In our continuing quest to find an affordable meal kit that has good recipes, this month I moved on to Sunbasket.

Now, Sunbasket is definitely in the splurge category. It’s one of the more expensive meal kits I’ve looked at during this project.

The introductory offer was $70 off across 4 meal orders.

We all know how I feel about applying the discount unequally at this point, and Sunbasket was no exception. It took $25.00 off the first order and $15 off the next three.

Now that I’ve been doing this a while, I can see how taking the bigger discount off the first box is actually beneficial because you can cancel anytime, including after that first box, if you wanted to.

Still – I’d rather see the discount applied evenly. Sunbasket wasn’t so bad but some of the companies it all starts to feel a bit shady when the discount varies wildly (cough, cough Hello Fresh).

And Sunbasket promised $70 off and gave me exactly $70 off – better than Hello Fresh and Blue Aprons promises.

Sunbasket also had a coupon on Honey that amounted to 80 Honey Gold points. That’s really not worth much as it takes 2500 Honey Gold points to earn a $25 gift certificate, but I guess it’s a little closer to the goal now.

We did four weeks of meals with them at two meals a week and they were:

• Ginger and Bok Choy-Stir Fry with Pickled Daikon Salad
• Sole with Caramelized Onions, Potatoes, and Sun-Dried Tomato Za’atar
• Chicken Breast Farro Bowl with Spinach, Apricots, and Green Goddess Dressing
• Coconut Shrimp with Cucumber Salad and Spicy Pineapple-Ginger Mayo
• Sloppy Joes with Pickled Jalapeños and Tangy Coleslaw
• Fish Po’Boy Bowl with Tomato Relish and Chipotle Mayo with Sole Fillets
• Montreal Steaks with Green Goddess Chopped Salad
• Hawaiian Garlic Shrimp Over Coconut Rice

Without the discounts, each meal (which serves 2) cost $27.98. A minimum order was 2 meals, which is what we did, so the weekly price here is $55.96 plus $7.99 for shipping – a total of $63.95 a week or $13.99 a meal.

With the introductory discounts, 8 meals (16 servings) cost $177.81 or $11.11 per serving.

The packaging was on par with the other brands. It’s excessive.

The recipe cards are really easy to use and I did appreciate that Sunbasket sends pretty much everything you need to cook each meal other than olive oil, salt and pepper.

The quality of the recipes was much better than Blue Apron. I thought they were on par with Hello Fresh, though Sunbasket has a very healthy bent to it’s recipes.

The only thing I didn’t like was that there were very few carbs, which is quite healthy, but I often felt like there wasn’t quite enough food. They were perfectly portioned, and I could just be a chubby American complaining here. If you are trying to eat healthier though, this is a good starting point, but just a reminder that healthier doesn’t always mean low calorie. Some of these meals had pretty high calorie counts.

I thought the best meal was the Chicken Breast Farro Bowl, mostly because I had never even heard of farro and I thought it was delicious. I also learned that green goddess dressing is delicious. Overall, each meal was very good.

Sunbasket really, really seems to like cabbage. Cabbage based salads and coleslaw are common sides. As someone who is really not that into coleslaw, it felt excessive to me. Of course, you can avoid coleslaw meals.

Like Hello Fresh and Blue Apron, Sunbasket has several recipes to select from each week. You can select your options several weeks in advance.

It was also a very easy to use website and it was very easy to cancel.

One fun bonus to Sunbasket is that they have a small grocery section too with some interesting snack items. I managed to avoid spending anything there. BUT Sunbasket sent a free sample item in each box. Over the four boxes there was: a blood orange juice, a seriously excellent chocolate bar, a soup, and a vegetable dip.

At $13.99 full price and $11.11 with the intro discount, Sunbasket is on the pricey end of the meal kit spectrum. If you’re just trying to mix things up for a month, it could be worth the splurge though. And with the front loaded discount, you can try just one box for even less than $11.11.

Current meal kit rankings stand at:

• #1 Hello Fresh
• #2 Sunbasket
• #3 Blue Apron

Next up, Dinnerly!