When I moved to Sydney, I was happily single and excited to explore my new Aussie life. As I’m sure everyone understands, this does bring the challenge of needing to feed yourself somewhat healthily. This is especially challenging when cooking for just yourself as it becomes incredibly tempting to just grab a takeaway or oven-ready pizza instead of cooking every night. In this article, I want to share my experiences of using Meal Kits and help you make the most of your meals.
My favourite Meal Kit for singles in Australia is HelloFresh. By ordering their 2-person box you’re able to eat quick, healthy and filling meals every night of the week. There are some clever tips and tricks to extend the life of your meals and reduce your time spent cooking, shared in this blog. If you want to have a different meal every night then I also recommend Pepper Leaf’s 1-person box for farm fresh, local ingredients.
You can read my full review of HelloFresh alongside my full review of Pepper Leaf to learn more, or continue reading this article below.
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Which Meal Kits offer Single Person meals?
Most Meal Kits services only offer subscriptions for 2 or more people. This is primarily down to the cost of packaging/shipping each individual box being too high when there are only a few portions in the box. It’s also important to consider that some ingredients are naturally in 2-person portions, such as onions, tomatoes and other vegetables. By serving single person Meal Kits, there is a high risk of increasing food wastage as recipes will only use half of the sent ingredients. The full list of Meal Kit companies and whether they offer single person kits is below.
| Meal Kit Provider | 1-Person Boxes? | Delivery Areas | Full Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dinner Twist | No | Perth Metro & Regional WA | |
| Dinnerly | No | All States except WA | Dinnerly Review |
| EveryPlate | No | NSW, QLD & VIC | EveryPlate Review |
| HelloFresh | No | All Metro Areas inc. Perth | HelloFresh Review |
| Marley Spoon | No | All Metro Areas exc. Perth | Marley Spoon Review |
| Pepper Leaf | ✓ Yes | Major Metro Areas exc. Perth | Pepper Leaf Review |
| Thomas Farms Kitchen | No | South Australia & Victoria | |
| YouPlateIt | No | Perth Metro Area | YouPlateIt Review |
This means that Pepper Leaf are unique in the Australian market for offering a single person Meal Kit.
Is it worth buying a Meal Kit for Singles?
Yes, absolutely! I have personally enjoyed hundreds of meals from Meal Kits that I have cooked for myself, so I feel somewhat qualified to say this. Even when you’re cooking solo, you can take advantage of eating the healthy, varied meals that Meal Kits provide. With most meals being around $10 per portion, you’re paying slightly more than you would if cooking from home bought ingredients but equally paying significantly less than if you were to buy in a takeaway. For all the reasons you should consider using a Meal Kit service, check out our blog ‘10 reasons Meal Kits are awesome’.
My recommendation is to buy a 2-person box which contains 3 meals (6 portions). This will provide meals for 6 days each week and also allows you to eat out one day a week. If you know that you’re going to be away for a couple of days then it’s super easy to use the tips I provide in this blog to keep meals in the fridge/freezer for longer. Alternatively, all Meal Kit providers allow you to pause/skip weeks whenever you want. Just remember to do this at least 7-8 days in advance of your delivery or you might get stuck with a box you don’t want.
How to use a 2-person box for 1 person
I have some simple advice for ensuring you make the most of Meal Kits when cooking just for yourself. Since most services only offer 2-person boxes as a minimum, these tips are how to make sure you still enjoy each meal.
- Subscribe based on PORTIONS not MEALS. This is as simple as multiplying the Number of People by the Number of Meals. The result is how many dinners you’ll be able to get out of the box. I’ll sometimes order 2 meals for 4 people and with some clever storage that’ll last me 8 days.
- Eat Meals in the right order. It’s really important to eat certain ingredients before others, as well as always checking the ‘use by’ dates on any meat products. The general rule of thumb for this is:
- Fresh Salads
- Chicken
- Fish
- Other Meats
- Plan ahead when you’re going to cook. Some meals are perfect for reheating and that means you don’t need to spend any time in the kitchen on the second night. It’s worth planning ahead to make sure you get these ‘reheat’ meals when you’re going to be busy.
- Choose the meals YOU want. I’m sure this will be super obvious to most, but one of the great advantages of ordering meal kits for yourself is that you have full control over the meals you order. Nobody else’s preferences can change that, so make the most of this advantage!
