We Tried Plated! - Not Sponsored

This weekend we tried Plated for the first time. We got a free box, so I thought, why not, let's test the recipes and give it a try.

The three dishes I selected for our box were: garlic basil shrimp and grits with cherry tomato sauce, garlic-soy pork chop with bok choy and water chestnuts, and Indian butter chicken with sautéed spinach and toasted naan.

Now as a preface to my opinions and summary of this food delivery kit, there's a few things to note.

1. I consider myself an experienced amateur chef. I have no formal training in cooking or preparing food, but I've had a good amount of experience in the last 6-8 years to know how to eyeball things and cook by feel.

2. I know how to buy groceries and plan a "menu" for the week. Most weeks we eat homemade food 13/14 meals. (Breakfast doesn't count because it either doesn't happen or we make a PBJ.)

So here are some thoughts on our experience with Plated, how we liked the recipes/food, and general thoughts and opinions of the service from an unbiased perspective.

I was super excited to get my box delivered on Thursday around 11:30 am.

The baby was sleeping at the time so I actually was able to unbox everything and put them away in peace.

Here's the spread of contents: they package and label everything for you in bundles according to recipe.
Their recipe cards are also printed with beautiful images of the completed recipe. My daughter loved
staring at it and wanted to get it from me when I was reading the recipes. 

We made our first recipe Friday night for dinner since I had to work Thursday night and was going to be out all day Friday. I had my box delivered on Thursday because they said delivery could be as late as 8 pm and I did want to make one Friday night. We decided to make the recipe for butter chicken because that was the recipe we were both very excited for.

The recipe is pretty easy to follow and the results were quite good.

Butter chicken, spinach, and half of the gigantic piece of naan.

For this recipe, we thought the serving size was excellent. Our box included 2 servings in each recipe and it portioned out very nicely to two bowls. The total prep and cooking time was about 30 minutes unless you marinated the chicken for longer (optional) so it makes for a fast dinner if you know what you're doing. My one qualm with this recipe was in the packaging - the tomato puree was really hard to squeeze out of a zip-top bag. I used my fingers to squeeze the sauce out from both sides, but then my fingers got dirty as I reached the bottom of the bag. Not the best way of packaging in my opinion, but I guess it works. Really delicious though. I'll probably make it again myself and swap out spinach for another leafy vegetable.

Shrimp and Grits

Our next recipe was shrimp and grits. We cooked this one Saturday for lunch while the baby took her morning nap. When I first opened the bag of ingredients for this recipe, I noticed my basil was already half wilted. Somehow there was moisture in the container. Not sure if this was my fault or faulty packaging. Plated recommends cooking seafood dishes within 1-2 days of receiving the box. I got the box on Thursday and cooked it Saturday for lunch - within the 2 day requirement. I had the ingredients in the refrigerator during this time because this bundle included mascarpone and butter. If I was supposed to unbundle it and not refrigerate everything in the bag....I was not aware of that. 

Shrimp and grits

We both thought the portions for this recipe were a little out of proportion. There were definitely more than 2 servings of grits, but since in my head the recipe was portioned for 2, I just split the grits into the bowl half and half until the pot was empty. It was probably a little more than we both wanted to eat. For this recipe, I also thought it needed some tweaking of the cooking times. The recipes are written very detailed with exact minutes of cooking each step. However, I thought the shrimp cooking times were a little long, especially since you had to return them to the sauce to finish cooking a second time in a later step. Also, different pots/pans and heating elements cook at different paces so even if you time it perfectly according to the recipe, it may still over/undercook slightly. Shrimp is one of those foods for me - overcooked shrimp gets tough and rubbery. I did not want to overcook my shrimp at all so I used my own judgement on cooking times for this one. 

Pork Chop with Bok Choy and Water Chestnuts

We made this last recipe today for lunch. Total cooking time was about 30 minutes again - their recipes are pretty good at staying consistent in the amount of cooking time required.

This was our least favorite recipe of the box. Nothing was "bad" but overall, it just didn't match up. I thought it was way too salty. The recipe used two boneless pork chops with a quarter cup of soy sauce plus other seasonings. I think that was way overkill with no sweet or sour to counterbalance the salt. Even my husband who has a higher salt tolerance than me needed some more rice to balance it out. The proportion of rice to meat in this recipe was also not nearly what it should have been (especially given how salty the sauce was.) We had extra rice to mix in, but if someone is just making this recipe straight from the box, they'd be gulping down cups of water or wishing they had more rice.

There was also no marinating of the meat so the flavor was limited to the exterior of the meat and sauce. I would have liked to marinate the meat in the sauce and then maybe cut out using some in the recipe later to drizzle. The flavor of this recipe really wasn't bad, but it was too overpowering. That says a lot, especially because I use soy sauce very frequently in my own cooking.

Conclusion

Did I enjoy my Plated experience? I actually did. It was really convenient to just unbox everything and have exactly what I needed for these recipes, and I now know how to make Butter Chicken which is a dish my husband enjoys when prepared well. Will I order and pay for a box myself? Probably not. Why? The cost. This box normally costs about $71.00. Considering it made 6 servings of food, that's $11.83 per serving. I could eat out for that cost, perhaps for less gourmet food, but with much less effort as well.

Our grocery budget for the two of us is about $50.00 per week. That being said, it makes 14 meals (lunch and dinner) for 2 people for 7 days, it comes out to less than $2.00 per serving. Yes, we are eating the same thing a few times as leftovers, but I don't mind leftovers for a meal or two. It means I cook even less!

I also enjoy going to the grocery store when my daughter is in a good mood because she gets to look around and be entertained and I get my shopping done.

So should you get a food kit delivery service? I think if your lifestyle and personality is a little different, one of these is a fantastic idea for the following:

1. This makes cooking fun. Many people find cooking very stressful. This sends you everything you need pre-portioned and packaged and provides you step-by-step instructions to cook. 

2. You don't have to buy groceries. If going to the grocery store stresses you out or you end up buying way too much and waste half of it, this is fantastic. You only get what you need and you use most if not all of it.

**Sidenote: If you're super eco-friendly, their packaging might frustrate you because of how much trash there is. As I was making these recipes, I constantly felt like I was throwing things away. The butter was individually packaged pads. Every ingredient had its own zip bag or container. Super wasteful if you simply unwrap and throw it away. I actually saved some of the bags to reuse whether it's to dump my daughter's poopy diapers when we're out and about and not near a trash can or to store my vegetable scraps in for stock in the freezer. I realize it's meant to be convenient and makes the packaging process easier on their end just to grab something that's pre-wrapped and place it in the box, but wow, there is a lot of trash from cooking three meals.