Mindful Chef Healthy Food Box Review

For the last 4 weeks, we have been reviewing Mindful Chef - a healthy food box that includes recipe cards and all the ingredients to make them. Since their launch in 2015, Mindful Chef have shipped over 500,000 recipes, with ingredients sourced from local Devonshire farms. The idea behind Mindful Chef, was founded by school friends Giles, Myles and Rob, and is to reduce our intake of sugar and refined carbs. As a result, their food boxes will never include pasta, bread or white rice. Instead all of their recipes are based on innovative uses of fresh, healthy ingredients – including butter bean mash (a personal favourite), black rice and beetroot wedges.During our review, we have sampled 8 dishes (2 per week), and each one has been unique and interesting in some way. Both Stew and I love to cook, and often experiment with our dishes. However, we find it hard to keep things interesting and of late, have found that we re-create the same meals repeatedly. Mindful Chef has helped open our eyes to new ingredients and different ways of using them. It’s easy to fall back on pasta and refined carbs in every meal, but often they are not needed. Replacing products such as white rice for black, pasta for bulgur wheat and potatoes for beans, has been enlightening, and has ultimately made us feel better after each meal. We no longer feel bloated, and no longer over eat as Mindful Chef cater for exactly 2 meals.Clockwise from top left: Vegan Tomato Ragu with Butterbean Mash, Red Pesto Fish Skewers, Vegan Sri Lankan Curry with Broccoli Rice, Hazelnut Pork with Cherries and Quinoa, Vegan Chana Masala Curry with Cauliflower Rice, Cashew Chicken Curry with Black Rice.Recipes that we have tried have included - red pesto fish skewers, Italian tomato ragu with butter bean mash, cashew chicken curry, Chana Masala and vegan Sri Lankan-style curry.I’ve loved that a lot of the recipes have been vegetarian or vegan, opening our eyes to new ideas entirely. The vegan Italian ragu was so good, that I’ve since made it a further two times – once for my vegan friend and one for my parents. Everyone has enjoyed it! The use of butter beans to make the mash is genius too. So easy, and it still creates that creamy consistency that I love so much about mash.As you can tell we’re a bit of a fan of a curry, but I was really pleased that each curry dish we made was completely different. I loved the cashew chicken curry, but if I make it again, I’d probably substitute the chicken for more vegetables. I prefer veggie curries.We’ve reviewed other food boxes similar to Mindful Chef before, and the one resounding thing that stood out to us, and sets Mindful Chef apart from their competition, is their fantastic use of vegetables. Each dish is packed full of nutrients from a variety of different fruits and vegetables. We never needed to add anything to a dish to bulk it out, or make it healthier (as we have done with our brands). In fact, although the carb element has always been a 2 person portion, the curries in particular have often been enough for 3 people, with us refrigerating leftovers for lunch the next day. It’s really taught us how to control our portion size. We definitely don’t need to eat all that we do, and make such giant dishes (although we do always freeze our leftovers).Mindful Chef, I believe, are also the only company providing a box for 1 person, making it super accessible for those living by themselves.Have you tried Mindful Chef before? Would you be interested in a food box?I've also reviewed HelloFresh if you'd like to read my review for comparison.