Tips & Tricks for reheating Meal Kit meals
I’m sure it’s become obvious by now that if you’re going to enjoy a solo Meal Kit, you’ll need to work out the best ways of reheating meals. This isn’t always the easiest thing to do and you need to be careful with food hygiene to avoid any nasty bugs. So, I wanted to share some helpful tips with you.
Disclaimer: I’m not a food scientist so this advice is purely based on experience. Please always apply common sense when reheating food.
Food you can/can’t reheat – With such a wide variety of food in Meal Kits these days, it’s impossible to run through every food and whether it will reheat. However, I can give some general guidance which can help you work out which meals are candidates for reheating.
- Great for Reheating – Stews, Soups, Curries, Beef, Pork, Lamb
- Can be Reheated (flavour/texture impacted) – Chicken, Fish, Potato, Pasta, Veggies
- Not to be Reheated – Salad, Herbs, Bread
Best ways to reheat food – There are three primary methods to reheating food; Hob, Oven and Microwave. My personal favourite is using the Microwave despite the fact it tends to make certain ingredients ‘soggy’. I just really value the speed at which it gets your food ready to eat! There are some exceptions where I will use the oven. The general rule of thumb being that if it’s been cooked in the oven originally, it’ll reheat well in the oven.
Mixing fresh and reheated parts of a meal – This is an absolute life changer when it comes to eating delicious meals every day. Most dishes tend to have 2-4 individual components that come together to make a full meal. It’s possible to reheat parts of these meals whilst cooking the rest of the ingredients from fresh. I’ll give you an example – the HelloFresh Cheesy American Beef Chilli. With this meal, I would cook up all the Beef Chilli on one night and store it in the fridge. Then, when I want to eat the meal, I would cook up the rice from fresh and stir in the fresh herbs. Perfect.
Which Meal Kit is best for Solo Eaters?
Now we know that you can enjoy Meal Kits even when you’re only cooking for yourself, it’s a question of which one to try. There are pros and cons of each Meal Kit provider, so I do recommend reading through our Meal Kit Reviews to see which one is right for you. These are my personal favourite meal kits for singles:
I find that HelloFresh provide meals that give the best ‘end result’ with truly fabulous flavours. Their recipe cards are some of the best available and they deliver all across the country. Using some of our tips alongside their 2-person box means you can have all those fantastic meals to yourself. To get some money off your first order, you can use our link below.
As the only Meal Kit service that offers 1-person meals, Pepper Leaf can ensure that you’re able to eat a different meal every night. There’s a small premium to pay for doing this, though it really does add some excitement to you meals for the week. I love that Pepper Leaf is fully Australian Owned and provides ingredients from farm to plate in super quick time. You can get $40 off your first order with our link below.
Save $40 on Pepper LeafGet a discount on your first order with this link
I hope you found this article useful and it helped you discover how to enjoy Meal Kits when you’re cooking for yourself. Please let me know if you have any other tips you’d like to share in the comments section down below.
Thank you for all of the work you’ve done pulling so much info together. There’s a lot around and the research can be time consuming, and especially tedious when you’re hungry ☺️
I have been back on Hello fresh for a while but am having what may be a rather unique challenge with living in a small studio apartment with no oven. I haven’t tried any of the prepared meal plans because I refuse to microwave every meal but I’m willing to look into the other meal kit providers to see if there’s much difference.
I doubt it’s a big enough issue that any of the companies would take too seriously but consideration for those of us with limited kitchens would be a godsend for me at the moment.
Cheers,
Burgers n mash (or soft chips)
No oven is a really interesting challenge! Fortunately, there are normally plenty of recipes that can be cooked purely on a stovetop. As I’m sure you’re discovering, it’s all about picking your recipes carefully and sometimes reducing your order if you can’t find enough suitable recipes you like.
I would suggest trying Marley Spoon purely because they have the largest selection of meals each week, so you’re more likely to find non-oven meals you’ll like. For a cheaper alternative, Dinnerly might interest you.
I hadn’t tried many ‘prepared meals’ type boxes before starting this site… but they have actually really surprised me! Companies like Macros genuinely provide fresh ingredients that aren’t unhealthy like typical microwave meals. Definitely not the same as cooking yourself though.
Thanks for your comment and I’m glad you found my site helpful! It really means a lot.