Sunbasket was founded in 2014, but early last year, the meal kit delivery service did a complete brand overhaul. Instead of just providing meal kits to customers, the company branched out to start also offering ready-to-heat meals, as well as snacks, pantry staples, sides, and proteins. This meal delivery service is a great choice for the health-conscious among us, as the company serves 99% USDA-organic produce, milk, eggs and yogurt. They also use antibiotic and hormone-free meats and wild/sustainable seafood. As a health-conscious person myself, I had the opportunity to try Sunbasket—and I was excited to see how it worked for me. Here’s my honest review.
How Sunbasket works
Customers have the option to choose their meal plans based on individual dietary restrictions and preferences, with options including:
PaleoChef’s Choice (hand-picked and seasonal recipes)Carb-consciousVegetarianGluten-freePescatarianLean & clean (600 calories or less per serving and whole food based)MediterraneanDiabetes-friendlyFresh & Ready (heat and ready in under six minutes)
Once you have your plan figured out, you can select which meals you want to receive. Each week, there are a handful of kit options to choose from. Dishes include items like chickpea and carrot pita pockets with cumin-lime, chipotle chilaquiles with black beans and fried eggs, spicy shrimp penne arrabbiata with mushrooms and green beans, or Mediterranean lemon chicken with baby broccoli, artichokes, and olives. The kit arrives on ice with everything you need prepackaged and inside to make your recipes. Each recipe comes in its own bag with all of the ingredients together and a card containing the cooking instructions.
Sunbasket cost
The cost depends on the number of recipes you’d like per week and the number of servings per recipe. You can choose from meal plans for two to four people and can select 2, 3, or 4 recipes per week. If you opt for a two-serving, two-recipe weekly meal kit, it comes out to $55.96. Three two-serving recipes per week and is $71.94, and the most expensive plan is a four-serving, four-recipe plan for $140.80. First-time users will get their initial delivery at a discounted rate. Customers can also order fresh and ready meals. Two recipes per week and two servings are $47.96 and four recipes per week at four servings per recipe is $143.84. The company makes it easy to change your plan, skip weeks, and even alter your delivery date. You also have the ability to pause your subscription indefinitely.
My experience with Sunbasket
Here are the three recipes that we tried in my household:
Recipe #1: Quinoa and tofu bowls with cashew lime dressing
This had a really nice flavor and was fairly easy to make, considering how many different things were going on inside the bowl. While boiling the quinoa, we made our own pickled radishes and carrots, which is something we can definitely say we don’t do in our everyday cooking. This required thinly slicing the radishes and combining everything with a provided “quick-pickle brine.” We then let this stand while we prepared the rest of the meal. The tofu sautéed pretty quickly, and while this was going on, we chopped cilantro and added that to the quinoa. Then we built our bowls. My husband did quinoa as the base with the pickled vegetables, shredded cabbage, and tofu on top. This was then topped off with a Sunbasket cashew-lime dressing. I opted to go lower carb and had the exact same thing, sans the quinoa, and put all the rest of the toppings over lettuce. Both versions were delicious and the dressing plus the pickled vegetables really made this a unique dish.
Recipe #2: Tex-Mex black bean and quinoa bowl with guacamole
This was the easiest to make out of all of the Sunbasket meals. It took about 35 minutes but the majority of that time was for the oven. Everything came pre-mixed in a cardboard container that went right into the oven. When this came out, we topped it with pre-made guacamole and salsa and it was ready to go. I added some hot sauce to mine and sprinkled some fresh cilantro on top. I also had some leftover cabbage to get rid of in the fridge so I chopped that up and threw it into my bowl as well. It blended nicely and was like a taco in a bowl. My husband added some vegan cheese to top his off. This was a very hearty meal and very tasty. The portion sizes were great. And I love a good Mexican meal. Anything with guacamole on top wins my approval!
Recipe #3: Pinto bean and hominy pozole with queso fresco.
The recipe called for a 20-30 minute cook time and it took us right around 20 minutes. This dish was easy to prepare. Per my husband, who is an authority on all things chili, “it tasted good but needed a bit more flavor” so we added some fresh cilantro and a dash of hot sauce, which did the trick. This was a hearty meal and great source of fiber, coming in at 14 grams. This dish is topped with cheese. My husband and I are dairy-free so left that out of ours but with the amazing options in vegan cheeses this day, we had things in our fridge to sub it out with. And it was a very small amount of cheese so it didn’t seem like a waste. The dogs were happy to get an unexpected snack and that kept them happy and out of the kitchen while we were cooking!
Pre-made meals
We also tried a few of their pre-made breakfast options: MUSH overnight oats being one of them. This was an instant ready-to-eat meal, which was marketed as a breakfast, snack, pre/post-workout meal or dessert. My husband ate it for breakfast and found it surprisingly filling. He says, “it was tasty and sweet.” There was also a chili-lime bowl included that just required you to add hot water. It was pretty heavy on the rice and would probably work better as a side dish versus an entire meal. We also tried a few Pep in Ya’s Step wellness shots. They were spicy energy/immune boosters. A mouthful of flavor!
Overall thoughts and final review of Sunbasket
As a health nut, I appreciated the fact that I could take comfort in knowing that the ingredients were fresh and healthy. I’m a big fan of organic produce, and you don’t necessarily find that in most meal kits, so this was a nice bonus. The meals also seemed relatively balanced–a nice mix of protein, fiber, and carbohydrates. The nutritional information for each meal is included on the back of each recipe card. It contains the grams of protein, carbohydrates, fat, fiber and sugar but I did notice that the overall calorie count had been intentionally left out. This leads me to believe that the meals may rank higher in that department than I initially thought. The back of each recipe card also includes a fun little overall blurb on the recipe, which I enjoyed reading, which explained the chef’s inspiration behind the dish. If you’re looking for rich and heavy comfort meals, this is likely not for you. A lot of these meals were lighter and erred on the healthier side, which I prefer, but it may not be the case for everyone. This isn’t going to be your lobster mac and cheese meal kit or fried chicken and biscuits meal kit. You’re going to want to love fresh vegetables, healthy proteins, and healthy fare to enjoy this. Next up, we tested 4 popular plant-based meal kits—here’s what to know!
