Skip to main content

Cooking Made Easy: 3 Delicious Meal Delivery Services

meal delivery services
Image used with permission by copyright holder
The meal kit trend is a good one: pre-portioned food, complete with a recipe delivered to your door. No grocery shopping, no wondering what to eat, no left over ingredients you’ll never use again and you learn some great new skills. But there are so many companies it’s tough to know where to start. Here are three unique meal delivery services.

Salted Eats

The hook: It’s recipes are created by major chefs in the LA-area, so it’s LA-only currently.

How it works: The service offers a meat and vegetarian option and as with others, the ingredients come pre-portioned. They make every effort to use only local and organic meats and veggies, all of which arrive in an insulated bag, so no need to be home when it arrives. Plus, they promise the items will stay fresh in your fridge for up to five days, so also no pressure to cook it the night it arrives. They don’t make substitutions for food allergies or taste preferences–definitely read the menus carefully before ordering.

Instructions come in the form of a video on Salted Eat’s website where chef will prepare the meal step-by-step. While the menus are full of delicious, sophisticated options, they promise even the most novice cook can complete them in around half an hour.

Unlike many others, Salted Eats does not require a subscription. Currently, they provide the meal kit once a month, the second Thursday of the month, so you just sign up whenever you feel like it.

How many does it feed? Just you! Unless you want more. The kit is good for one portion. Most meal kit services start at two servings, so the idea that you can just cook for yourself is pretty rad. You can order additional servings if you’re having friends or family over– it might be the most foolproof way to cook for a dinner party.

A taste of the menu:

Meat: from Chef Corina Weibel of Canelé

Flattened “Brick” Chicken with Peppers and North African Chermoula Sauce

Vegetarian: from Chef Christy Vega of Casa Vega

Vegan Sweet Potato Tacos with Fresh Tomatoes

One Potato

The hook: Healthy, organic meals for picky eaters. And it always comes with their own slice-and-bake cookie dough. Frankly, that’s reason enough.

How it works: Technically, this service is geared towards families, offering the option of child-sized portions, but procreation is not a requirement. You tell One Potato how many people you’ll be feeding and you food preferences and you’ll receive emails with pictures and recipes hand-picked for your tastes. You can make the dishes in 30 minutes or less, which is probably true given they do so much of the prep work for you.

All the ingredients arrive pre-portioned and chopped! Some detractors of the meal kit services complain about all the waste produced by the packaging: One Potato has thought of that. All of their packaging is recyclable or made to biodegrade.

It is a subscription service, but you’re able to cancel anytime or skip weeks whenever needed so long as you’re in the 6 day-before-delivery-window. It currently only delivers to California, Nevada, and Arizona but is expanding.

A taste of the menu:

Omnivore box: Oven Fried Chicken with Smashed Peas, Cheesy Biscuits and Coleslaw

Vegetarian box: Crispy Tofu Rice Bowl

Terra’s Kitchen

The hook: Transparency and earth-friendly practices. They give you the details on every farm and meat supplier they use as well as using a revolutionary new packing option, the vessel!

How it works: No customization here: pick from their weekly menu options, but they give you a lot to choose from. You can pause and cancel your subscription at anytime. They do offer gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan, and Paleo options.

Their ingredients are all fresh, seasonal, and sourced from sustainable, ethical farms. You can read about their suppliers here. All of the ingredients are washed, pre-portioned, and prepped so you’re ready to start cooking the minute you get home. A recipe card with instructions is included for your chosen meal and includes suggested beer and wine pairings.

Terra’s Kitchen also makes people with allergies a prime focus. Their suppliers segregate allergens during storage and preparation. Anything that might leak onto other ingredients is given a secondary barrier to prevent any contact during delivery.

Everything arrives in what they call the vessel. It’s a locked refrigerated plastic storage unit that is delivered to your door. Once you’ve finished with it, peel off the sticker to reveal the return address label and put it back outside your door for pick up. That means zero waste is created.

They have 1-serving options they call Grab-n-Go which are about $3.99 and the 2-serving dinners are anywhere from $9.99-$17.99 per serving. Shipping is free, however they have a minimum price of $64.99 for delivery. It’s all over the place!

A taste of the menu:

Meat: One Skillet Bison Tacos (also happens to be gluten free)

Vegetarian: Creamy Black Bean Sliders

Elizabeth Dahl
Elizabeth Dahl is a southern girl in the heart of Los Angeles who lived far too long before learning what an incredible food…
Forget wine — Beer and cheese is an unbeatable combination
Put the corkscrew away and crack open a cold one
Beer and cheese

When one hears the term cheese pairings, wine is the beverage that most often comes to mind, we'd wager. Because, of course, it is. The pairing of wine and cheese is as classic a coupling as peanut butter and jelly, bacon and eggs, or chocolate and strawberries. They're meant to be together. But that certainly doesn't mean that wine is the only adult beverage that can dance an alluring tango alongside everyone's favorite dairy product. Beer, as humble as its reputation can be, is also a beautiful balance to cheese's immense offering of flavors. While some may think of beer as not being as multi-dimensional and varied in its palate-pleasing capabilities as wine, this is not the case - especially now that we live in a world with so many exquisite craft beers, stouts, and lagers.
Of course, another classic accompaniment to cheese is bread or crackers. Why might that be, one might ask. Is it because we're simply in need of a starchy vessel to usher the cheese into our mouths? The answer is actually a bit deeper than that. Starches like bread and crackers are made from the same yeasty ingredients as beer, so their pairing makes perfect culinary sense.
This isn't to say, though, that one can simply pick up a hunk of cheddar and crack open a Budweiser and expect culinary artistry. The science is a bit more nuanced than that, so we're here to help you find the best pairings for your favorite beers and cheeses.

How to pair beer and cheese

Read more
Mijenta has a new cristalino tequila — here’s why bourbon fans will love it
Mijenta has a cristalino tequila perfect for bourbon drinkers
Mijenta Cristalino

If you’re new to tequila, you might not know all the terms. Even if you’re just a beginner, you probably know all about blanco, reposado, añejo, and maybe even joven. But chances are, you’re not familiar with Cristalino tequila. This reasonably contemporary style is simply añejo tequila that’s been charcoal filtered to remove its natural caramel color and various impurities.

The style is more than just a little popular. It’s actually the fastest growing style of tequila according to Nielsen data. The newest brand to get in on the Cristalino trend is Mijenta.

Read more
You may not dislike IPAs as much as you think — you’ve just tried the wrong type
There's much more to the IPA than bitter hop bombs
Beer

The IPA has been described as the cilantro of the beer world. It’s assumed by some novice drinkers that you either love it or hate it. On one hand, it’s one of the most popular beer styles in the American craft world. It’s loved by many drinkers for its liberal use of hops and fresh, crushable flavor profile.

But haters of the style dislike it because they have an assumption that all IPA beers are aggressively hopped and uncomfortably bitter. While there are IPAs that fit that criterion (and fans of that style can’t get enough of them), there are also a handful of other types of IPAs to fit any palate.
The IPA stigma

Read more