Purple Carrot Meal Kit Review: Tastier Than Meal Kits With Meat

Purple Carrot 餐饮包测评：比含肉餐饮包更美味

WIRED Rating: 8/10 WIRED 评分：8/10

THE GOOD: Adventurous, delicious recipes with excellent culinary technique. Offers both meal kits and ready-to-eat premade meals. Doesn’t over-rely on soy. 优点： 充满创意、美味的食谱，烹饪技巧精湛。提供餐饮包和即食预制餐两种选择。不会过度依赖大豆制品。

THE BAD: Recipes can be involved and time-consuming. Prepared meals are less fun than meal prep options. 缺点： 食谱可能比较复杂且耗时。预制餐的乐趣不如自己动手烹饪的选项。

The meals I made with vegan meal kit Purple Carrot include some of the best-tasting food I’ve made with any meal delivery service. This is no small statement. I’m an omnivore and longtime food critic who’s tested pretty much every meal delivery service in existence over the past two years. 我用纯素餐饮包 Purple Carrot 制作的餐点，是我在所有餐饮配送服务中做出的最美味的食物之一。这可不是随口说说。我是一名杂食者，也是一位资深美食评论家，过去两年里我几乎测试了市面上所有的餐饮配送服务。

And so when I say Purple Carrot offers good cooking, I’m not grading on a curve. Purple Carrot’s pecan-topped, five-spice butternut squash dumplings I prepped this July were among the most extravagant meals I made for myself during that entire month. The prep was extensive, more than I’d usually attempt on any but a weekend evening, but the results were both healthful and a rival to excellent bistro fare. 因此，当我说 Purple Carrot 提供的是高水准烹饪时，我并不是在放宽标准。今年七月，我制作了 Purple Carrot 的五香奶油南瓜饺（配山核桃碎），这是我那个月为自己准备的最丰盛的餐点之一。准备工作非常繁琐，除了周末晚上，我平时通常不会尝试，但成品既健康又足以媲美一流的小酒馆菜肴。

Purple Carrot achieves this on its meal kit recipes while avoiding the pitfalls endemic to vegan fare—namely, an over-reliance on soy or cashew substitutes. Purple Carrot, thank God, loves a vegetable. It loves a fruit. And it loves an herb. While Purple doesn’t offer a huge menu each week, and I was less enthralled by microwave meal options that resorted more often to hunks of seitan, the meal kit choices are both broad and appetizing. Purple Carrot 在其餐饮包食谱中实现了这一点，同时避免了纯素饮食中常见的陷阱——即过度依赖大豆或腰果替代品。谢天谢地，Purple Carrot 热爱蔬菜、水果和香草。虽然 Purple 每周提供的菜单不算庞大，且我对那些更多使用面筋块的微波炉餐点不太感冒，但其餐饮包的选择既广泛又令人垂涎。

Purple Carrot manages to deliver the classic promise of a meal kit—sweet relief from the same staid recipes I bore myself with when I’m out of ideas. It does so better than most meal kits that cater to meat-eaters. It was my colleague Molly Higgins’ favorite plant-based meal kit of the dozen or so she tested last year. After testing five meals and a number of market add-ons this year, I rank it among my favorites overall. Purple Carrot 成功兑现了餐饮包的经典承诺——让我从那些因缺乏灵感而重复的乏味食谱中解脱出来。它在这方面做得比大多数面向肉食者的餐饮包更好。这是我同事 Molly Higgins 去年测试的十几种植物基餐饮包中最喜欢的一款。在今年测试了五顿餐点和一些市场加购商品后，我也将其列为我最喜欢的餐饮包之一。

The Nuts and Bolts / 核心参数

Cost per meal: $13 to $15 per serving, plus $12 shipping per box. (Shipping free for orders above $120.) 每餐成本： 每份 13 至 15 美元，另加每箱 12 美元运费。（订单满 120 美元免运费。）
Meal plan options: Two or four people; three or four meals a week for the classic meal kit. One to 10 meals a week for the ready-to-eat meal plan. Mix & match plans also available. 餐饮计划选项： 两人或四人份；经典餐饮包每周三或四餐。即食餐计划每周一至十餐。也可选择混合搭配计划。
Lowest-cost plan at full price: $65 minimum order, $12 shipping. 原价最低消费计划： 最低订单 65 美元，运费 12 美元。
Size of weekly menu: 24+ meal kit options, and 20-30 more ready-to-eat options, plus snacks and market items. 每周菜单规模： 24 种以上餐饮包选项，20-30 种即食选项，外加零食和市场商品。
Gluten-free meals? More than a third of meals are gluten-free. (But not certified as such for celiac, and prepared in a shared facility with wheat-containing products.) 无麸质餐点？ 超过三分之一的餐点是无麸质的。（但未获得乳糜泻认证，且在与含小麦产品共用的设施中制备。）
Plant-based meals? Vegan, vegan, all-vegan. 植物基餐点？ 纯素，纯素，全纯素。
Prep time: 20 minutes to an hour for recipes; quick-prep meals as fast as 5 minutes. 准备时间： 食谱需 20 分钟至一小时；快速准备餐点最快仅需 5 分钟。

