Terra's Kitchen is a meal kit delivery subscription service with recipes created around the Mediterranean diet and lifestyle. According to Terra's Kitchen, the heart-healthy, inflammation-reducing Mediterranean diet includes "colorful fruits and vegetables, nuts, heart-healthy fats (like olive oil and avocados) and minimizes red meat, sugar, and saturated fat."
Unlike other meal kits, which offer smaller weekly menus, Terra's Kitchen offers a menu of 50+ dishes (that changes a little less frequently) with choices for vegetarian, paleo, gluten-free, and even low-calorie diets (they even have an entire nutritionist-directed "Real Diet" program for those of you looking for healthy weight loss guidance). Set your preferences, and Terra's Kitchen will match you with weekly meals to fit. Or, you can dive into the menu and pick what recipes work for you making the experience totally customizable! You may also add à la carte items like smoothies, salads, and fruit.
When you sign up, you'll also choose how many meals you'd like to receive per week. Options are:
3 Dinners for 2 People (Meals start at $9.99 per serving with a minimum weekly order of $72.00)
4 Dinners for 2 People (Meals start at $9.99 per serving with a minimum weekly order of $72.00)
2 Dinners for 4 People (Meals start at $9.99 per serving with a minimum weekly order of $72.00)
This is a review of the 3 Dinners for 2 People vegetarian option (each meal was manually selected for a total of $86.38).
My Subscription Addiction paid for this box. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes.)
One big difference between Terra's Kitchen and other meal kit delivery subscriptions is that it ships your ingredients in a heavy-duty, reusable package.
Swing open the doors of the cooler, and you'll find all of your pre-portioned ingredients neatly packaged and arranged on its teal shelves. Ingredients are antibiotic and hormone-free and mostly GMO-free and organic.
Once you've transferred all of the chilled, fresh ingredients to your fridge, you'll follow the instructions on the box and leave it out front of your house to be picked up (and used again)! It's definitely an out-of-the-ordinary approach, but I have to say, I love it! Recycling meal subscription box after box (and its insulation, and ice packs, and other materials) still feels like I'm creating a lot of waste, so I love knowing that this one cooler will be able to be used over and over again.
The ingredients for your recipes are packaged in small, super-light plastic containers—I took the containers out of my vessel and managed to fit all of them in the crisper drawer of my fridge. Terra's Kitchen does most of the chopping, slicing, and dicing for you, which not only helps the recipes go faster but makes for smaller packages of ingredients that are easier to store.
About Terra's Kitchen
The Subscription Box: Terra's Kitchen
The Cost: $9.99+ per serving, plus free shipping. Minimum purchase order amount is $72.00.
The Products: Quality, pre-portioned (and often, pre-chopped!) ingredients plus easy-to-follow recipes for health-conscious, Mediterranean-diet-inspired dishes.
Ships to: Ships to most of the U.S.
Terra's Kitchen December 2017 Review
Price per Serving: $14.49
Calories per Serving: 718
Time to Table, According to Terra's Kitchen: 25 Minutes
Actual Time to Table: 25 Minutes
I actually realized after receiving my delivery this month that this recipe card looked super familiar. Sure enough, it turns out that I made this dish back in August. I do manually select my meals with each box, but it's easy to fall into duplicate recipes since Terra's Kitchen doesn't update their meal options as frequently as many other meal subscription boxes do (especially if you have dietary restrictions -- only a couple new vegetarians meals are added each month).
Still, I love rice bowls, and I was excited to have this easy and filling dish to prepare for dinner after an exceptionally busy day! Pre-chopped ingredients = total plus.
I began with crumbling the tofu. This isn't a method that I normally use to prepare tofu, an ingredient that I'm pretty familiar with in our vegetarian household. It's nice to be reminded of new ways to freshen up old favorites.
Avocado and cilantro were sliced and chopped. I've had MANY issues with the avocados that I've received in past Terra's Kitchen boxes. It really seems like they've improved their produce game -- this one was totally okay!
The base of this dish is white rice. Easy!
I then cooked down my onions and garlic until they browned a bit before adding the tofu and black beans.
This dish is so easy largely because everything is added to one pan. Nothing worse than unnecessarily dirtying tons of dishes.
Once everything is combined, spices are added.
