I FIRST wrote a Mindful Chef review a few years ago, and I’ve kept coming back to it since.
January is peak “can someone else plan dinner?” season. Cold evenings, busy diaries, and good intentions that need food with some actual flavour.
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So I ordered Mindful Chef again, testing several meals across a few boxes, to see how it holds up in 2026.
The big question is value. Mindful Chef UK prices have crept up, with cheaper recipes now around £7.50 per person and premium picks closer to £10 per person. That’s not small change for midweek.
The good news is the food still feels fresh, filling, and genuinely well-designed for weeknights, and it can keep its place in our best meal delivery services ranking.
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Pros
- Great-quality ingredients
- Interesting, seasonal and wide-ranging recipe selection that introduces you to new dishes and cuisines
- Portion for two ACTUALLY serves two
- B-Corp certified
Cons
- Expensive, even compared to other meal delivery services, especially if you’re only feeding one person
- Introductory offers aren’t as good as competitors’
Rating: 9.5/10
Mindful Chef review: Quickfire Q&A
What is Mindful Chef? The idea for Mindful Chef isn’t unusual, and it isn’t the first of its kind; it’s a meal prep service with a fairly vanilla mission statement to send customers well-sourced, healthy ingredients that combine to create tasty meals.
Who’s it best for? Frankly, people who have a bit of money to spend, and who want to cook tasty, seasonal food without putting in too much effort.
What we loved: The food — quality ingredients, generous portions and thoughtfully-designed recipes come together to make a delicious dinner.
What we didn’t: It’s undeniably expensive, and its introductory offer isn’t as good as the ones from, say, Hello Fresh or Gousto.
Mindful Chef review: The Nitty Gritty
First impressions
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Mindful Chef works much like any other recipe box. You head to the website, pick the meals you want for the week (and how many people you’re feeding), choose a delivery day, then get cooking.
Each week, you get around 20 to 25 recipes to choose from, fewer than those of its two big rivals.
At the time of writing, Gousto lists a mind-bending 180 recipes (although plenty stay the same week to week), while HelloFresh sits closer to 50.
The difference is that Mindful Chef’s selection feels curated rather than stuffed.
Recipes are clearly built around seasonal ingredients and proper flavour, and the menu reads more like somewhere you’d actually pay to eat.
This week (mid-January), for example, includes:
- Baharat Turkey Meatballs with Chickpeas & Mint Kefir Dressing
- Grilled Basa with Blood Orange & Peanut Noodle Salad
- Korean-style Sticky Tofu with Veggie Fried Rice & Spring Onions
I also have a personal restaurant rule: the smaller the menu, the better the food. Mindful Chef tends to prove it.
Once you place an order, you’re automatically enrolled in a weekly subscription, but you can cancel any time.
That flexibility matters, especially if you only want it for busy weeks or when you’re bored with your own cooking.
When the box arrives, the ingredients come organised into separate paper bags, one per recipe.
It sounds like a small thing, but it makes midweek cooking feel far less chaotic, because you’re not hunting for the last remaining sachet of something at the bottom of the box.
Portion sizes are where I’ve historically found recipe boxes fall down.
I can eat a “serves two” portion from most services without much effort.
Sometimes I can stretch it into dinner plus a slightly sad lunch the next day, but if I’m cooking for myself and another person, odds are I’ll be going to bed still thinking about food.
Some services (I’m looking at you, HelloFresh) solve this by padding meals out with hefty piles of carbs and veg.
That can work, but it’s not always what you want, especially if you’re paying for “premium” ingredients.
Mindful Chef is the first service I’ve tried that consistently sends enough protein for two genuinely generous portions.
One of the first meals it ever sent me was a Valentine’s Day steak dinner, and the ribeye was the kind of cut that makes you slow down and pay attention.
My girlfriend and I finished the meal properly stuffed.
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The same theme runs through the rest of the menu. A tofu recipe for two includes a full 280g block of Tofoo Naked Tofu.
A salmon recipe for two comes with 300g. A pork loin dish includes two thick, butcher-sourced pork steaks.
I was honestly taken aback by how far they push portions in the one area most brands try to economise.
Does it deliver?
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For this Mindful Chef review, I’ve tried three boxes, spanning meat, fish and veg recipes.
I’ve used the service several times over the years, too, so I feel like I’ve seen it in more than one “era”, not just at its best.
Every time, I come away with the same impression: the ingredients feel high-quality, the recipes feel carefully crafted, and the portions feel well thought through.
There’s also a small editorial choice I really appreciate.
Rather than sending individual recipe cards (which tend to end up splashed, curled and eventually binned), Mindful Chef includes a full booklet of that week’s recipes.
It’s basically a mini cookbook you can keep, making it much easier to repeat favourites.
Health-wise, most of what I’ve tried has been genuinely nutritious, but it rarely feels like you’re being punished for it.
A standout for me was the Salmon Okonomiyaki, a Japanese savoury pancake made with batter and cabbage.
I’d never made it before, and I’ll absolutely make it again.
