I’m an RD Who Tried Hungryroot. Here’s My Review

So I was intrigued when I heard about Hungryroot. This hybrid service offers grocery delivery and easy-to-make meal kits that are customizable based on the recipe you choose. It also claims to make it easy to find vegetarian, vegan, low-sugar, low-sodium, family-friendly, and allergen-free options. I decided to try out Hungryroot’s meal and grocery delivery service for one week. Here’s what I thought.

The sign-up process for Hungryroot starts with a quiz to help the service get a better idea about your needs and preferences when it comes to food.

First I was asked about what I hoped to get out of my Hungryroot subscription (my options included better health, weight loss, saving money, and saving time), then I was asked about my food allergies, taste preferences, cooking skills, and how much food I wanted to receive each week.

Once I’d completed the quiz, I was asked to select my meal plan. It auto-populated a proposed meal plan based on my quiz results, but I had the option to change any selection and customize how many meals, snacks, fruit, or desserts I was interested in. After completing the questionnaire, my cart was automatically filled with suggested recipes and food items based on my quiz answers.

Recipes and Grocery Items

This is where Hungryroot is a little different than other meal delivery services I’ve tried before. Instead of choosing meal kits, you have the option to select a recipe, and then the ingredients will be added to your cart for you, including a suggested protein, base (pasta, grains), veggies, and sauces. You also have the option to swap ingredients out based on your tastes, like replacing chicken with tofu or another plant-based protein.

There are more than 1,000 recipes to choose from in all. To make selecting recipes easier, you can filter by dietary needs (such as allergy-friendly, vegan, etc.), protein type, spice level, meal type, cooking time, and cooking appliances used.

I found that the filters worked very well at showing options based on specific needs. For example, adding the peanut-free filter removed all the recipes and groceries with peanuts. It’s also worth noting that even if you tell Hungryroot that you’re interested in vegan meals during your sign-up quiz, you still have access to the entire recipe library (and all grocery items), vegan and non-vegan.

If you don’t like any of the recipe options, you can just select grocery items you like and make your own creations. Or you can just pick out a number of your favorite food items — using the service more like a grocery delivery.

Hungryroot Point System

The ability to select recipes for meals and grocery items is made a little complicated by Hungryroot’s point system. Rather than viewing the cost per meal or per item in your recipe, you are allocated a certain number of points to use to order groceries that week. Each recipe and add-on is given a point value.

For example, the Marinara Italian Sausage Stuffed Peppers meal costs 11 points; fresh avocado is 1 point; and fruit, nut, and cheese snack packs are 3 points each.

I couldn’t find an explanation of how many points you get for each meal plan or how much each point is worth. So you don’t see the true dollar cost of each add-on item or meal, which I didn’t like. It made it difficult for me to gauge whether my grocery items were more or less expensive than similar items I could get at my local grocery store.

You can’t order more than eight recipes for meals per week, but you can add extra grocery items beyond your point total for an added cost. If you don’t use all of your points that week, they do carry over to the next week. You can edit the cart up to two weeks in advance for menu and grocery selections.

Choosing My Meals

When choosing meals, I was surprised by the number of options and variety available. For example, I saw bison and scallops on the menu. The selection made it hard to narrow down recipes to try, but I ended up receiving the following meals:

• Crispy Chicken Caesar Salad
• Spinach Artichoke Salmon and Shaved Brussels
• Sesame Ginger Tofu and Crispy Brussels Bowl
• NY Strip With Creamy Asiago Salad and Potatoes
• Creamy Garlic Chicken Naan Wrap
• Chicken Breast and Pad Thai Veggie Stir-Fry
• Lemongrass Chicken With Sweet Potato and Green Beans
• Tomato Basil Chicken Pasta Alla Vodka

On delivery day, my order came in a large box. The food was packaged inside with four large ice packs and another sheet of cardboard between the ice packs and food. I unpacked the box when I got home, about an hour after the delivery notification. The ice packs were still solid, and I felt confident the food would’ve been kept at a good temperature had it sat there for several more hours.

Just about every item was individually wrapped. Some of the items were packaged in recyclable material, but there was a lot of single-use plastic too.

All items arrived in good condition and nothing was spoiled. However, I was surprised that about four of the proteins needed to be used within three to five days of receiving, and one of those needed to be used within three days. If you decide to try Hungryroot, be sure to check the use-by dates when you receive your items to ensure freshness.

Preparing the Meals

All the recipes for the meals I received were easy to make and the instructions were easy to follow. The box came with a packing slip that listed all the items included, and on the back were up to six recipes. The other two recipes were available on the Hungryroot website and app (you can also use the app to choose your recipes week-to-week).

The recipes expect you to have some basic pantry items like oil, salt, and pepper and offer recommendations for other items that pair well with the meal. For example, the Tomato Basil Chicken Pasta Alla Vodka recipe I ordered suggested that I consider adding fresh onion, parmesan cheese, and fresh bread sticks.

On average, the meals took 12 to 15 minutes to make. The Crispy Chicken Caesar Salad took about 5 minutes to cook and the Spinach Artichoke Salmon and Shaved Brussels around 30 minutes. The meals I selected all had very little prep; the only chopping was cutting up romaine lettuce for salad. The rest of the produce for meals came prechopped and ready to cook.

