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These premium premade meals are engineered to be boiled in bags for better results. I tried a week of RealEats meals to see how the unorthodox service stacks up.

Senior Editor / Home and Kitchen

I live in Brooklyn where I write about food subscriptions, cooking, kitchen gadgets and commerce. Anything with sesame is my all-time favorite food this week.

Some foods are undoubtedly best when boiled -- pasta and rice to name a few. RealEats is a meal delivery service that recommends you boil it all. Well, sort of. The food from this subscription service is already cooked using various methods when it arrives, but the culinary team recommends boiling it in heat-safe bags to reheat before eating. It's a different approach than other services, and it's intended to heat each component to an optimal temperature and avoid overcooking.

I've found that the technique you use to reheat prepared meals or leftovers  has an outsized impact on the final product. To see if RealEat precooked and bag-boiled meals had an edge over the competition, I tried a week's worth of the service's self-proclaimed "farm-to-table" meals, which include premium eats such as steak and lobster.

In the end, RealEats falls short of my favorite meal delivery services , especially considering the cost. (It's one of the more expensive options.) A few of the entrees I had were above average but others were below and one was just plain bad. Here's my firsthand review of RealEats meal delivery in case you're tempted to taste them.

Read more: Best Prepared Meal Delivery Service for 2022

RealEats is a weekly meal subscription service so you'll choose at least four meals and as many as 12. The menu features roughly 24 menu options per week which change from season to season but many of which stick around from week to week. Most meal options are intended to be a hearty lunch or dinner but the service also offers breakfasts, greens and salads, soups, smoothies, snacks, cheese and proteins to add to your delivery.

RealEats is one of the pricier prepared meal subscription services with plans starting at over $13 a serving.

The page for each single-serving meal includes a description, list of ingredients and nutritional information such as the total calories, carbs, fat and protein. Here, you'll also find options for swapping proteins, vegetables, starches and other sides (more on that in a second).

RealEats is a subscription service so if you don't pause, cancel or skip the next week's delivery before 11:59 p.m. ET on Thursday, you'll continue to receive meals, but you can pause meals for up to eight weeks at a time. RealEats meals arrive fresh, not frozen and they can be reheated within a few days or frozen for later. 

At present, RealEats is available for delivery to 30 states, plus Washington, DC. The delivery area includes most of the eastern half of the country but no states or zip codes west of Texas. 

You can view all the ingredients and some nutritional information for each meal before adding it to your weekly delivery

While meal kit companies have introduced meal customization, you don't often see it in prepared meal delivery but RealEats is one exception. Because the components of each meal are individually packaged in the heat-safe "FreshPacks," you can swap proteins and sides at no extra charge. 

I liked this function and there were almost no limitations for what you can swap as long as it's side for side or protein for protein. Because of this, you can make some strange meal combos if you want, like chicken tikka masala with a side of fusilli in marinara sauce and broccoli casserole.

Try not to get carried away with the limitless swaps or you might end up with some odd flavor combos.

RealEats meals are also a bit pricier than other services, starting at $13.49 for the cheapest plan (12 meals) but you'll find higher-end ingredients including lobster mac and cheese, steak and short ribs. 

RealEats weekly menu is packed with familiar favorites. You'll find recipe staples including balsamic glazed steak, chicken parm with pasta, grilled barbecue chicken with mashed potatoes and garlic lime shrimp. There are several cuisines represented with popular Indian dishes including chicken tikka masala and Mexican standbys such as fajitas and tacos. There are typically two or three seafood options with shrimp or salmon but almost no vegetarian options. In fact, the week I ordered my meals there was only one nonmeat meal. 

You can peruse RealEats' current full menu here.

RealEats offers comfort classics representing a range of global cuisines.

According to the brand's marketing, much of the food is sourced from local farms in the New York area and some is organic, although that information is not listed for each individual meal so it's difficult to confirm. 

A few of the RealEats meals I tried. Some were good while others missed the mark.

I tried meals and ate them over the course of a few weeks. There were a few hits but sprinkled among them were others I didn't care for, including one that proved inedible. 

Balsamic-glazed steak with mashed potatoes and green beans: Despite my high hopes for a hearty steak dinner, the meat that emerged from its boiling bath was tough and mostly inedible. The mashed potatoes were also watery and the green beans mushy and overcooked. This meal combo was a disaster from soup to nuts.

Tuscan chicken meatballs with fusilli pasta and pesto green beans: The next meal I tried was considerably better than the first. The meatballs were tender with good flavor. The green beans were OK but tasted more like black pepper than pesto, and I wondered if they'd been mislabeled. The pasta was fine but a tad overcooked with little sauce.

Tuscan chicken meatballs with fusilli and "pesto" green beans.

Honey-sesame chicken with fried rice and veg medley: This was the best meal I ate from RealEats. The chicken was fork tender and the stir-fried rice was cooked nicely and not overdone. The vegetable medley was good but not great, with slightly overcooked broccoli.

The honey-sesame chicken was my favorite meal of the bunch.

Shredded chicken fajitas with Cuban black beans and Spanish rice: This meal was also tasty. Both the chicken and black beans had plenty of spice and depth of flavor. The rice was blander but paired well with the others. 

While I contend that a nonstick skillet or air fryer is often the best way to heat prepared meals, RealEats meals are designed for a different approach. Each ingredient is sealed in an airtight, heat-safe plastic bag similar to those used for sous vide cooking.

RealEats recommends boiling each component in heat-safe bags for best results.

All meals can be heated in under 6 minutes and the label includes an optimal time to boil each component. As an example, one meal I tried asked that I boil the bags containing honey sesame chicken and rice for six minutes each, but the bag of vegetables for just three. The aim is to keep foods from overcooking and getting mushy, which can happen if you employ a one-size-fits-all reheating method.

Each meal comes with recommended boiling times for each component.

There are also microwave heating instructions included, but I opted to boil my food in every instance since nuking food almost always nets in inferior eats.

Boiling water before reheating is another step and adds more time to the process. You'll also have to stay focused so you remember to add foods with a shorter boil time to the pot. The bags also emerge very hot, so you'll want to remove them with tongs and let them both drain and cool for a few seconds before handling. On the flip side, the boiling pot stays clean so it won't saddle you with any extra dishes to wash.

While the box and cooler bags are recyclable, each meal contains three separate plastic bags, one for each component, which can't be recycled. Most meal delivery services pack meals in a recyclable container, shrink-wrapped in one piece of plastic. 

RealEats meals use more plastic than the average meal delivery service.

I found RealEats to be a meal delivery service with high highs and low lows. The honey-sesame chicken was about as satisfying a meal as I've had from a meal delivery service, but the bag-boiled steak was tough and inedible. The others fell somewhere in the middle. 

RealEats recommended approach to heating its prepared meals was intriguing and, for some of my meals, seemed to work well. But for me, waiting around for water to boil and fumbling with hot bags of food proved more of a hassle than it was worth. I still contend heating food in a nonstick skillet is the easiest, fastest and overall best way to get a prepared meal ready for eating. 

One boon for RealEats is the inclusion of premium foods such as steak, lobster and other seafood that you won't find on most other meal delivery menus. And for picky eaters, the ability to customize each meal with protein and side swaps is another luxury most services don't afford. 

With meals priced at over $13 a serving, even for the cheapest plan, it's one of the pricier meal subscriptions around, making it hard to recommend. Others I've tried, including Fresh N Lean , Mosaic Foods (plant-based) and Freshly had a better hit rate of great meals, and all three cost less per-serving than RealEats.

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.