My Honest CookUnity Review: Worth it or No Better Than Frozen Dinners?

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While I’ve tested my fair share of meal kits, I’ve never tried a meal delivery service. The difference between the two is that one provides you with recipes and ingredients, and the other sends you prepared meals that you heat up when you’re ready to eat. As far as meal deliveries go, I’ve been interested in CookUnity for a long time. The company has a vast menu of meals crafted by real chefs and food creators that get delivered to your doorstep from their kitchens in New York, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Austin. Courtesy of CookUnity, I was given a trial subscription to try out 10 meals of my choosing, and I didn’t let it go to waste.

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What Is CookUnity?

• Ready-to-eat meal delivery service with recipes created by actual chefs
• Vegan and vegetarian-friendly
• Packaged in oven-friendly, microwaveable trays
• Your choice of 6, 8, 12, or 16 meals, delivered weekly
• Subscription can be paused, skipped, or changed after first delivery
• Starts at $79 for a 6 meals per week (roughly $13 per meal)

How CookUnity Works

The CookUnity process starts with a short, two-question quiz to flag your dietary preferences and food allergies. From there, you’ll select how many meals you want per week from 6, 8, 12, or 16 (8 is the most popular), create your account, and pay for your first week. On the checkout screen, you can set your delivery preferences, and then, you’ll be able to select your meals. You can pause your subscription, add to your delivery, and change or reschedule your delivery date as part of your CookUnity membership.

When you’re ready to select your meals, CookUnity will offer suggestions, but you can always remove the pre-selected picks to choose your own. Personally, I like to scroll through the entire weekly menu to gradually narrow down my choices, but with hundreds of options available, you can save time by searching specific cuisines, chefs, diets, proteins, and more. The dishes are packaged in recyclable containers, and your weekly meals are delivered with ice packs in a reusable insulated bag. You can return the insulated bag along with any ice packs that are in good condition by placing them where your CookUnity meals are delivered on the day your new shipment is scheduled to arrive.

My Experience with CookUnity

In picking out my 10 CookUnity meals, I based my decisions on the food itself. As someone who was raised in the South, I chose some dishes that were familiar to me by culture, such as Creole Crawfish Etouffee and Blackened Shrimp and Fresh Corn Grits. Other meals were picked because they fell under some of my favorite flavor profiles, such as the Gochujang Butter Ramen, Great American Pot Roast, and Chicken Shawarma Rice Bowl. For the remaining meal slots, I selected dishes that made me curious or those that I’d always wanted to try. CookUnity has a huge menu available, and I appreciated the variety of options and flavors so I could be really diverse or stick with comfort foods.

The meals were delivered chilled and on time in an insulated CookUnity bag with ice packs. All I had to do was make room in the refrigerator for them. I loved the convenience of CookUnity because I don’t always have time to cook, especially in the middle of the week, and the meals can be reheated in the microwave or oven. For all of my meals except one or two, I warmed them in the oven as recommended by the chefs, and none took longer than 15 minutes to heat up. When my meals got delivered, the earliest “Use by” date was three days following and the latest was six days after delivery. It was a lot of food, but I was able to finish them all by eating the meals for lunch and dinner if I was at home.

You can tell that CookUnity meals are crafted by real chefs because none of these meals looked or tasted like a generic TV dinner. The dishes were seasoned with care based on the recipe and didn’t shy away from bold flavors, which I enjoyed. There were one or two dishes I wanted to season more, but that’s solely rooted in my own taste preferences rather than the food being bland. Of all my CookUnity picks, my favorites ended up being the Gochujang Butter Ramen with Salmon Jeon by Chef Paul Suh and the Baked Swai in Cajun Pan Sauce by Chef Andres Mendez. The Spicy Bulgogi Banh Mi also made for a tasty lunch!

Things You Should Know About CookUnity

CookUnity meals are meant to be refrigerated for 3-7 days upon delivery. Each meal is labeled with a “Use by” date so you can prioritize the order in which they are eaten. According to CookUnity, freezing the meals is not recommended as it could affect the flavor and quality of the food, especially when it comes to dairy, eggs, and leafy greens, but the containers are freezer-safe.

Additionally, each CookUnity meal is a single serving, so if you’d like to start a membership for your family or a group, then consider opting for a higher number of meals in your shipment each week.

Final Verdict: Is CookUnity Worth It?

In my opinion, no meal delivery service is a long-term solution for ensuring you hit three meals a day, but they can be a great complement to meal planning that can help take the stress out of cooking or ordering takeout when life gets busy.

CookUnity is a good meal delivery option for those who want dishes that don’t feel like something you could have grabbed from the freezer aisle at the grocery store. The recipes are thoughtful, flavorful, and surprisingly nice to look at considering they’re in to-go containers. Although I ate all of my CookUnity meals out of their trays, you can easily heat them up and plate them like a home-cooked meal. I like that there was care in the delivery as well. So often with meal kits that come in boxes, they can sometimes get roughed up on the journey to your home, but I didn’t have to deal with any mishaps or shaken up food containers when the bag was dropped off at my door. Simply put, it’s clear that CookUnity is a service that provides meals from chefs who love food to people who love food. So, to me, it’s definitely worth trying again.

Ready to get started with CookUnity? Pick your meals now, and save 50% on your first week.