It’s clever, filling, and the amount of salmon sent to top the pancake was properly generous (the photo I took shows half of the two-person portion).
Another thing worth calling out is that Mindful Chef makes life harder for itself by avoiding the cheap fillers that prop up many recipe box meals.
You’ll rarely see the obvious defaults like white rice or standard pasta.
One of my recipes used black rice instead, while others leaned on butterbeans or more interesting salads that actually add something beyond bulk.
The point is that Mindful Chef doesn’t phone it in. Each element feels deliberate, and you don’t get the sense that the brand is cutting corners to hit a price point.
And if you do fancy something more indulgent, you’re not stuck with “healthy” in the blandest sense.
The menu usually includes fakeaway favourites too, from Pad Thai to burgers, so it still works when you want comfort food with a bit more balance.
Mindful Chef review: FAQs
How much is Mindful Chef?
Mindful Chef is excellent, but it is undeniably pricey.
If you are feeding two, veggie recipes start at around £7.50 per person.
Cheaper meat dishes (chicken, turkey, pork, mince) usually sit in the £8-£9 bracket, while steak, lamb, duck and fish can reach £10 per head.
Cooking for one is steep, with portions rising to about £14.50, so I would order for two and take the leftovers for lunch.
A family of four gets better value, from roughly £5.25 to £7.50 per person.
Without discounts, three recipes a week for two comes to around £50, versus about £31.75 at Gousto and £36.48 at HelloFresh.
Mindful Chef often runs 25% off your first four boxes, but rivals regularly offer bigger discounts.
Is Mindful Chef gluten-free?
Yes, Mindful Chef is gluten-free, and that is one of its biggest USPs.
Mindful Chef says every recipe box meal is 100% gluten free, so you are not stuck scrolling through a menu hoping to find the one “GF” option that still looks appealing.
It also says it is the only recipe box in the UK that is completely gluten-free, and it explicitly positions this as support for coeliacs and other dietary needs.
In practice, it means you can order anything on the menu with far less second-guessing.
If you are highly sensitive, I would still double-check the allergen info and speak to the brand if you have any concerns.
How do I cancel Mindful Chef?
Cancelling Mindful Chef is straightforward, but you need to do so before the weekly cutoff to stop the next box.
If you just want a week off, you can skip a specific delivery from your upcoming orders by hitting Skip and confirming.
If you want to cancel properly, log in to the website, go to My subscription, scroll to the bottom and click Cancel subscription, then follow the prompts.
Mindful Chef also flags that changes are only possible up to its cut-off time, so it is worth checking the Help Centre and your account calendar before you assume you are in the clear.
Does Mindful Chef do frozen meals?
Mindful Chef isn’t just about fresh recipe boxes – it also offers a range of frozen meals.
Initially, these frozen meals were only available to existing Mindful Chef customers, but the brand opened access more widely from April.
You can either add them to your regular recipe box delivery or order them separately – you don’t need a subscription to get your hands on them.
There’s also a frozen smoothie range with six different flavours. These come in packs of five for just £10, which is pretty reasonable.
Who founded Mindful Chef?
It was founded by school friends Giles Humphries, Myles Hopper and Robert Grieg-Gran. Early investors in the brand included Sir Andy Murray and Victoria Pendleton.
In 2020, five years after the brand was founded, Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, acquired a majority stake in the company.
The Verdict: is Mindful Chef worth it?
Simply put, yes; Mindful Chef is worth it.
The price difference between the brand and its competitors is unavoidable, but this is also a much more thoughtful and high-quality service than anything else I’ve tried.
All the recipes are easy to follow, yet feel imaginative, creative, and healthy. Once you’ve finished cooking and eating, you’re left feeling full, which alone makes it better than anything else on the market.
- Get 25% off your first four Mindful Chef boxes – here
How I tested Mindful Chef
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I’m an enthusiastic home cook, and I spend a lot of my free time turning the kitchen into an absolute bomb site in the name of making something decent for dinner.
That said, I do not always have the time (or energy) to start from scratch, and recipe boxes are a handy middle ground.
You get a proper meal on the table without immediately defaulting to Deliveroo.
Lately, I’ve been revisiting our meal delivery reviews to make sure they still do what they promise.
Over the past few months, that’s meant testing HelloFresh, Gousto, GreenChef and FieldDoctor.
I put Mindful Chef through the same process: I chose, cooked and ate three meals, then scored them on how easy they were to make and clean up, how good they tasted, and whether the service offers value for money.
I also compared it to my experience a couple of years ago, to see what has improved and what has slipped.
Mindful Chef alternatives
There’s a buffet of meal delivery services to pick and choose from these days, but Mindful Chef does occupy its corner of the market; a premium service more concerned with quality than affordability.
The closest comparison I’ve encountered is probably Green Chef, which I tested for my Green Chef review; it has the same focus on healthy ingredients and has a slightly higher-than-average price point.
If you’re looking for a full list of alternatives, I’d recommend you read our tried-and-tested list of the best meal delivery services.
