Recipe ingredients are organized nicely into individual bags, and the foldout recipe cards are charmingly well designed and easy to save if you plan to replicate them in the future with or without Purple Carrot. The kits offer a mix of fresh produce and prepackaged ingredients that might include tofu, instant rice, or spice pouches.

Although produce isn’t guaranteed organic, most of the ingredients were (and of course, they were all vegan). The only ingredients you need to provide are salt, pepper, and cooking oil. Though note that at least one recipe—those excellent butternut squash dumplings—required a food processor, a rarity among meal kits loath to make such assumptions about anyone’s home kitchen.

Good Cooking, Real Cooking

Purple Carrot’s strength lies with the recipes and the freshness of the ingredients. Some sourcing is local where possible, according to Purple Carrot. And the produce I received did seem a step above most of the bigger meal kits. In my box, the poblanos were crisp, and the herbs were fragrant. In July, my corn came seasonably still on its cob, waiting to be sliced off into kernels. Avocado, a real worry for a delivery meal kit, was unbruised and ripe but not overripe.

This kind of freshness adds confidence. But it also adds prep. The butternut squash dumplings I prepared required that I throw squash and soy cream cheese into a food processor with herbs and spices, then individually fold the filling into a dozen dumpling wrappers, before then frying up the dumplings and toasting a sesame-pecan topper. In the meantime, I’ll be slicing up apples for a little citrus-y salad.

That recipe is advertised at just under an hour: It will take every bit of it. It’s also worth it—a nice balance of crisp and soft, comforting and brightly acidic.

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

But most recipes sport advertised prep times closer to 30 minutes. Other recipes, like rajas avocado tacos with corn straight off the cob, aren’t much harder to prep than merely slicing the vegetables. Beyond this, the recipe called for a short turn in the broiler and oven for both veggies and tortillas. I’ll admit, I didn’t want to heat the oven on a hot summer day, and so I instead griddled the ingredients on a broad All-Clad stainless steel pan, and it was both faster and delicious. The meal took maybe 20 minutes to prep, even less than advertised.