Martha & Marley Spoon Box Review – August 2018

Martha & Marley Spoon is a meal kit box that offers fresh, seasonal recipes delivered weekly to your home, featuring Martha Stewart’s recipes and techniques. They offer a two-person plan or a three-four-person plan and you can opt to have two, three or four meals per person each week. Plans start at $48 for a two-person two meal plan (four meals total) and go up to $131.20 for the three-four- person four meal plan (12-16 meals total) and all plans include free delivery. They do offer vegetarian dishes, but no specific gluten-free or other allergen-free options are currently available. You have the option to select your meals each week from a choice of ten meals and can skip any time.

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

This review is of a Martha & Marley Spoon Meal box 2-person, 3- meal plan for $61.50 + free delivery with meals that I chose ahead of time.

About Martha & Marley Spoon

The Box: Martha & Marley Spoon 

The Cost: Meal plans start at $48 for 4 meals and go up to $131.20 for 12-16 meals + free delivery.

ACTIVE DEAL: $100 Off For Your First 4 Boxes (40/20/20/20). No coupon needed - just use this link.

The Products: You’ll receive fresh pre-portioned, seasonal ingredients to create quality meals in your own home.

Ships to: Most of the contiguous U.S. (Check here to see if they deliver to your area!)

Martha & Marley Spoon August 2018 Review

I liked that when I opened the box, the recipe cards were stored neatly on top, easy to access and safe from getting bent or wet from condensation inside the box.

Most of the ingredients for each meal were packed in their own little brown bag, other than the meats and items that needed to be kept chilled such as butter and sour cream.

All of the meats are tucked underneath a piece of cardboard with cold packs to keep them cool. I really wish that they had placed the little butter pats into some sort of bag though because I had to dig through the box and consult my recipes to make sure I found them all before I recycled the contents. Almost everything is recyclable by the way- find out more here!

Each bag is labeled with a sticker to tell you which meal it belongs to. Very helpful! I was able to throw everything in the fridge until I was ready to cook. They recommend that most meals be cooked within 4 days of receipt, with the exception of fish which needs to be cooked within 48 hours. Let's get to the meals!

Crispy Pork Cutlet with Corn & Snap Pea Saute

Calories: 980 kcal

Time to Table, According to Marley Spoon: 30 minutes

Actual Time to Table: 35 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Spice Level: Not spicy

The recipe cards were great- very easy to read and everything was well organized with lots of pictures for reference.

Each card also has this section with more detailed information, which I totally should have paid more attention to at the beginning, because I used regular salt for the first half of my cooking before I realized they recommend Kosher salt. Oops! But they have a section on "what we send" and "what you need" as well as a "tools" section so that you can get prepared easily.

The first step is to pound the pork out until it's thin to make your cutlets. This picture is pre-pounding, but I probably didn't pound mine down quite as thin as they wanted when I got to it, but it still worked!

Next step, wash and cut up my produce. Here we have garlic, scallions and snap peas. So one super nitpicky thing for me here was that they didn't specify whether they wanted the whites of the scallions or the greens. Any other meal box I have done lets you know to separate them and then you usually use them for different purposes in the dish. Since they didn't specify I just kept a mix of greens and whites to use. It wasn't a big deal, but I definitely appreciate super specific directions and I didn't find that here. 

They included an ear of corn that I had to husk, wash and then cut the corn off of.

Next, I mixed up the sauce which was sour cream, scallions (both parts!), dijon mustard and garlic with salt and pepper to taste.

Then I dipped my cutlets into the flour, then egg, and then coated them with panko breadcrumbs that I had seasoned with salt and pepper. Then those went into the pan with some oil to cook.

While my cutlets were cooking, I sauteed the corn and peas with oil and salt and pepper, adding the spinach last until it was wilted.

My cutlets cooked up to a nice golden brown and I then removed them to a paper towel to let them sit while I finished up the veggies.

Plating was easy, just adding the cutlets and veggies to the plate and then topping the cutlets with the sauce we made.

This meal was good, although, for me, the star was the veggies! The mixture of sweet corn, crunchy peas, and salty spinach was so tasty! I would never have considered that combination myself. The pork was good too, but the sauce was a little lackluster for me. Overall, we would order this again.

Seared Steak & Ginger Butter with Oven Fries and Green Beans

Calories: 780kcal

Time to Table, According to Marley Spoon: 40 minutes

Actual Time to Table: 45 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Spice Level: Not spicy

This recipe looked and sounded delicious to me and I'm always looking to find a decent steak recipe!

The first step is to cut the potatoes into long pieces, then toss them in oil, salt, and pepper and put them in the oven to roast.

Next, I cut up the scallions and once again, there were no instructions as to which part of the scallions to use in the recipe so I just did a mix of the white and green parts and tossed them with the green beans that I had prepared in oil, salt & pepper.

Then I peeled and grated the piece of ginger using a Microplane grater (one of the best kitchen tools that you never knew you needed, by the way!).

