Plated Review: Food At Your Door

Time for some honesty, friends. I do not like to cook.  Eek! There, I said it. I enjoy baking, but in our current townhouse the kitchen is tiny so even baking is no fun. My husband on the other hand, LOVES to cook. He adores Alton Brown and is a total scientific cook. Except my husband is also a fourth year medical student and his schedule is super busy. We end up eating cereal, takeout, or running to the grocery store multiple times per week. Oh, the arguments that brings on! We made cute little index cards with our favorite meals. We planned to draw them out each week and grocery shop once a week. We were cooking on a schedule and eating leftovers. Ha! That worked for a whole week.

So when I heard about Plated, I knew it would be worth a try. Their whole concept is fresh ingredients and chef-designed recipes delivered right to your door. When you sign up through a referral link, you get 2 plates for free so you can try it out. I figured we had nothing to lose so we gave it a try. You can fill out your taste preferences and choose from land, sea, or veggie options. After filling out our profile, this showed up the next week:

Now we are talking! The ingredients were all carefully packaged inside and labeled for each meal. We would only need to add basics– water, salt or pepper, etc. Things even WE had at home already.

Then you also get these recipe cards for each meal. It gives you a little blurb about the recipe, notes what you’ll need from the box, and what you’ll provide on your own from the pantry.

For our first meal, we picked Loaded Baked Potatoes with Cheddar Cheese and Turkey Chili. Here’s everything we needed from the box.

Toss everything in a skillet, bake the potatoes, and here’s the end result compared to their picture. My score? 7/10. I’m not typically a fan of mixing things together and prefer to eat things separately so I’d put the potato on the side next time and leave out the beans. Great flavor and texture though!

Next, we went with Italian Wedding Soup with Chicken Meatballs. Here’s everything from the box we needed.

So, totally not a fan here. 5/10. It was pretty heavy on the greens and a little bitter. BUT we will totally make the chicken meatballs again.

Finally, we saved the best for last with these ingredients for Cubano Chicken Cutlets with Baked Plantains.

This one was a home run, 10/10! We’ve actually made this recipe again just two weeks later.  It was so interesting and I would have never thought to pair it on my own. I love that Plated is expanding our menu.

Will we do Plated again? Yes! I have another box coming this week. 🙂 I like that you can auto-schedule your boxes to arrive each week or have them every other week. BUT, you can also skip weeks by clicking them “off” on the calendar in your account. We went to Disney World soon after we signed up, so I turned my subscription off without a problem.

I also like that you can customize your menu and actually pick what will be inside your box. You can add on dessert items too (my next box will have one, so I’ll be sure to let you know what we think). Plus you have the recipes to keep so you can duplicate the meal again in the future, except you actually have to go to the grocery store. Whomp. Whomp.

Head on over and give Plated a try. I’d love to hear what you think!