Published on Nov. 11, 2024
In this CookUnity review, we detail our experience with the meal service that promises easy heat and eat meals. The twist? Each dish is conceptualized and prepared by expert chefs.
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Thanks to working from home and rising grocery prices, meal delivery services are having a moment. Some options, like HelloFresh, offer homemade meal kits that contain all the ingredients required for chef-inspired dishes. However, for those who don’t have the time to spend chopping and sauteing, there’s also a slew of options that offer heat-and-eat dishes for on-the-go folks. Enter: CookUnity. In this CookUnity review, we explore the meal service that’s prepared by expert chefs—yet cooks as quickly as a TV dinner.
Unlike most meal kits for families, CookUnity focuses on single-serve meals that arrive ready to enjoy. These are typically known as “heat and eat meals.” However, there’s a twist: Each dish arrives freshly prepared by one of CookUnity’s expert chefs. As a result, these meals are much tastier (and classier) than anything you’d find in the frozen food section.
As we learned while testing this service for our CookUnity review, there are many flexitarian dishes available on the menu. These include keto meal kits and vegetarian options, among dozens of other diet-specific meals. A number of limited-time, seasonal dishes are also released each year, such as turkey and stuffing for Thanksgiving or ham and mashed potatoes for the holidays. Additionally, CookUnity often offers deals like significant discounts, free meals and other savings.
EMIKO FRANZEN FOR TASTE OF HOME
CookUnity is a meal delivery service that employs real, skilled chefs who prepare each meal. All it takes is a few minutes in the microwave or oven for a delicious, home-cooked dish!
Product Testing Manager and former editor Annamarie Higley tested the service for this CookUnity review. She notes that the menu (created and prepared by professional chefs) is incredibly tantalizing. There are also a number of dietary filters, sorting dishes by Seafood, Vegetarian, Beef, Poultry, Vegan, less than 600 Calories, Low Carbs, Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Low Sodium, Keto Diet, Paleo, High Protein and Low Fat. As customers scroll the menu, they get a preview of the star ratings of each meal as well as a spiciness indicator and calorie count. The menu is very expansive, offering over 200 different dish options in total, with the choice of up to 16 meals per shipment.
The cuisines in each dietary category are diverse, and the meals are creative. “I’m so impressed by the options—I had a really hard time choosing,” Annamarie says. Eventually, she settled on a menu featuring the following dishes: Falafel-Crusted Artichokes, Caramelized Mushroom Quesadilla, Chicken Cacciatore, Southern Fried Chicken, Chili-Roasted Shrimp and Miso-Glazed Salmon Bowl.
The CookUnity website is slick and easy to use, albeit a bit unwieldy in that it offers almost too much information. It’s a little slow when it comes to loading, but it looks modern with cool graphics and nice photos. We love that customers can create a pretty robust, built-out favorites library.
The app looks quite a bit like the website and offers four tabs: Orders, History, Invite and Account. “Orders” is where you edit upcoming orders, including menu selections and delivery details. You can also add an extra order and rate meals within this tab. The “History” tab is where you view previous orders and transactions. “Invite” is where you refer friends. The “Account” tab is where you adjust meal preferences, plan settings, payment methods, favorites, account settings, notifications and other account modifications.
The best feature is under “Meal Preferences,” where you can add other profiles. Annamarie created a profile for her boyfriend so he could detail his own list of preferred cuisines, along with proteins and foods to avoid.
CookUnity has a Zero Waste goal, so nearly all the packaging is recyclable, compostable or reusable. Meals arrive stacked up inside a little zippered tote bag with a reflective foil interior. Each meal has a sleeve, plastic film and cardboard tray. These are refrigerated, not frozen, so the insulation is a little lighter. I also think they pack the meals the day of, so they don’t need to be kept chilled overnight. In our bag, there was just one thick ice pack laid right over the top of the stack of meals.
“It was a tracking experience like I’ve never had,” says Annamarie of the delivery experience. “I was able to access minute-by-minute updates on my order and was given details regarding how many stops the delivery person had to make before mine. Once my delivery was next up, I could track what street the delivery person was on, like you would with an Uber or Lyft driver. I also was able to call or message the person if needed.”
Each meal provides two sets of instructions: the “Chef Instructions” and the “Fast Instructions.” The former is the oven-baked version, and the latter is the microwaved version. The instructions are super clear and concise. They describe what to do with the packaging and how long to heat for each respective cooking method. As with most reheated meals, the cooking time depends on your appliances. Annamarie notes that while making these meals is not more complicated than making a frozen pizza, there’s no guarantee that the listed cook time will be accurate, so you might need to adjust accordingly.
