Best Grubby Recipes This Month: Our Top 4 (May 2026)

Last updated 16 May 2026

By Stiv · Design, technology and personal finance

We pay full price for our weekly Grubby box, like any other subscriber. We have a referral partnership with Grubby, so signing up via our link supports the site. Our opinions are independent.

The May Roundup · Issue 05/26

Crispy burger tacos with burger sauce on a plate, Grubby plant-based recipe kit dinner.

Pulled meaty mushroom burger cross-section showing the pulled texture, Grubby vegan recipe kit.

BBQ brisket burnt ends with smoky beans and pickles in a bowl, Grubby vegan recipe kit.

Crispy jerk tofu burger with creamy slaw and jerk gravy, Grubby plant-based recipe kit.

Every week we get a Grubby box delivered. Four or five plant-based recipes we picked ourselves and paid for in full. This month, four recipes across the rotation were so good we decided to write about it. Here are the best Grubby recipes we cooked, what we thought, and which one caused an actual argument over the last portion.

A quick note for new readers

For anyone landing here cold, Grubby is the UK's first 100% plant-based recipe kit company, founded in 2020 and now B Corp certified. They post fresh ingredients and chef-written cards to your door each week, and you cook the meals in twenty to forty minutes. We have been paying subscribers for over a year, getting a weekly box with four or five recipes we pick ourselves from the rotating menu. If you want the proper deep dive, we wrote a full review here, and we also compared it to Mindful Chef here. This piece is lighter. It is just the best Grubby recipes we cooked this month, in roughly the order of how loudly we shouted about them.

The four best Grubby recipes we cooked this month

⏱ 25 mins 👤 Serves 2 🌶 Easy

Crispy burger tacos with burger sauce

The concept reads like something a tired marketing intern dreamt up at 4pm on a Friday. Burger filling, folded inside a toasted flatbread, smash-fried until crisp. Reader, it works. Grubby's plant-based mince hits a hot pan and goes golden in minutes. Meanwhile, the flatbread shatters when you bite it, and the burger sauce (mustard, plant mayo, ketchup, a sneaky hit of nutritional yeast) glues the whole thing together with a faint cheesy umami you cannot quite place.

Total cooking time was about fifteen minutes. Add another ten for pickling shallots and assembling, and dinner for two lands in twenty-five. We ate four tacos. We had planned to eat two each. Then, within fifteen minutes of plating, we were openly fighting over the last one. The full recipe lives here in case you fancy starting your own argument.

⏱ 35 mins 👤 Serves 2 🌶 Medium

Pulled meaty mushroom burger with shoestring fries

The technique is the headline. Grubby's so-called meaty mushrooms arrive whole, and you bash them with a rolling pin before pulling them apart with your fingers like a deli sandwich filling. The texture is uncannily close to slow-braised pulled pork, without the slow and without the pork. First, smoked paprika does the heavy lifting on the marinade. Then a slosh of BBQ sauce and a generous splash of Henderson's Relish (the distinctly Yorkshire alternative to Worcestershire) lacquers the lot into something sticky and savoury.

The shoestring fries are a fiddle, but also a treat, the kind of crisp salty thing you would order as a side at a proper burger joint. Furthermore, the plant-based brioche is pillowy, the burger is messy in the right way, and this is the recipe we would feed a sceptical meat-eater first. Honestly, Grubby's house spice blend is doing work here that you simply cannot replicate from your own cupboard at the same speed. The recipe page is here.

"The best vegan food doesn't try to imitate meat. It makes you forget you were ever comparing."

⏱ 20 mins 👤 Serves 2 🌶 Medium

BBQ brisket burnt ends with smoky beans and pickles

This one is pure American smokehouse fantasy, dropped onto a Tuesday evening in Britain. The plant-based steak gets torn, seasoned, then tossed through BBQ sauce until the edges turn sticky and charred. In other words, it does its best impression of the burnt ends a Texas pitmaster would coax out of a brisket point over six hours. Meanwhile, smoky pinto beans bubble alongside in tomato paste and tamari, the red cabbage slaw turns creamy and tangy, and quick-pickled cucumbers cut through it all like a small, sharp knife.

We ate it on the sofa, in front of something instantly forgettable on the telly, and felt like we had ordered in. Except we had cooked it ourselves in twenty minutes, and it came in at four of our five-a-day. This is the Grubby sweet spot. It feels indulgent enough to be a treat, fresh enough to feel virtuous, and quick enough to make on a Friday when neither of you can really be bothered. The full recipe sits here.

Jerk tofu. Creamy slaw. Pour the gravy on everything.

