Plated
Recently, my sister blessed me with a pre-portioned dinner meal kit from Plated. I was excited to try this out because I love cooking and it's supposed to remove the hassle of shopping (which I don't mind) and measuring. Here are the advantages according to Plated (my paraphrasing is in bold).
Deciding what to do for dinner shouldn’t be a struggle.
Small list of menus to choose from
Skip the shopping. Make your groceries come to you.
Food is delivered to you
Real, delicious cooking, without all the extra work.
Food is portioned off and measured
Discover your new favorite meal, made by you.
Satisfaction of cooking a fancy meal on your own
how it works
First, you choose a weekly plan. You select the number of servings and the number of nights per week, either two, three, or four. The price for the 2-serving option is $11.95/serving and for 3 and 4-serving options is $9.95/serving. The total weekly prices as of this writing are listed below.
Next, is the fun part: choosing a menu! You can choose between meat, vegetarian, seafood and dessert options. There are just as many meat options as there are vegetarian and seafood options combined. The online menu changes weekly so that there is a variety of options. I haven't looked at it long enough to see how often meals are rotated back into the menu.
Lastly, when the package arrives throw your apron on, Chef!
My cooking experience
The plated box I was gifted included three 2-serving vegetarian meals: sesame broccoli with bell peppers and scallion pancakes, shakshuka with mint and toasted baguettes, black bean chilaquiles with cheddar and chipotle. Although all three of the meals featured attractive photos of the completed entrees, we chose to prepare the sesame broccoli because making our own bread from scratch seemed legit.
Plated's picture of the completed sesame broccoli meal
Each of the meals came with a recipe card that showed an image of the final product, cooking instructions with images and some recipe tips. The recipe card also informs you of which pots/pans and cooking supplies are needed to complete the meal.
Recipe cards
Each meal was packaged separately and labeled. We kept the box in the fridge for a little while until our schedules aligned but when we finally opened the box the ingredients still were pretty fresh. There were no expiration dates on the packages though but I guess they assume you'd use the box within the week that it was delivered. Here are all the ingredients that were in the package for the sesame broccoli meal. The bag of flour for the scallion pancakes isn't pictured.
Sesame broccoli ingredients
When I pulled out all of the ingredients, I was kind of bummed out that I had to chop things up. I was thinking all of that was taken care of for me because of the promise of "Real, delicious cooking, without all the extra work." It wasn't terrible and I guess you really feel like you're cooking if you're using your knife skills but I was under the impression I was just going to put the ingredients together. Below is all the cutting that needed to be done.
Chopped ingredients
While the veggies were being roasted in the oven, the sauce was prepared with the remainder of the ingredients on the stove top.
Lastly, the scallion pancakes were prepared. To me this was the most exciting part because I don't take the time to make bread on the regular basis. The dough was basically flour, water, and salt. The recipe provided instructions on a cool technique for making flaky bread. The dough was rolled up into a log, rolled into these little spiral balls pictured below and then flattened.
Dough balls used to make the flaky scallian pancakes
The Finale
Final plating
Close up on the sesame broccoli
Flaky layers in scallion pancakes
Scallion pancakes
Thoughts
The meal actually tasted good. This is a bit dependent on the person cooking but if the instructions are followed well then you'll have a flavorful and filling meal. I enjoyed the recipe for the stir fry sauce and the veggies were super simple yet some of my favs. The pancakes were flaky but didn't really taste like much if the bite didn't include a bunch of scallion pieces. If I was to prepare this meal again, I would add garlic and some seasoning to the dough.
The portion size was enough for each of us to be full especially because it included bread and bread is filling. All of the meals included some form of bread.
Using Plated definitely saves the grocery trip and planning beforehand because the meals are delivered straight to your door. Now, obviously you still need to eat the other times of the day and the other days of week so eventually you will end up at the grocery store anyway. I do love the idea of getting exactly what you need to prevent wasting food.
Anybody who knows me knows I'm frugal and all about numbers. I always try to be bougie on a budget. The ingredient list for the sesame broccoli was pretty simple. Most of the items are already in your pantry: soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, red pepper flakes (some spice element), syrup, flour & garlic. Fun fact: I go to the grocery store like every other day and will beat anyone in a game of Price Is Right: Grocery Store Edition. I went to my local grocery store though to grab the fresh ingredients to make this meal for bae this week so these are actual values. The breakdown is cost is below assuming the rest of the ingredients are in the pantry.
For 2 servings this meal costs me $6.54, $3.27/serving. This meal from plated was $11.95 per serving. That's a huge difference. I understand saving the trip to the grocery but is it really worth it when you have to go to the store anyway to eat the remainder of your meals? I also understand they provide step by step instructions but so does Pinterest. Really for $11.95 you can order some great Thai take out and not have to do any chopping or clean-up.
I think the major benefit for me was learning some new techniques and adding a simple easy-to-remember recipe to my list. I was also pretty proud of the bread from scratch as well.
As a regular weekly thing I'd vote no for my household. I do think this would be a great idea for a date night, though; Cooking the meal together followed by watching a movie. This will take your Netflix and Chill game to another level.
Comment below if you'd like to see my grocery lists and weekly meal preps. Feel free to gift me with some of the other brands of pre-portioned dinner meal kits like Blue Apron and/or Hello Fresh so I can review those as well.