Gluten-free dishes have Deserved reputation. This is not because wheat has a monopoly on good taste: the whole country and culture will disagree. Instead, chefs often make things that are desperately needed for gluten what they look like: pancakes and waffles, such as southern fried chicken. Or, the Lord helps us, pizza.

So every time I try the gluten-free board in many dining kits I have reviewed, it’s filled with fear – eventually, I find myself chewing the tapioca pancakes endlessly, or breaking my heart on a bunch of limp Zoodles.

Here’s a noteworthy prologue: Hellofresh’s organic meal brand Green Chef’s gluten-free meal is surprisingly good. More than half of Green Chef’s recipes are gluten-free, and the brand is proven by Seattle’s beautiful, full-throat verification of its Gluten Intolerance Group, which provides certification for gluten-free ingredients and restaurants.

More information about this verification and its meaning. But first, I'm going to say that I didn't miss gluten-free meals for the week worth of Green Chef. I didn't miss it because, in addition to replacing gluten-free amino seasonings (which is a popular brand) in lieu of soy sauce, none of these meals should or shouldn't be coated with gluten in any case.

Green Chef’s meals are not pale imitations of gluten stuff, but dishes that don’t require wheat in the first place. This may include a kale and quinoa grilled chicken bowl with North African spices, a steak with green peas and rice, or a rice bowl topped with cabbage and honey ginger shrimp.

Everyone was a completely familiar meal and it took me half an hour to an hour to prepare after receiving a box of ingredients and recipe cards in the email. No one feels lacking ingredients. This is how green chefs work.

Organic, hearty, often gluten-free

Founded in Boulder, Colorado, Green Chef was once a competitor to Hellofresh (7/10, Wired Review), a German-created cutlery bag brand that helped build successful business models in dozens of countries. When Hellofresh snapped up Green Chef in 2018, the cutlery Titan positioned Green Chef as an organic alternative: Green Chef promotes that all its produce and eggs are organic unless otherwise noted. (Currently, this meat is the same meat, mostly used by other brands of Hellofresh, mainly high-end merchandise cut from traditional American providers and producers.)