Purple Carrot is among the older meal delivery services in the United States, founded in 2014 in Massachusetts but later acquired by Japanese sustainable-focused food delivery company Oisix. Purple Carrot is indeed packaged more sustainably than most kits: cardboard insulation, recyclable paper containers for microwavable meals. One could also argue that plant-based food is sustainable by its nature. But there’s still the usual battery of plastic baggies housing the various ingredients. Purple Carrot 是美国较早期的餐饮配送服务之一，2014 年成立于马萨诸塞州，后被日本可持续食品配送公司 Oisix 收购。Purple Carrot 的包装确实比大多数餐饮包更具可持续性：采用纸板隔热材料，微波炉餐点使用可回收纸质容器。人们也可以认为植物基食品本身就是可持续的。但包装中仍然不可避免地使用了大量用于盛放各种食材的塑料袋。

Though it’s a subscription service, Purple Carrot’s subscription is unusually flexible. Meals are priced individually, from $13 to $15 a serving, and can be mixed and matched among solo ready-to-heat meals and meal prep recipes for two or four. (Introductory plans lop half off your first week’s order up to $100.) While you can cancel a week, each week does have a $65 minimum order—amounting to five or six servings. 虽然这是一种订阅服务，但 Purple Carrot 的订阅非常灵活。餐点按份定价，每份 13 至 15 美元，可以在单人即食餐和两人或四人份的烹饪食谱之间混合搭配。（入门计划首周订单可享半价优惠，最高减免 100 美元。）虽然你可以取消某一周的配送，但每周有 65 美元的最低订单要求——相当于五到六份餐点。

Note also that Purple Carrot does not add a lot of fats and sugar to its meals, nor load up lots of carbs. Servings tend to range between 550 and 750 calories. That’s a large lunch, and filling enough for medium appetites—but unlikely to stuff you if you’re used to more heaping portions at dinner. In a trashmonster mood, I could hoover two servings and save my guilt for later. 还要注意，Purple Carrot 不会在餐点中添加过多的脂肪和糖分，也不会堆砌大量的碳水化合物。每份餐点的热量通常在 550 到 750 卡路里之间。这是一顿丰盛的午餐，对于中等食量的人来说足够饱腹——但如果你习惯晚餐吃得很多，这可能不会让你感到撑。如果我心情不好想“暴饮暴食”，我可以一口气吃掉两份，把罪恶感留到以后再说。

Recipe ingredients are organized nicely into individual bags, and the foldout recipe cards are charmingly well designed and easy to save if you plan to replicate them in the future with or without Purple Carrot. The kits offer a mix of fresh produce and prepackaged ingredients that might include tofu, instant rice, or spice pouches. 食谱食材被整齐地装在独立的袋子里，折叠式食谱卡设计精美，如果你打算将来（无论是否使用 Purple Carrot）复刻这些菜肴，这些卡片很容易保存。餐饮包提供了新鲜农产品和预包装食材的组合，可能包括豆腐、速食米饭或调料包。

Although produce isn’t guaranteed organic, most of the ingredients were (and of course, they were all vegan). The only ingredients you need to provide are salt, pepper, and cooking oil. Though note that at least one recipe—those excellent butternut squash dumplings—required a food processor, a rarity among meal kits loath to make such assumptions about anyone’s home kitchen. 虽然农产品不保证是有机的，但大多数食材确实是有机的（当然，它们都是纯素的）。你唯一需要自备的食材是盐、胡椒和食用油。不过请注意，至少有一道食谱——那些美味的奶油南瓜饺——需要用到食品加工机，这在餐饮包中很少见，因为大多数餐饮包都不愿对用户的家庭厨房设备做此类假设。

Good Cooking, Real Cooking / 好的烹饪，真实的烹饪

Purple Carrot’s strength lies with the recipes and the freshness of the ingredients. Some sourcing is local where possible, according to Purple Carrot. And the produce I received did seem a step above most of the bigger meal kits. In my box, the poblanos were crisp, and the herbs were fragrant. In July, my corn came seasonably still on its cob, waiting to be sliced off into kernels. Avocado, a real worry for a delivery meal kit, was unbruised and ripe but not overripe. Purple Carrot 的优势在于食谱和食材的新鲜度。据 Purple Carrot 称，部分食材尽可能在当地采购。我收到的农产品确实比大多数大型餐饮包的品质高出一筹。在我的盒子里，波布拉诺辣椒很脆，香草很香。七月份，我收到的玉米还是带棒的，需要自己切成玉米粒。对于餐饮配送包来说，牛油果通常是个大问题，但我收到的牛油果没有擦伤，成熟度刚刚好，没有过熟。

This kind of freshness adds confidence. But it also adds prep. The butternut squash dumplings I prepared required that I throw squash and soy cream cheese into a food processor with herbs and spices, then individually fold the filling into a dozen dumpling wrappers, before then frying up the dumplings and toasting a sesame-pecan topper. In the meantime, I’ll be slicing up apples for a little citrus-y salad. 这种新鲜感增加了信心，但也增加了准备工作。我制作的奶油南瓜饺需要将南瓜和大豆奶油奶酪与香草和香料一起放入食品加工机，然后将馅料逐个包入十几个饺子皮中，接着煎饺子，并烘烤芝麻山核桃碎作为点缀。与此同时，我还要切苹果做一份带有柑橘风味的沙拉。

That recipe is advertised at just under an hour: It will take every bit of it. It’s also worth it—a nice balance of crisp and soft, comforting and brightly acidic. 该食谱标注的准备时间不到一小时：实际上确实需要花掉整整一小时。但这是值得的——口感在酥脆与柔软之间达到了很好的平衡，既令人慰藉又带有明亮的酸味。