Plated: What's For Dinner?

I'm going to be up front about it - Plated is our favorite. Which may seem strange because their meals are hit or miss. Sometimes the fresh produce isn't fresh, or even edible. Sometimes the recipe misses the mark. Others take for-freaking-ever to make. The redeeming factor is the variety and portions. We've tried dishes and ingredients I never would have attempted to sneak by the kids, or even the husband. And more often than not, the 4-portion meal feeds our family of 5.

Plated has twenty dinners to choose from each week, and available a month in advance. Plus two dessert options, which aren't offered by many other services. There are options for vegetarian, family-friendly, stovetop-only.. We opt to see everything they offer and go from there.

Pricing is straightforward - $9.95 per meal for our family plan dinner for four, twice a week. A smidge less than $80 a week. Some of the recipes aren't worth that $40 price tag (I'm looking at you tomato bisque) while others make up for it (i.e. Lamb Merguez).

We ordered an eclectic mix for our first box. Curried Lamb Tacos, Tomato Basic Shrimp & Grits, and Cuban Chicken Empanadas. We loved one, found the other odd, and the third was straight-up disgusting and went in the trash. Yes, that bad.

Curried Lamb Tacos. We love lamb curry. We love tacos. We weren't convinced the two had any business on the same plate until this delightful dish. If this had been a Pinterest recipe, none of the kids would have tried it. Because it came from this novel box meal kit, they were game. And loved it. All of us. This is how our love affair with Plated began, but the course of true love took a few turns...


Tomato Basil Shrimp & Grits. Shrimp is good. Grits can be good. Tomato and basil have a happy marriage. And yet, this didn't work. Maybe because it made enough grits to feed a neighborhood, but only enough flavor for a family. Bland as can be, when they had such promise. The shrimp and tomato mixture would have been better with pasta, or garlic bread, or both.

Cuban Chicken Empanadas. I do not know what was in the spice packet that came in this kit, but it tasted like dirt. Honestly. And these took forever to make. So I spent an hour making and baking only to have two trays of empanadas no one would eat. Good times. I emailed to say I thought something had gone bad in the spice mix, but never heard back.


For more of our Plated journey...

If you want to try Plated, here's a link to a free box...

See what we thought of other meal kits...

Well, Hello Fresh

Save $60 on Hello Fresh lives at the top of my inbox. Even now that I've subscribed, they're still paying Google to plop it on top of my real emails. That's advertising for you, preaching to the choir. 

The kids and I looked over the menu and made our selections. Once we'd made all the meals, we realized the flavor mash-ups weren't our thing. And that produce in Oregon is awesome! What they sent... was not. 

SESAME BEEF TACOS with quick pickled vegetables

Our favorite recipe of the box. I wasn't sure how the kids would react to radishes, but the quick pickling method was a winner. When I unpacked the bag my eldest was against the red cabbage, but it gets cooked up with the sesame beef. He actually like it - the tacos, he's still suspicious of red cabbage. This is one we'd make, or order, again. - loved

SWEET & SMOKY CHICKEN CUTLETS with green beans and pineapple rice

The produce on this one was a let down. The green beans were past their prime - tough and stringy. We all love green beans, but none of us finished these. The tub of fresh pineapple had gone rancid, so we made the rice with a pineapple fruit cup we had in the pantry. The chicken flavor was fine, but really dry. I wound up making grilled cheese sandwiches. This was a miss with us. -blerg

CHIPOTLE PULLED CHICKEN SANDWICHES with carrot-apple slaw

My son chose this one thinking it would be a spicy barbecue. The chicken would have been better as a taco. I loved the carrot-apple slaw, but the kids weren't fans and balked at putting it on their sandwich. My daughter... ate the bun. The apple they sent was mealy, so I used one from our fruit bowl. -meh

Hello Fresh... wasn't fresh. I had to replace much of the produce, and what I used wasn't great. The directions were a bit odd as well because our meals were for four servings and the recipe cards were for two. We figured it out, but I think it could have been an issue if my son had been cooking them alone. Having each meal packaged in a separate bag was a great help keeping things sorted in the fridge.

I hadn't ordered since that original underwhelming box. The website has a six-week lead time on menus, so I check every week. I couldn't find two meals I thought we'd like. For three months! Yes, the site makes it easy to skip weeks and change meals, but that's a long time. Yeah... fingers crossed Hot Honey Chicken & Pork Carnitas Tacos win us over. 

The $60 off code? GMAIL60  Let me know if you want a free week. I can send them out from my account. 

See what we thought of other meal kits.

We Tried: Meal Delivery Kits

Dinner Delivered! Well, kind of. All the ingredients are in a box and easy to follow recipes are included - but you're doing the cooking. Fine in theory, but I wasn't sure how it worked out in real life. Sure, there were a bajillion blog articles about them, but the ones I found were sponsored posts. You know, where the company gifts the blogger a box in exchange for an 'honest' review. Here's the thing, if you don't like something and tell the world why, you're honest but not likely to get more opportunities for 'honest' reviews. It's a business, y'all.

Since I couldn't get the straight goss online, I asked the Facebook hive-mind.I guess I don't hang with a dinner boxer crowd because I only got a few 'we tried it' and a couple 'the kids didn't like it'. The overwhelming response was 'no, but we've been thinking about trying it'. Hmmm. Now I was curious.

A new meal kit company ad shows up on my Facebook feed on the regular. I decided to take advantage of all the '$$ off your first box' offers and try a few. To be fair, I tried more than one box from each company. It made the experiment more expensive, but any business can have an off week. I know I do. 

I love to cook, but I hated making dinner. 

I didn't think meal delivery kits would stand a chance with my picky bunch, so I never bothered to try until a Blue Apron box showed up on the shelves at Costco. No commitment, no pressure for everyone to like it. The novelty of it had my fifteen-year-old interested enough to offer to do it with me. That right there reeled me in. It's hard to find things to do with teenagers. Plus, when they were younger they were much more l likely to try new foods if they'd helped in the kitchen. 

For me the step-by-step directions seemed tedious, but they were perfect for my son. By the time we plated our dinner that night I knew he'd be able to prepare any dinner kit. Meal delivery kits had never been so attractive...

The first dinner was rather meh, but I had such fun preparing it with my son  that when Hello Fresh popped up on Facebook, I signed up. Plated? Sure. Home Chef? Let's give it a try. Marley Spoon? Well, if Martha thinks so...

I thought it would be fun to try them out, and my family was along for the ride. I'll share our real-life experiences, and since I paid for this little experiment, all opinions will be ours alone. Not that we're big on sugar coating anything but doughnuts. Mmm, doughnuts. 

BLUE APRON

HELLO FRESH

PLATED

HOME CHEF

MARLEY SPOON

FRED MEYER/KROGER