Yahoo Lifestyle 
We tried ‘the most affordable meal kit in the world’
If we said you could get a healthy dinner delivered to your home for under $6 a meal, you’d want to know more, right?
Well so did we. As someone who's never been overly excited about getting into the kitchen, I've sampled just about every possible dinner shortcut available in Australia.
Pre-packaged meals like those from Lite 'N Easy and YouFoodz are exceptionally easy, but come with a higher price-tag to match - while ingredient boxes like those on offer from Hello Fresh, require a bit more effort but still save you from the dreaded 'what do you feel like for dinner' conversation.
The newest offering in the delivered-to-your-door meal box department to arrive Down Under is Dinnerly, and it touts itself as a cheaper option for families that are struggling for time and money to cook healthy meals at home.
The budget-friendly kit, from the creators of Marley Spoon, claims to be ‘the most affordable meal kit in the world’, coming in at just $5.75 a serve, with a shipping fee of $8.95 per box, so when I was offered the opportunity to try it, I couldn't say no.
“Recipes use fewer ingredients, packing is streamlined and recipes are online meaning Dinnerly fits within a typical family budget,” co-founder Rolf Weber said.
“The average family household cannot afford current meal kit offerings at $10 per portion, Dinnerly is almost half this.”
Here I've compared Dinnerly to some of those current offerings including Hello Fresh and Marley Spoon, to see how it stacks up.
The recipes I got to try in our box were Chicken Linguine with crispy caper crumbs, Indonesian Vegetable Curry with vermicelli noodles, and Beef Koftas with sweet potato mash.
All were delicious and the recipe cards were easy to follow but there was one thing I noticed straight away.
The ‘quick and easy 20-minute meals’ we got actually required 30 minutes (chicken and curry) and 40 minutes (koftas).
But the pre-portioned ingredients and veggies were all good quality and the fact that the recipe cards are digital saves on paper. There is also much less rubbish and packaging to throw away compared to the other meal kits.
Both Marley Spoon and Hello Fresh separate their ingredients into paper bags for each meal so that everything you need for one recipe stays together – convenient. They also print their recipe cards out which is nice if you want to keep a folder of them.
In terms of the meals, I've always found Hello Fresh's boxes quite simple and delicious, while Marley Spoon's options are a little more complicated, but still great.
Looking at the price difference, Hello Fresh currently offers vegetarian boxes for $10.83 per serving, while the classic plan costs $11.66 and the family plan $9.16.
Marley Spoon is the most expensive costing $11.65 per serving for a two-person box and $9.50 per serving for a four-person box.
Dinnerly have been smart in where they cut their costs to give you a very similar offering for less.
“We use the same quality ingredients as the other kits but take a simpler approach: digital recipe cards instead of paper, fewer ingredients per dish (which means less chopping and cleaning), simple packaging, and no fancy marketing campaigns,” they explained.
Dinnerly is available to order in NSW, VIC, QLD and ACT. More recipes and vegetarian options will become available this month.
This reporter was invited to try Dinnerly free of charge.
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