Table of Contents
Summary of this allplants review
Like many busy people, I don’t always have time to cook meals from scratch every day, so when I was invited to sample some of their products to write this allplants review, I was quick to take them up on the offer! Of the meals that I subsequently tested, most were high quality, tasty, nutritionally well-balanced, and with lists of ingredients that I would happily use in my own cooking. All vegan too of course, and with a really good range to choose from including breakfasts, sides, desserts, smoothies, and mains. So whilst not every meal was perfect (apart from lasagne, I just don’t think that pasta responds well to the freezing process), I found these to be a convenient and very acceptable alternative to spending hours in the kitchen after a long day.
Editor’s rating: 4.6
Pros
- Great range to choose from
- All vegan
- Includes breakfasts, sides and desserts
- Mainly recognisable ingredients
- Subscription or single purchase
- Guest chefs add variety
- Environmentally sound
Cons
- Pasta textures could be better
- Occasional use of processed ingredients
- Spicy dishes could be spicier
Feeling peckish already?
Who are allplants?
allplants supplies and delivers frozen, plantbased, chef-prepared meals to your door. Founded by the Petrides brothers, allplants has been a B-Corp business since 2017 and is now classified as ‘outstanding’ by that organisation (at the time of publishing this allplants review). This means that they follow stringent environmental and social guidelines designed to encourage and recognise good business practice. This includes the recycling of packaging, the sourcing of ingredients, and their positive social impact – find out more here on the Sustainability + Social Impact page of the allplants website.
How does allplants work?
It is incredibly easy to order from the allplants online shop, and you can either set up a regular subscription (as I’ve just done), or simply order as a one-off. To be honest, one-off orders are fine, but you won’t benefit from the great discount offers that allplants makes to its new subscription customers. And if you do set up a subscription and decide you don’t want to continue with it, it’s incredibly easy to cancel. So, why wouldn’t you I guess?
Can’t make up your mind what to order? Fear not! Just head over to the allplants bundles page and stop stressing about which tasty meals to order. Bundles include a gut health selection, or maybe choose a box of their award-winning creations (Gold Great Taste awards) – yum.
More of an independent type? Not a problem. Just scroll through the dozens of delicious sounding meals on the allplants menu, which is helpfully broken down into sections.
Once you’ve made your selection, choose your delivery day and then just wait (possibly drooling) for your meals to turn up. They’ll get delivered in a box with dry ice and fully recyclable insulated packaging, guaranteed to stay frozen until 10pm on your delivery day. You can read more about all this on the allplants how it works page.
Are allplants meals just for vegans?
No, allplants meals are for everyone! They are keen to emphasise that their creations are plant-based and tend to avoid the term ‘vegan’ in an attempt to appeal to a wider demographic. This approach seems to work and in their first year of trading, 60% of allplants customers were non-vegan – and I’m up for anything that influences people to eat fewer animals. To be clear though, the meals are all vegan.
Vegan Mum’s experience of this allplants review
As this picture of allplants’ salted caramel cheesecake may demonstrate, I have thoroughly enjoyed working my way through a cross-section of samples so that I can offer a really honest and comprehensive allplants review. I defrosted this cheesecake overnight in the fridge as instructed and it was great. The crunchy chocolatey base was the perfect foil for the creamy caramel flavoured layers and topping of tasty cacao nibs. Pretty yummy…
Choice
I was first impressed by the choice of mains, sides and desserts and loved how they were categorised – for example:
- Guest chef creations (Rachel Ama at the time of publishing this allplants review)
- Buddha Bowls
- Desserts
- Breakfast Pots
- Curries
- Pastas and Risottos
- Noodle dishes
…and many more! I found it really helpful to be able to choose from the different cuisines, but also thought that the bundles section was an excellent idea too for those times when I’m feeling indecisive (which is quite often – welcome to my life…)
Value
I think the meals are pretty good value, starting from £4.99. By the time you have bought all the ingredients to replicate these meals, I’m confident you’d be spending more, and both the quality and the convenience factor I experienced is worth the cost to me anyway. You can also make significant savings by signing up for a subscription, which is very easy to manage subsequently, with flexible delivery frequency, and without getting tied in to any contract that you can’t easily extricate yourself from.
Delivery
Next up is the courier delivery, with its use of dry ice and recyclable insulation. All the packaging – both delivery and product – has been carefully thought through and designed to have minimal impact on the environment. My delivery was perfect, arrived on my chosen date, with all items still thoroughly frozen and ready to go straight into the freezer. Big tick from me.