Most recipes follow a similar cooking process: Prepare and cook the grain (if included), cook the protein, sauté the vegetables, mix everything together, and stir in the contents of the sauce pouch.

If you’re an experienced cook who enjoys a little extra prep work, then you might end up getting a little bored with these meals. But if you’re looking for meals that will make cooking fast and easy, it’s a perfect option.

Tasting the Meals

All of the recipes tasted good, but there were some I would add more flavor to next time.

For example, I was excited to try the Chicken Breast and Pad Thai Veggie Stir-Fry, and it ended up being good, but not great. For this review I wanted to try the recipes exactly as the instructions called for, but in the future I would use more seasoning when cooking the chicken in this recipe. The instructions just had me cook it with heated oil, which made it a little bland.

The meals all left me full and satisfied. The portion sizes for the “protein with a side dish” meals (steak and sides, salmon and sides, etc.) were hefty for the two-serving meals. It was enough for both my husband and me to feel full, though we didn’t have any leftovers with the Spinach Artichoke Salmon or NY Strip recipes. However, the portions for the mixed dishes like the chicken pasta and the stir-fry were even more generous, leaving us full and with food left over. So I enjoyed the Tomato Basil Chicken Pasta Alla Vodka and the Sesame Ginger Tofu and Crispy Brussels Bowl as lunches the following days.

I enjoyed most of my add-ons, but I wouldn’t say that every item was delicious. For example, the pumpkinseed chocolate dipper had a texture and aftertaste that I didn’t like. But I really enjoyed the few snack packs I got with different fruits, vegetables, nuts, or cheeses in them.

Hungryroot provides a nutrition label for all of its items that lists information about calories, fat, protein, sugar, vitamin D, calcium, iron, potassium, and fiber, but this information is only available online or in the app, not on the printed recipes.

Protein

Calories

Depending on your health goals, you’ll want to be conscious of what you’re ordering from Hungryroot, because the calorie counts of the meals vary widely. For example, the NY Strip With Creamy Asiago Salad and Potatoes has 1,060 calories, 44 g of carbs, 38 g of protein, and 6 g of fiber per serving. The Garlic Chicken Naan Wrap has 960 calories per serving. But the Chicken Breast and Pad Thai Veggie Stir-Fry only has 390 calories per serving.

Sodium

So if you’re monitoring your intake of certain ingredients, you’ll need to be mindful. Hungryroot does make finding options that match your needs easier with the filters on its site; you can sort recipes to view those with less sodium, sugar, or calories.

Allergies

Hungryroot offers a few allergy-friendly options, including meals labeled as free of dairy, gluten, soy, tree nuts, peanuts, eggs, and shellfish. All recipes and ingredients are labeled on the website if they contain an allergen or are processed in a facility where cross-contamination could occur.

Hungryroot offers a more balanced weekly menu than some of its competitors because of the add-ons. Some meal kits provide just a few meals for the week, but with Hungryroot you can add on breakfast, snacks, fresh produce, extra grains, and other pantry staples. In that way, Hungryroot may make it possible to actually skip a trip to the grocery store.

With more than 1,000 recipes to choose from, the massive selection of meals every week really wowed me. Other meal kit delivery services have a much smaller selection of weekly meals: Dinnerly offers more than 90 recipes, Blue Apron offers about 20, HelloFresh offers approximately 100, and Purple Carrot offers about 20. Hungryroot’s large selection of meals and ingredients allows you to customize your meal kit more easily and ensures you’ll rarely have to repeat meals (unless you want to). However, some people could get overwhelmed by the volume of choices and may appreciate the more curated weekly selections of the other meal delivery services.

The grocery selection at Hungryroot sets the company apart because of the fresh produce and protein options. It’s more common to see add-ons like snacks, smoothies, and ready-to-eat foods. So being able to add extra ingredients for meals is a big benefit. With other meal kits I still needed to go to the grocery store for ingredients that aren’t included in the deliveries, but with the grocery selection from Hungryroot, I could order meat, vegetables, and grains to make additional meals.

Depending on your needs, Hungryroot can definitely be worth it. It may not be the best option for an experienced cook because the meals are very simple. However, Hungryroot is a great option for anyone looking for a hybrid of an online grocery service, meal kits, and fast, easy meals.

If you’re following a specific diet either to lose weight or manage a health condition, Hungryroot could also be a fit for you. With over 1,000 recipes to choose from every week, it’s very likely you’ll be able to find options that fit your needs. Not every recipe will be good because some are high in calories, carbs, salt, or contain allergens. So if you need to watch what you’re eating, you’ll need to intentionally select the recipes you receive to ensure they fit within your dietary needs.

Everyday Health is testing more than 50 meal delivery services to compare and provide honest reviews of the experiences with the companies. Each time we review a meal delivery service we vet the company and its business practices, consult with registered dietitians, and test the service to share the firsthand experience of using the product.

As a registered dietitian, I assessed the nutritional quality of the meals and whether the options would be a good fit with different diet needs. When reviewing Hungryroot meal delivery service, I also assessed:

• Sign-up process
• Menu selection
• Variety of meals and diets
• Quality of food when delivered
• Cooking process
• Taste of food
• Cost and value
• Quality of ingredients