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The prepared, microwave meal delivery service is certainly having a moment. My team and I have been watchers of the meal kit space for years and in the past six months it seems that every major meal kit company has come out with its own slate of fully cooked heat-and-eat options. Lots of the new dishes are add-ons or alternatives to a more traditional meal kit that sends you ingredients for you to prepare yourself. Forkful, however, offers only these prepared meals and promises to be both time-saving and healthy for a whole range of dietary needs. I tried it out for a couple weeks to see what kind of food the brand had on offer and whether it delivered on its promises.
What is Forkful
It’s a prepared-meal service, which means that all of Forkful’s meals arrive at your door entirely cooked, though not frozen. In a sea of fully cooked meal deliveries, Forkful aims to set itself apart by appealing to the health and wellness crowd, with meals falling into seven different categories for specific diets, which is as many as I’ve seen any meal service offer. It has meals specific to vegan diets (listed as plant-based), keto, Paleo, high-protein, low-carb, gluten-free, and for people using GLP-1s.
Every recipe on the site shows both its ingredient list and nutritional breakdown in a way designed to help people who are tracking calories, protein, or sodium intake.
The meals themselves are generally separated into “mains” and “sides” (chicken and rice for example) in a microwave-safe plastic container that heats in two minutes. There are stovetop instructions on every package as well and oven heating instructions on the Forkful website.
How does Forkful compare to other meal delivery services?
| Forkful | Hungryroot | CookUnity | Purple Carrot | Green Chef | Sakara | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per serving | $9–$13 | $9+ | $12+ | $13 | $11.99 | $27+ |
| Type of meal kit | Fully prepared and delivered fresh | Kit and grocery | Fully prepared | Kit; heat-and-eat meals available as add-ons | Primarily kit; heat-and-eat meals available | Fully prepared |
| Option for add-ons? | Yes; limited add-ons include desserts and snacks | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Vegetarian/vegan-friendly? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes; vegan only | Yes | Yes; fully plant-based |
| Other diets they accommodate | Vegan, gluten-free, low-carb, Paleo, keto, high-protein | Dairy-free, gluten-free, pescatarian, allergen-free, plus various other nutrition preferences | Dairy-free, gluten-free, pescatarian, keto, paleo, plus various other nutrition preferences | High-protein, gluten-free | Protein-packed, keto, gluten-free, calorie-smart | Gluten-free, detox programs available |
What I liked about Forkful
Placing my first order was seamless and simple to do. Before creating an account you can peruse some sample menu options and decide what you'd want to eat. The sign-up process is quick and easy, as is selecting your meals. Just toggle the number of any particular meal you want.
The Achilles heel of almost every prepared meal, whether you get it from an online service or the freezer aisle of your local grocery store, is texture. Rubbery chicken, stale rice, goopy pasta. Forkful didn’t have many of these issues. Rice came out of the microwave fairly soft, pasta noodles were distinct and, in a happy surprise, the seafood in the shrimp dish I ordered had good bite and bounce.
This wasn’t universally true—some of the vegetables had that falling-apart-in-the-microwave problem—but more often than not, I was happy with the chew and texture.
The most flavorful Forkful meals I ate were the ones that ventured into cuisines from East Asia and Central and South America. The tofu sofritas and lentil curry (both vegan meals) both had a nice subtle spice to them. And while it took the addition of a little salt, I was also impressed with the creamy shrimp over linguine mentioned above.
One of the sells of Forkful is that all the meals are ready in two minutes in the microwave. But each one also comes with instructions for the stovetop (those instructions are basically: Heat the protein in a skillet followed by the sides). I used both methods and, perhaps unsurprisingly, taking an extra five minutes to heat a meal on the stove provided an entirely different experience. Ingredients like broccoli and cauliflower that came out mushy in the microwave were transformed in the pan.
Using the stove will take away some of the convenience, but it will make a much tastier meal.
What could stand some improvement
It’s hard to make meals that come out of the microwave look good and that’s as true for Forkful as it is for lots of other microwave meals I’ve eaten. When left in their trays, Forkful meals have a bit of an international flight meal vibe. But even when plated, their look would be at home on the “easy weeknight dinner” section of a food blog.
There’s some fairly recent Reddit chatter with users complaining about getting a runaround from Forkful when they tried to cancel. I’ll say that was not my experience (some of the trouble seemed to be getting someone on the phone). But I did go through the process of cancelling online to see what it was like and I was prompted three times with various options urging me to keep my subscription. I declined and successfully cancelled entirely online, but it is more of a process to cancel than it is to sign up.
Is Forkful worth it?
If you’re meal kit-curious because you want exposure to new cuisines and ingredients you’ve never prepared, Forkful will fall short. But that’s a bar almost no meal delivery service meets.
After eating it as both a lunch and a dinner for a couple weeks, I can say I think Forkful fills a specific niche: It’s for the solo eater looking for an easy, filling meal, probably after a workout. And for that eater, it’s a reliable and healthy choice. I think it makes a better supplement to your weekly meal plan than the backbone of it, and is best used as filling in-office lunch. And if you eat vegan, are looking to ramp up your protein, or want to make a change in your eating habits going into the new year, Forkful makes that particularly easy to execute.
