Checking out a current menu, you'll find pesto pasta using an egg-free vegan pasta. Flatbread pizzas keep the egg out of the naan crust but unfortunately use mozzarella cheese and parmesan. Still, of the six recipes offered, only one contained problematic ingredients, so vegans will still find a healthy selection of recipes to choose from.

Other vegan meal kits

In addition to Green Chef, Sun Basket also offers a vegan option among its meal plans. Sun Basket ingredients are also organic, like Green Chef. Sun Basket takes the guesswork out of picking the vegan meals, as the vegan plans don't hide any vegetarian options in the mix. Some of the recipes currently available include lentil sloppy joes, teriyaki tempeh, and sweet and sticky tofu. Sun Basket also offers vegetarian options.

If you're looking for a meal kit service that specializes in vegan fare, Purple Carrot ships only plant-based meals with no animal products to be found. The ranchero bowls use a cashew-based yogurt, and the mac n' cheese uses vegan mozzarella. There is a robust menu of vegan options with far more creativity and breadth of ingredients than I see on other meal kit menus.

Paying for vegan privilege

These vegan meal kit services are among the most expensive meal kit options, usually shipping recipes for $13 per serving or $26 for each 2-person meal. If it makes you feel better, these services are not up-charging vegans. The Green Chef Paleo, Keto, and omnivore plans all cost the same amount as the plant-powered plan. The same is true for Sun Basket. It would be nice for a more budget-friendly service like Blue Apron or Hello Fresh to get in on the vegan meal kit game, but for now, the high-end options are the only options.

Veganish menu

Green Chef

$13 at Green Chef

Vegan meals but check the ingredients

Green Chef offers plenty of vegan meals but unfortunately confuses the meal plan by mixing in a few decidedly vegetarian options as well.

Vegan menu

Sun Basket

$12 at Sun Basket

Sun Basket keeps the plan strictly vegan

Sun Basket offers organic meal kits, like Green Chef, but the service caters directly to vegans with a menu that omits any recipe with animal products.

All vegan

Purple Carrot

$12 at Purple Carrot

Purple Carrot is all vegan all the time

While competitors have vegan options, Purple Carrot only offers vegan meal plans, and the menu is more extensive.