You simply top your rice with the sofritas mixture and then add avocado slices and a sprinkling of cilantro. Really tasty, filling, and simple to execute!
Price per Serving: $11.49
Calories per Serving: 283
Time to Table, According to Terra's Kitchen: 30 Minutes
Actual Time to Table: 30 Minutes
Continuing with the 'spicy' theme! However, at 283 calories per serving, this dish is much lighter and healthier than the sofritas bowl.
Ingredients were simple and fresh. And, again, my avocado was pretty perfect! Score!
I began by rinsing my quinoa, toasting it in a pan, and then boiling it in salted water to cook.
I whisked together lime zest, lime juice, minced jalapeno, honey, red wine vinegar, canola oil, and salt and pepper to create the salad vinaigrette.
Okay, so maybe the included avocado isn't perfect... but it certainly is a vast improvement to what I've received in the past.
After mixing the quinoa with arugula and the already-prepared pico de gallo, it's tossed in the dressing.
I simply topped with avocado to serve! This dish had pretty generous portions for 2 people, and the hardest part about it was probably zesting the lime. Seriously, these pre-chopped ingredients make a world of a difference when you have a brand new baby and your life is incessant chaos.
Price per Serving: $10.99
Calories per Serving: 413
Time to Table, According to Terra's Kitchen: 30 Minutes
Actual Time to Table: 25 Minutes
Okay, whoops. Here's another recipe repeat. My husband prepared this dish last time around (speaking of that baby again... I was in recovery mode when we received it before), so the step-by-step was brand new to me.
As usual, the ingredients were pretty simple, and I was anticipating smooth sailing after glancing over the recipe.
The meal began with cooking the mushrooms and onions in oil and garlic as well as boiling the egg noodles.
I then prepared the vegetable stock for the gravy-like sauce by whisking the veggie stock concentrate into hot water. Flour was added to thicken it as well as soy sauce and paprika.
Chopped parsley!
It's added to the cooked egg noodles.
The veggie stock mixture is added to the cooked down mushrooms and onions to form a gravy. Except that never really happened for me. I even added an extra bit of flour in an attempt to thicken up the sauce a bit more, but it remained pretty watery. I probably could have solved the issue with giving the sauce more time to cook down. However, I'm busy and impatient and stubborn and... just let it go.
The end result was really comforting and almost nostalgic to eat on a cold day. It did taste a bit bland, but there's also something I love about the simplicity of noodles and gravy. Next time, I'd definitely play around with the ratio and cooking time of ingredients in the gravy.
Caprese Salad
Terra's Kitchen now requires all orders to have a minimum of $72.00. Even with 3 meals added to my delivery, I didn't meet that minimum, so I added a Caprese salad to my order. It's nice that Terra's Kitchen offers extras like side salads, yogurt, sliced fruit, and even proteins, smoothies, and desserts.
Verdict: Terra's Kitchen is really terrific for those of us that want easy to prepare meals delivered to our doorstep. Now that my days seem much more disorganized than they ever were before (thanks, newfound parenthood!), I appreciate the pre-chopped ingredients even more. My only real gripe with the service is the cost. I feel like Terra's Kitchen tends to be much pricier than other, very similar, meal subscription services. I suppose you really do pay for the convenience of having your mushrooms sliced for you. Which, yes, I do enjoy... but does it justify the price?
As far as value goes, I've found that other meal subscription boxes tend to have a set per shipment cost. It's so great that Terra's Kitchen allows you to fully customize your order, but the $72.00/box is a minimum (it was recently raised from $62.99). With this 3 meal all-veggie plan and Caprese salad, this box cost came to $86.38. You do definitely end up paying for the convenience of pre-prepped fresh ingredients. Just know that this one is pricier than meal subscription services like Hello Fresh, Plated, or Home Chef (that offer a set price).
To Wrap Up:
Can you still get this box if you sign up today? Since Terra's Kitchen is fully customizable, your choices may look completely different!
Coupon – Use code TKNOW35 to save $35 off your first order!
Value Breakdown: At $86.38 for this box, you’re paying $10.80 per serving for 3 dinners and a salad.
Check out all of our Terra's Kitchen reviews and the Meal Delivery Subscription Box Directory for more food and meal kits!
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