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 $79.94).
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 April 2018 Review
Chipotle Sweet Potato + Black Bean Soup
Price per Serving: $12.49
Calories per Serving: 413
Time to Table, According to Terra's Kitchen: 30 Minutes
Actual Time to Table: 30 Minutes
It's been a whiiiile since I've made a soup from scratch, but these steps looked to be really easy to follow. Not so daunting is a nice plus!
All ingredients arrived prepped and ready to go -- the biggest perk of Terra's Kitchen! The same veggies are packaged in the same way for inclusion in various dishes, so I ended up receiving 3 containers of sweet potatoes in this shipment when taking the quinoa bowl recipe into account as well.
I began by making my stock. 3 cups of hot water are combined with the veggie stock concentrate packet.
Next, I coarsely chopped my veggies. This fajita mix is used for other dishes, like I mentioned above, so it the slices required a bit of attention. I also chopped my cilantro and chipotle pepper.
The pepper mixture went into a large pot with a bit of olive oil and the provided minced garlic. I let this cook for a few minutes until it was aromatic and softened.
There you have it. Perfectly sautéed!
I then added the sweet potato chunks, black beans, veggie stock, chipotle pepper, and salt.
From there, I brought the mixture to a boil and just sorta let it do its thing. This recipe is incredibly simple.
The recipe suggests bringing the soup to a boil, taking it down to a simmer, and then cooking for 10 minutes. I found that my potatoes were nowhere near soft enough in that amount of time, so I kept the pot on the stove for about 20 minutes total. I also mashed everything up a bit for a thicker consistency.
The final pot of goodness! I finished the soup with a bit of lime juice and the chopped cilantro.
So colorful and pretty! I couldn't believe how easy this was to execute. It really made me wonder why I didn't spend winter making more soups. I'll definitely be repeating this dish in bulk in order to have some in the freezer for filling emergency meals. The sweet potato was really delicious, and I loved how the splash of lime juice cut through the richness of the potato and beans.
Grilled Vegetable Bow-Tie Pasta with Cilantro-Pepita Pesto
Price per Serving: $13.99
Calories per Serving: 539
Time to Table, According to Terra's Kitchen: 30 Minutes
Actual Time to Table: 30 Minutes
Like the first, this recipe looked super simple at first glance. I also really love pesto on my pasta, so I was excited to give this version a try.
Love all the fresh cilantro! I was a bit confused when I saw a box of vegetables with skewers labeled as "kabobs," but this was just another example of Terra's Kitchen using the same ingredient packages for various dishes.
After starting my bow tie pasta in some boiling water, I toasted the pepitas in a drizzle of olive oil for the pesto.
These fragrant and lightly browned pepitas went into my blender with the garlic, parmesan, and coriander. The recipe states to use a food processor, but, since I don't own one, I made the blender work. It was perfectly fine in the end.
I added the cilantro after the rest of the ingredients were properly mixed.
It took some starting and stopping while scraping the sides of the blender, but here's what everything looked like all blended together. To form a looser sauce, this is when I slowly added lime juice, olive oil, and a bit of water.
The resulting pesto was seasoned with salt and pepper, and its freshness was incredible!
Meanwhile, as my pasta cooked away...
...I started on the veggies. It's so nice that they all arrived pre-cut, so all I had to do was place them on a baking sheet to roast. The recipe instructed to grill them, but I've never had much luck with my grill pan on a stove top. Lots of adapting for this meal! I knew that roasting would bring out the natural flavors of the vegetables just as well, so I chose to go that route.
Check out those colors! I topped the veggies with a light drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper, and about 3 tablespoons of pesto to infuse them with its flavor as they cooked.
The remaining pesto coated the drained pasta.
I ended up removing my veggies from a 450-degree oven after about 10 minutes.
They were incorporated into the pasta pot to create a really lovely looking dish. So summery!
This meal was really hearty and fresh-tasting, and, as you'd imagine, the pesto was the real star of the show. The pepitas and cilantro made for a really flavorful base, and the added parmesan and lime juice added a nice bright finish. This was delicious, and I could see myself recreating it for months to come. Again, so simple.
Sweet Potato, Spinach, Apple and Quinoa Bowl
Price per Serving: $9.00
Calories per Serving: 636
Time to Table, According to Terra's Kitchen: 30 Minutes
Actual Time to Table: 30 Minutes
First impressions: Looks pretty straightforward! Properly cooking the quinoa may be the hardest part.
With ingredients like sweet potato, feta, and pecan pieces, I was expecting a beautifully composed salad.
I began by laying my sweet potato pieces out on a baking sheet. They were coated with a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper, and roasted in the oven at 425 for 15 minutes. I tossed them at around the 8-minute mark for even cooking.
I then added my quinoa to a pan with a bit more oil to lightly toast it before adding water.
I then cooked it in a slow simmer of salted water.
Next up, the dressing! I whisked together the vinegar, mustard, honey, olive oil, and a bit of seasoning.
After lightly toasting the pecan pieces in a pan, I removed my sweet potato from the oven to cool down just a touch before adding it to my salad.
The browned bits are the best part of that subtle crunch! The rest of the components - spinach, apple, and feta - were added to a bowl with the quinoa and sweet potatoes. I then tossed it all in the dressing.
So pretty! The sweetness of the apple really complimented the subtle sweetness of the potato, and I think the tangy dressing and crunchy pecan bits brought it all together. This was technically 3 servings, but my husband and I gobbled it up with no leftovers.
Verdict: Terra's Kitchen is a great meal box option for those of us that value pre-prepped ingredients (read: TIME). The recipes are simple as can be. Being a new parent with a schedule that's completely unpredictable and exhausting, I super appreciate not having to take the extra 15 minutes to make perfect cuts on my vegetables. My issues with the service center are around cost and variety, though. There's not much to choose from with new recipes each month, especially as a vegetarian, in my experience. I also feel like Terra's Kitchen tends to be much pricier than other, very similar, meal subscription services. I'm still having an issue with the cost. I suppose you really do pay for the convenience of having your veggies sliced and diced. Does that justify the cost? I'm still not sure.
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, this box cost came to $84.90. They also offer other options like a lunch-portioned salad, smoothies, fruit, etc. You do definitely end up paying for the convenience of pre-prepped fresh ingredients. And, a lot of the time, just the meals themselves won't add up to the minimum price, so you must add more items. It sort of feels like upselling, in a way. 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 $84.90 for this box, you’re paying an average of $12.13 per serving for 3 meals (the quinoa bowl counted as 3 servings).
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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