⏱ 35 mins 👤 Serves 2 🌶 Medium

Crispy jerk tofu burger, creamy slaw and jerk gravy

Tofu has a marketing problem in this country, mostly because most people meet it for the first time as a sad wobbly cube in a stir-fry that tastes of nothing. Grubby's jerk tofu is the antidote. First, the tofu is torn rather than cubed, which gives it craggy edges that catch every bit of spice. Then it gets a tamari bath, a dusting of cornflour, and a shallow-fry until the outside is properly crisp. Importantly, the jerk seasoning here is aggressive, in the best way.

The jerk gravy, however, is the part nobody saw coming. Built from veg stock, flour, nutritional yeast and a reserved teaspoon of Grubby's signature jerk blend, it pours over the chips on the side and elevates a Wednesday dinner into something you would willingly pay for in a restaurant. The creamy lime-mayo slaw balances the heat, the brioche soaks up the gravy, and at one point we were openly dipping the burger directly into the gravy boat. The recipe is here. Bring napkins.

Next on our list

A few more dishes from the current Grubby menu have caught our eye and queued up in next week's box. First, the Creamy Curried Coconut Dahl with Cumin Roasted Cauliflower, which lands in thirty-five minutes and scores a four on five-a-day. After all the burgers above, frankly, we need it. Second, the Sticky Teriyaki Tofu Lettuce Cups, ready in fifteen minutes and quietly the fastest dinner on the entire Grubby menu. Finally, the Crispy Tofu, Mango and Quinoa Salad with a tamari-lime dressing, which feels like the warm-weather counterpoint to all the BBQ above.

We will report back next month with the verdict on next month's best Grubby recipes.

Why Grubby keeps winning

The creative gap is what gets us. Most vegan recipe kits we have tried fall into one of two camps. On one side, aggressively healthy bowls of grains and roasted things. On the other, sad defensive imitations of meals you already know. Grubby sits somewhere else entirely. Burger tacos. Jerk gravy. Burnt ends. These are the kind of ideas a creative chef would actually put on a restaurant menu, not a marketing team scrambling for a Veganuary press release.

The portions also genuinely fill you up. Several rival meal kits have left us reaching for toast at 9pm. Grubby boxes, by contrast, consistently feel generous, the kind of serving size that ends with leftovers rather than regret. Worth noting too: Grubby is B Corp certified, scores four stars on Trustpilot across roughly 1,870 reviews, and was named Best Vegan Recipe Box by The Telegraph. For free plant-based inspiration outside the subscription, the Vegan Society's recipe hub is a solid resource we keep going back to.

Most importantly, Grubby has quietly changed how we cook midweek. We used to default to pasta or stir-fry on autopilot. Now we look forward to opening the box on a Monday. That, ultimately, is what a good recipe kit is supposed to do. If you want our running list of the best Grubby recipes, this post is where we will keep updating it.

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FAQs

Is Grubby worth it?

For us, yes. After more than a year of weekly boxes we paid for ourselves, the quality and creativity have stayed consistent, and the portions are generous. It is more expensive than a supermarket shop, but it is cheaper than ordering in. If you want a fuller cost analysis, our full review goes into the numbers properly.

What are the best Grubby recipes?

On current evidence, the best Grubby recipes we have cooked this month are the Crispy Burger Tacos, the Pulled Meaty Mushroom Burger, the BBQ Brisket Burnt Ends, and the Jerk Tofu Burger. The burger tacos were the surprise hit. However, the jerk gravy was the most-talked-about thing we ate all month.

How long do Grubby meals take to cook?

Most Grubby meals take between fifteen and thirty-five minutes. The four we cooked this month ranged from twenty to thirty-five minutes. For weeknight speed, look for the lower end of that range, like the Sticky Teriyaki Tofu Lettuce Cups at fifteen minutes flat.

Is Grubby fully vegan?

Yes. Grubby is the UK's first 100% plant-based recipe kit company, and every dish on every menu is vegan by default. Interestingly, around 80% of their customers are flexitarian rather than fully vegan, which speaks to how broadly the food appeals.

Can you choose your Grubby recipes?

Yes. Each week you pick four or five recipes from a rotating menu of more than forty dishes, and you can also skip weeks, change your delivery day, or pause the subscription whenever you like. In practice, that flexibility is one of the things that keeps us subscribed.

How much does Grubby cost per meal?

Roughly £4 to £7 per serving, depending on box size and dish choice. Larger boxes work out cheaper per portion. For the latest live pricing and our referral discount, see our Grubby discount code page.

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