So one thing I omitted from this recipe was the cilantro. Mine came spilling out of its box and it was wilted and brown and yellow in parts and just did not feel very fresh so I decided not to use it. This was the only ingredient in the whole box that felt like it wasn't that fresh and I really think that is just because it was coming out of the box during transportation so this time I'm going to let it slide!

Next came the steaks. The recipe said to pound the steaks to an even thickness, but mine both looked about the same, so I didn't bother. I then seasoned the steaks with salt and pepper and seared them for about 4 minutes on each side.

I let the steaks rest while I finished the rest of the dish.

I took my fries out of the oven, gave them a toss and then added the green beans to my pan and put them back in the oven on broil.

I used the same skillet from my steaks and added 3 of the butter pats to the pan along with my grated ginger.

Then I removed it from the heat and squeezed in my little fish full of tamari and added some of the steak juices. The next step was to slice the steak for serving, but it was a little bit too rare for my husband and me, so I did the unthinkable and threw it in the oven under the broiler with the fries and green beans that were still cooking to get it a little closer to medium rare/medium.

Plating was easy, just slice the steaks and add the pan sauce on top, then put the veggies on the side.

This meal was good, but there are a few things I did wrong, like oversalted the potatoes- whoops! and also, I probably would have used a little less butter in the sauce in the future. The veggies were great and I love that I learned a new method for making homemade fries that wasn't too complicated and didn't involve frying them. The sauce was a little bit greasy and of course, my steaks weren't perfectly cooked, but I thought the ginger and butter was a delicious way to top a steak! I could definitely see turning this into a stir-fry dish with the Asian flavors here! I would eat this again, but I don't think I would seek it out.

Buttery Garlic Chicken with Orzo Pilaf & Roasted Broccoli

Calories: 683 kcal

Time to Table, According to Marley Spoon: 30 minutes 

Actual Time to Table: 40 minutes (I was also being super mom and simultaneously making apple crisp for the kids, so the 30 minutes expected time is probably accurate!)

Difficulty: Easy

Spice Level: Not spicy

I'm really not a fan of broccoli, but the rest of my family is, so I figured I would be able to pawn it off onto one of them, but - spoiler alert: I ate it ALL!

I washed all of the produce and then I sliced up one of the pieces of shallot, cut up my broccoli, tossed them in olive oil, salt & pepper and put those in the oven to roast.

Next, I chopped up the remaining shallots, cut my lemon into wedges and then cut up both the parsley leaves and stems, keeping them separate.

I sauteed the shallots with some oil.

Then I added the dry orzo and browned it- although I probably could have browned it longer, I've never prepared it this way, so I didn't want to risk burning it!

I added the parsley stems, water and salt then let it boil before reducing it to a simmer. 

I seasoned the flour with salt and pepper.

Then I coated the chicken with flour and added it to a pan of heated olive oil to cook, removing it when it was golden brown.

I used the same pan from the chicken and added in the parsley garlic and 2 pats of butter.

Once that was melted, I added the chicken back into the pan to coat it.

The orzo and broccoli were both finished by this time and I added the orzo to the plate, topped it with broccoli and put the chicken next to it with some lemon wedges. Then I poured the excess sauce on top of the chicken.

This was the best dish by far! So simple, but all of the flavors came together so well! The butter, lemon, and parsley on the slightly crisp chicken breast were amazing. The orzo was a little plain, but that's my fault for not pouring sauce over it. The broccoli was SO GOOD. I have never had it prepared this way and I didn't know I could actually ever like broccoli! The roasting gave it just a slight crisp and the olive oil soaked into it just enough to give it some flavor. My favorite part of this recipe is that I could easily recreate this at home and I definitely plan on doing just that!

The Verdict: Overall, this was a box full of decent dinners. There was nothing incredible about any of them, I feel like they all played it really safe and conservatively as far as flavors, but certain aspects of the meals were delicious. I enjoyed learning new ways to prepare familiar foods and I think that this is a great box for teaching you new ways to approach cooking. I now have some ideas for making fries and broccoli which is actually sort of inspirational to someone like me who is constantly cooking boring dinners like tacos and spaghetti (both of which I love, but get old on repeat!). The cost came down to about $10 per meal, which I think is decent for the meals we received. The portions were good and filling and nothing was overly complicated. I'm curious to try more meals from them and see if there is anything a bit more creative in flavor!

To Wrap Up:

Can you still get this box if you sign up today? Since Marley Spoon menus change weekly and you must choose them ahead of time, you won’t be able to order these dishes unless they are offered again in the future.

ACTIVE DEAL: $100 Off For Your First 4 Boxes (40/20/20/20). No coupon needed - just use this link.

Value Breakdown: This box costs $60.50 for two people with free shipping. That breaks down to three meals for $10.08 per person.

Check out all of our Martha & Marley Spoon reviews and the Meal Food Subscription Box Directory for other great meal kits and boxes to try.

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