An unadulterated review of Every Plate

What do you do when you love cooking and want to eat healthier but you work five days a week and you're so damn tired that you just can't find the energy to plan out a week's worth of meals and do the grocery shopping during the weekend?

Well, I can't speak for everyone, but like most millennials, we really enjoy the concept of having things delivered right to our door. Convenience is key after all, I suppose.

So we shopped around for meal delivery services because why the hell not? And we got a great deal on Every Plate. $27 for 10 meals? Who would say no to that?

We learned that Every Plate is basically a smaller scale version of Hello Fresh, and Hello Fresh has some good reviews from what we found. So to add our own input on these meal delivery services:

The pros?

There is something for everyone - and it can successfully get you out of your comfort zone! They have comfort foods like a loaded baked potato soup or a creamy pasta dish, but they also have some dishes that might be a little different, like the basmati rice bowl with chickpeas and pickled cabbage (below).

We've successfully completed two weeks of recipes so far. Now you should probably be aware, I am historically known as a picky eater; I don't like most of the vegetables that are actually good for me, I usually hate onions and frankly tend to generally dislike most of the ingredients that seem to come in most Every Plate recipes (re: zucchini, onions, bell peppers, garlic, sausage)

I would give at least a four star rating to nine of the ten recipes we've tried.

We tried a sandwich where the "meat" of it was literally nothing but sliced bell peppers and sliced zucchini... and I actually loved it!?

I don't tend to like soups, not because I dislike the ingredients or the flavors - I just like being able to hop over to something different to break up the flavors occasionally and soup doesn't offer me that ability because it's all cooked into one liquid bowl. But that loaded baked potato soup? Amazing.

The packaging. I would say the most annoying thing about grocery shopping is when you have to buy an ingredient you know you'll never touch again after this one recipe and yet the store only sells it in portion sizes fit for a family of 8 looking to eat it for the next 10 meals. Every Plate doesn't do that to you! They give you perfectly portioned ingredients in their own individual wrapper, all the way down to the spices you'll need. Every Plate also delivers on time in a well packaged, fairly small box with ice packs that keep everything super fresh.

The ingredients. So far, every (fresh) ingredient we've received has been fresh and completely blemish-free! Our local grocery store honestly don't have ingredients that look this nice so it's amazing that we can get something like this delivered straight to our door, and it holds up for an entire additional week while we work our way through each recipe.

The cook time. My personal complaint with staying home for dinner is that I have to cook and I'm a slow cook. I don't want to get home from work at dinner time just to work on a meal for an hour and a half just to finish it in 10 minutes and then want to drop dead into my bed. We've been averaging around 30-45 minutes per meal. That may be a lot for some people, I know there are people out there who can cook a damn fine meal in 30 minutes or less, but for us this is a total game changer. We actually get to enjoy our nights now.

The price. Of course the price for the first week roped us in at $27, and sure, that may have been just for the first week. But we were spending enough on eating out and wasted groceries and leftovers that even the full price of $60 per week is frankly a fantastic deal. Sixty dollars for 10 meals is infinitely better when you realize one "real" meal out for two (not fast food) is automatically at least $40 before tip these days. Even a fast food meal generally is not just $6 per person anymore.

The concept. We get to plan our meals up to three weeks in advance, we get a fairly good selection of choices for full meals, we don't have to do any of the actual shopping, it's all delivered straight to our door (with recipe cards) and it stays fresh all the way into our bellies, we still get to cook our own food, and so far it's all been delicious. What isn't there to like about this concept?

So what are the cons then?

Portion sizing. I love that Every Plate delivers just enough food to feed two people per meal so that there is no wasted leftover, but occasionally some of the meals feel a little... lackluster on the filling front. Take these fajitas for example:

Don't get me wrong, the flavor was all there - I even enjoyed the onions and bell peppers, again! But as you can see, there are only three fajitas per person and the filling is a little on the empty size. For some dishes this is totally fine - one serving of the creamy pasta dish was more than enough to tide me over until the next morning. But for others it just left me wanting more and for someone who is trying to eat healthier, ending a meal still wanting more is the quickest way to overeat and/or grab for the wrong foods. Like last night when we made brownies after splitting a dinner of pork flautas.

Repetitive ingredients. Most dishes we've seen have pretty repetitive ingredients. Zucchini, onions, garlic, bell peppers... sausage is another popular one. I know there are plenty of dishes out there that do not include a single one of those ingredients and I'd love to see some of them offered a little more often. Fortunately we haven't tired of these ingredients yet though!

Unfortunately, the one option Every Plate offers to lessen the repetitiveness of ingredients is to offer premium dishes that cost extra. Like steak. Let me tell y'all, a steak would really hit the spot one of these days and I'd love to try one of the recipes they provide for it since I'm not exactly a steak aficionado and really only know how to make a steak two or three ways.

Semi limited choices. While I'm happy with the number of choices they provide per week, I put this one in here because my partner would like to see more options. We've seen approximately 14 choices per week and while I haven't always easily found five meals I would like to try, if you put the two of us together we usually end up with at least six that we have to cut back to five. But that has also led me out of my comfort zone several times and personally, I'm ok with that!

Would I recommend it overall?

Absolutely. I haven't eaten this many home cooked meals since I lived with my parents, except these meals are better - and my mom is a great cook so that's really saying something.

Please leave a like, follow, or tip if you enjoyed this or if you decided to try Every Plate and enjoyed it!