The standard knock, of course, is that meal kits are expensive: anywhere from $7 to $14 a portion, less than a restaurant meal but more than most food budgets. So I set an experiment for myself. Armed only with meal kit recipe cards, I went to my local grocery store to see if I could make the meals for less. Reader, it wasn’t easy.
In fact, I mostly failed. For the sake of science, I bought everything at the store that the meal kit provided in the box, including rice or “Italian herb seasoning,” even if I otherwise already had it at home—but tried to buy it in as small a portion as I could. Where quality was credibly equivalent to the meal kit, I bought the lowest-cost option. Portions were for two, not for a family.
And I only went to one store for each meal, meaning if I had to improvise substitutes to make the meal happen, that’s what I did. No one’s going to three stores for a Tuesday dinner, and so I did what people do when they’re shopping for themselves on a weeknight: I bought what was there.
My conclusion, not to spoil the ending, is that the real bonus offered by a meal kit is sauces, spices, and flavors, doled out in small portions rather than large jars. You can maybe buy a steak for less, even at an all-organic butcher, but you won’t get your cream-cheese sauce with roasted red peppers, the Parmesan cheese for your rice, and the herbs you rub your meat with.
Aside from time savings, it turns out that what a meal kit does best is serve up single- or double-serve flavor at relatively low cost compared with procuring it yourself. When trying to replicate meal kit sauces and spices at a grocery store, I ended up spending a lot more—though of course I then also had multitudinous condiments left over for future meals.
Which is to say: You can, of course, eat much more cheaply than a $12 kit meal. But you can’t easily eat these exact things this cheaply, unless you already own the right spices and bulk ingredients. Here’s my experience trying.
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Ingredients: 2 boneless, center-cut pork chops or 2 skin-on salmon fillets; 1 cup long-grain white rice; 4 cloves garlic; 2 tbsp vegetarian ponzu sauce, 4 tbsp soy glaze, 6 tbsp cumin-Sichuan peppercorn sauce, 12 oz carrots, 4 scallions, 2 tsp black and white sesame seeds