Plated Subscription Box Review + Coupon – April 2018

Plated is a weekly meal kit delivery subscription that delivers you pre-portioned ingredients and recipes to help you make chef-designed recipes at home. They offer different weekly menus and randomly pick recipes for you based on preferences you submit when you sign up. If you'd rather pick your own recipes from the weekly menu, it's easy to hop in and change your order on their website or their handy-dandy app.

Plated is committed to using sustainably sourced seafood, seasonal produce, and meat that’s free from antibiotics and added hormones. Like most meal kits, Plated won't include standard pantry items (think salt, pepper, olive oil). They will, however, email you to let you know what pantry items you should have on hand for that week's box. Prep time and dietary details are listed in each recipe. And if you love a recipe, you can rate it and download a digital recipe card via your online account. (Highly rated recipes sometimes come back as "Encore" recipes for you to order again, so don't forget to leave your star rating each week!)

Check out all of our reviews of Meal Delivery Services to see every meal kit subscription box option!

This review is for the 2 recipes (4 plates) plan, which cost $48.00 per week (+ $6.00 shipping). I chose to have chicken, beef, shellfish, and fish as options to include in my recipes.

My Subscription Addiction paid for this box. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes.)

About Plated

The Subscription Box: Plated

The Cost: Recipes begin at $12.00 per plate:

• 2 recipes (4 plates)= $48.00 per week (+ $6.00 shipping)
• 3 recipes (6 plates)= $72.00 per week (with free shipping)
• 4 recipes (8 total plates)= $96.00 per week (with free shipping)
• Dessert costs $4.00 per serving (available after your first order)

LIMITED TIME DEAL: Save 25% off your first 4 weeks of Plated with any subscription plan (up to a $159.20 value)

The Products: All of the pre-portioned fresh and seasonal ingredients you need to make chef-designed recipes at home in your own kitchen.

Ships to: 95% of the U.S. (Currently, Plated does not ship to Hawaii and Alaska, and there are also a few cities in Texas, including San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Laredo, and Midland, where they don’t yet ship.)

Good to know: Plated was recently purchased by Albertsons.

Plated April 2018 Review

Plated sends each meal mostly packaged together in a plastic bag, except for meat and any larger produce that may not fit. Each individually wrapped item is marked with the meal it belongs to so you can organize them in your refrigerator upon unpacking. I really appreciate this extra step to keep things organized and easy for me when unpacking!

Cilantro Chicken Lettuce Wraps with Peanut Sauce and Cucumber Slaw

Calories per Serving: 850

Total Prep and Cook Time (listed): 25-35 minutes

Actual Time to Cook: 30 minutes

Plated recipe cards come with a short description on the front and include the estimated prep and cook time and the calories per serving. On the other side, you'll see a list of ingredients, what you'll need from your kitchen (ingredients as well as tools), recipe tips, and step-by-step directions with photos.

I was really excited reading through the recipe card because this was probably the easiest meal-prep I have seen in a while! I started by preparing my cilantro, lettuce, cucumber, and pepper.

Once all of my fresh vegetables were ready, I prepared my cucumber slaw. The slaw came in a package that was basically already prepped. All I had to do was add the fresh ingredients along with rice wine vinegar and canola oil.

Since I was already prepping the slaw I decided to make my sauce next. This was also incredibly easy! All I did was whisk together peanut butter, soy sauce, and the remaining rice wine vinegar. This smelled so good, I couldn't wait to eat it!

The next two steps were the only ones that I had to use my stove. I formed my chicken meatballs and cooked them for about 4 minutes on each side. While those were cooking, I added the white rice to a pot of water, brought it to a boil, and then let it simmer before fluffing the rice with a fork. Super simple!

Look at this beautiful green dish! Once everything was ready, all I did was add the rice, chicken meatballs, slaw, and peanut sauce to my lettuce cups. This meal was fresh and extremely flavorful. Remember that little red pepper I chopped in the first step? Well, it packed a ton of heat so this meal was on the spicier side! The peanut sauce added this yummy creamy texture that I really loved. The one thing I will say is that these were tricky to eat only because the chicken meatballs didn't sit nicely within the lettuce cups. I am going to make these again but just with ground turkey meat like a taco instead of taking the time to make little meatballs. All in all this dinner was super simple, filling, and oh so flavorful!

Caprese Chicken over Warm Spinach Salad 

Calories per Serving: 780

Total Prep and Cook Time (listed): 25-35 minutes

Actual Time to Cook: 40 minutes

Here is our second recipe card, I love reading through the recipe tips that are listed on the back of each card.

I started by chopping my fresh ingredients. So many pretty colors here! This step was easy since I only had to chop the spinach, cherry tomatoes, and mozzarella.

Here is my lineup of ingredients to bread my chicken. The chicken goes into the flour, to the egg wash, and finishes in that parmesan cheese.

While my chicken cooked, I prepared my warm spinach salad. Here you see everything I chopped in step one along with mustard and champagne vinegar.

Here is my chicken that I cooked in the pan. One major thing to note here is that the recipe says to cook the chicken for 2 to 4 minutes on each side. I did that but was still left with raw chicken. These cuts of chicken are on the larger side, but I don't really think any raw meat should be cooked for such a short amount of time. This is something that I noticed with most of my Plated recipes, so please just be careful when cooking raw meat everyone, always cut into the middle before plating. I ended up popping these into the oven to finish cooking because the outside breading was getting burnt while the center was still raw. If I did this over again, I would just put these in the oven from the start.

After a long wait for the chicken to cook, we finally had our finished plate. This meal was good but nothing that I think I would repeat. It was simple enough but the chicken took so long that it ended up being a pretty late dinner for us the night we made this. In the end, though, the chicken was really delicious and the breading was perfect. The warm spinach salad was so flavorful with the mustard and champagne vinegarette. I love mozzarella so much, but I would have loved to have a bit more slices.

Verdict: This month's Plated brought a new vibe of fresh dishes that got me really excited for the warmer spring weather. Both meals had vibrant colors and had so much flavor. After a long winter, it was nice to receive two meals that were very fresh and bold. All in all, I received one meal that was a huge hit in my house that I know I will try to make again. While the second meal fell a bit flat and ended up not providing the best cooking instructions. The best part about Plated, though, is the ease of receiving meals straight to your door! They really do take out the difficulty of deciding what to cook week to week, making a grocery list, and fetching the groceries.

To Wrap Up:

Can you still get this box if you sign up today? No. The Plated menus change weekly and you need to lock in orders before shipments go out.

Coupon -LIMITED TIME DEAL: Save 25% off your first 4 weeks of Plated with any subscription plan (up to a $159.20 value)

Value Breakdown: This box cost $48.00 + $6.00 shipping, which is $13.50 per meal.

Check out all of our Plated Reviews and discover more meal boxes in the Meal Subscription Box Directory!

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Would you eat the meals I cooked from Plated this week?