The use-by dates of these meals, especially the seafood ones, aren’t very far out because they’re refrigerated rather than frozen. For example, the shrimp dish needed to be eaten by Friday, and Annamarie received it on Tuesday. CookUnity notes that you can freeze the meals to preserve them longer if needed.
We baked our first meal in the oven, opting for the “chef” instructions over the “fast” instructions. “I was worried these would be a little overcooked because of how curled up they were, but they were nice and succulent,” reports Annamarie of the shrimp. “Some of the shrimp still even had a nice crust from the roasting, which was then kept intact by baking in the oven, I assume. This really tasted like a reheated home-cooked meal (in a good way).”
However, the real star was the grits. “These grits were just out of this world. I’m not a grits expert, but these were so rich and luscious, and I loved the inclusion of the corn kernels for a bit of textural contrast, so it wasn’t just mush,” says Annamarie. “I couldn’t stop eating them! The best thing in the whole box I got.”
Annamarie microwaved this gluten-free meal kit to get both sides of the CookUnity experience, noting that preparing meals this way is simple. After three minutes in the microwave, she cut into the center of the biggest breast, which was a good eating temperature. It doesn’t get much more foolproof than a fully microwaved meal—and a tasty one, to boot!
“I’m a bit biased against chicken breast, but this was cooked pretty well,” says Annamarie. “There was also tons of it—it was a sizable piece of meat that would satiate even big appetites. The braised tomato-olive sauce was what really shined, though. It was super savory with the mushrooms and olives. The sauteed onions were left large, so they provided a bit of bite, and the herbs made this flavorful to boot. Yum, yum, yum.”
We wanted to give CookUnity’s plant-based meal kits a fair shake, so Annamarie settled on this mushroom-forward dish made in the oven. The results? Delicious!
“The char on the tortilla was so promising! And its edges really crisped up in the oven—love! Very glad I baked this,” says Annamarie. “There was a dreamy cheesy pull right when I pulled the pieces apart. The mushrooms were perfectly tender, but you definitely need to love mushrooms to enjoy this meal. Their intense umami flavor really shined through.”
While she didn’t see anything about poblano peppers in the description, their earthy zip was a lovely addition. The cheese was mild but delicious and rich. Overall, Annamarie calls this a super satisfying meat-free meal.
All meal delivery reviews—including this CookUnity review—are backed by testing from different Taste of Home team members with varying degrees of cooking expertise. Our testers’ needs, wants and budgets reflect those of the average shopper. We aren’t new to testing this product category, either. In addition to over a dozen meal kits, our team has reviewed meat and chicken delivery services like ButcherBox, Snake River Farms and Good Chop. Our testing extends to grocery services, like Misfits Market and Thrive Market, as well.
Product Tester and former editor Annamarie oversees Taste of Home’s product testing team and daily operations in our testing lab. She and her team assess online trends, search traffic and audience engagement to determine which items warrant testing firsthand in our dedicated office space or our homes. This includes everything from kitchen appliances to beauty products to power tools. Knowing we sourced, saw and tested these products ourselves, readers can feel confident in our recommendations and, ultimately, secure in their purchases.
If you’re smitten by the significant number of recipes and delicious endorsements after reading this rave CookUnity review, it’s easy to secure a subscription to CookUnity. Just head over to the website and start building your cart. Fuss-free dishes and chef-created flavors await!
EMIKO FRANZEN FOR TASTE OF HOME
CookUnity is a meal delivery service that employs real, skilled chefs who prepare each meal. All it takes is a few minutes in the microwave or oven for a delicious, home-cooked dish!
CookUnity costs as little as $75 for six meals or as much as $178 for 16 meals. Costs also depend on several factors, including whether or not you choose any “premium” meals with pricier proteins. For this CookUnity review, we stuck to the regular menu.
Navigate to “Settings” and find the “Cancel Subscription ” button. Next, select a reason from the dropdown, leave a comment (optional), check a terms box, and then click “Cancel my subscription.” CookUnity then sends out a confirmation email.
While canceling the subscription after writing our CookUnity review, we noticed that there’s also an option to pause a week. To pause the subscription, toggle through any upcoming delivery weeks and look for a button that says “manage order.” Within the pop-up, there is an option to skip weeks of service.