Preparing
Choosing what to eat first was a problem because everything looked so delicious. I chose the Kung Pao Cauliflower first – easy peasy to cook in the microwave and very tasty. I don’t actually own a microwave so had to nip round to the neighbours to test it (and then had to share it…they gave it a thumbs up as well!) However, I cooked most of the subsequent meals in my conventional oven (so I could keep it all to myself) and they were all great, they just took a bit longer. All cooking instructions were spot-on, perfect timings, and every meal was piping hot, whichever cooking method I used.
Warning – a few of the allplants meals are only suitable for microwave cooking and these therefore have no instructions for conventional oven cooking. They are the exception however.
Quality, Nutrition and Taste
I found all the mains, sides, desserts and breakfasts to be of a very high quality and very delicious. Particular favourites in the Vegan Mum household though were the buddha bowls – the ones we tried out for this allplants review were excellent, including the Miso and Tamari pictured below. The edamame bean ‘mash’ was particularly tasty and the miso gave the dish a real umami flavour overall. Very good…
In addition, all the allplants main meals we ordered were nutritionally very well balanced, with lots of fresh ingredients. These recipes are absolutely not ultra-processed and there were only 1 or 2 items where there was an ingredient that I wouldn’t actually have to hand in my own kitchen. Of course, you should always check the ingredients for your own peace of mind, but I was not too perturbed by any of them.
One area I thought could do with improvement was the pasta. I’m not completely sold on pasta that has been cooked and frozen, and found the texture a little off-putting, although certainly still edible. I’m not sure whether this is the case with other frozen meal delivery brands, I suspect it is. However, the mushrooms and sauce in the stroganoff were delicious, and I didn’t have the same problem with the lasagne. The pasta in that was absolutely fine, although maybe because it is encased in more sauce.
The other thing was the spice level. I do use a lot of different chillies (and am about to harvest the Scotch Bonnets I’ve just grown!) so maybe we have a different expectation of the word ‘spicy’. The dishes described as spicy were warming and lovely, but could go up a notch or two. That’s my personal opinion though, and allplants has to consider a wide range of tolerance levels on the chilli front. And anyway, I guess it’s easy to pep it up yourself with a bit of hot sauce if you really need it to be more challenging!
Serving Sizes
The meals are available to serve either 1 or 2 – we chose the ‘2 servings’ meals. I have a pretty big appetite, but found the serving size to be just right. My partner does have, well…a bigger appetite (here’s hoping he doesn’t read this) but actually, he appreciated not being able to have his normal supply of seconds and thirds, and we genuinely did feel satiated after each meal. When I cook from scratch, I am incapable of scaling it down from a meal for 6, so we are in the habit of overeating and not being able to move for an hour! Consequently, we found these meals to be really good because they are actually very appropriate serving sizes and it has helped to educate us to eat less! Our waistlines will thank us…
Guest Chef – Rachel Ama
I love the idea of having a guest chef. I think it will help allplants to keep their menu fresh and invigorated. And, having just eaten Rachel Ama’s Chimichurri Portobello Mushroom Bowl created for allplants, I can really recommend it. With the warmth of cayenne and paprika, the combination of portobello and button mushrooms were right up my street, and who doesn’t like a spicy, herby chimichurri to top it all off with?
I liked it so much, that I have now ordered her cookbook from Amazon as well: Rachel Ama’s ‘One Pot. Three Ways’ cookbook
Conclusion
Overall, I am very impressed by allplants. The quality, variety, convenience, taste, and value for money tick all the right boxes for me – and that’s quite a lot of boxes ticked! I wouldn’t personally eat an allplants meal every single day, but then I am lucky enough to have a little more time nowadays to cook, without having to balance the pressures of having a young family and an overly-demanding job any longer.
However, I am still a very busy person and there are often days when I don’t have the time or the inclination to cook. Previously on these occasions, I would turn to using processed products like fishless fingers, vegan burgers etc, but having now discovered allplants, I have a much healthier, tastier alternative that I can reach for in the freezer. And I’m pretty pleased about that!
In addition, all the packaging – with the exception of the plastic film covering the food trays – is fully, and easily, recyclable. The film has to go in the bin, but at least it is a tiny amount of the overall packaging.
Where can I buy allplants?
Some ranges of allplants meals are available in Ocado and a few other food shops. However, to really benefit from the discounts and subscriptions on offer, the best thing to do is head over to the allplants online shop where you will also be able to see their entire range – believe me, you’ll want to!
Not only that, allplants also offers additional discounts to students and key workers which is amazing. And – you don’t see this very often – they offer a discount to the over 60’s which is very thoughtful, and hopefully reflects the fact that a much wider spectrum of people now consider eating more plants the right thing to do.
If you do try out some of their products as a result of this allplants review, I hope you enjoy them as much as we have. I’m confident you will.
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