I got EveryPlate last week and I was pretty impressed by the food I got. The recipes were simple, they had few ingredients, but they were very tasty. I was particularly blown away by their spicing of ground beef for “been banh mi”. It was so simple, yet delicious! So here is the recipe:
1 Tbsp oil
1 small yellow onion, chopped
10 oz ground beef
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tsp sugar
4 tsp soy sauce
salt & pepper to taste
Heat oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook until soft, 4-5 minutes, stirring. Add the ground beef, garlic and sugar and cook, breaking up the clumps of beef, until it’s browned, 4-5 minutes. Stir in the soy sauce. Turn off heat. Taste and season as needed.
I was planning to make a chicken stew tonight, but my husband bought skinless, boneless chicken thighs instead of the chicken parts I’d asked him to get. So I was left with trying to figure out what to make for dinner with the ingredients I had at hand. I could have easily replicated a meal I’d made before, but I saw it as an opportunity to try something new. I looked through different meal kit company sites, but the only one that had a simple recipe I could make with the stuff I had at home was EveryPlate. Perhaps I should have started with them.
This recipe for Garlic-Rosemary Chicken with Roasted Root Veggies was uncomplicated, but I thought pretty good. My daughter, who didn’t want the rosemary-garlic topping found the chicken flavorless, but that’s to be expected. The rosemary-garlic topping was good, if not gourmet quality. I’m not sure I’d make this particular dish again, however.
I used chicken thighs rather than the chicken breasts that the kit would have used, both because that’s what I had at home and because I much prefer them. I didn’t have a carrot, a sweet potato or Yukon gold potatoes, so I substituted with the two large russet potatoes I had at home.
I made this meal for 3 people. EveryPlate does not have kits that feed three, but their kit for 2 would have cost $13 (including shipping). A kit for 3, if it existed, would have cost $18. I spent ~$7.50 making it for the three of us. Had I used a carrot and sweet potatoes, it might have cost a couple of dollars more. While I didn’t buy any ingredients to make this meal, I had bought some recently enough to qualify as not being in my pantry just waiting to be used.
EveryPlate is a budget meal kit brand launched by HelloFresh, which has found it difficult to keep customers due to the relatively high price of their meals. It offers simpler meals than its parent company, with fewer fancy ingredients. It also only offers 5 choices a week, one of which is a ” premium” meal and costs $6 more per kit, which helps keep their prices low. At $13 per 2-portion kit (including shipping costs), it’s considerably cheaper than HelloFresh’s $20 regular kits. But exactly because they have fewer ingredients, they are also easier and quicker to put together and cook.
The Plans
EveryPlate has two plans: 3 meals for 2 people per week for $30 + $9 shipping (so $39) and 3 meals for 4 people per week for $60 + $9 shipping. That means that for the 2-person plan, you get are paying $6.50 per person per meal – cheaper than other services, but not the $5 they advertise.
EveryPlate’s reduced costs are achieved by offering fewer meal choices, each with fewer ingredients, reducing assembly time by not separating ingredients by recipe in the box and by not including some ingredients their recipes call for (e.g. butter & ketchup).
The Food
EveryPlate offers four meal choices a week plus a premium choice that costs $3pp/$6 per kit more. The premium choice is usually steak.
The meals are usually uncomplicated American favorites, things such as grilled cheese sandwich with tomato sauce, burgers, baked pastas and the now-popular “bowls”. Most meals include pork, chicken or sausages – there is rarely a vegetarian meal.
For me, the lack of choices means that, despite its affordability, I couldn’t use this meal kit every week, as I seldom can find three meals out of the four they offer that at least two people in my house would like.
The ingredients, in general, were of good quality. The meats were tasty and at least as good as supermarket meats. I particularly liked the ranch steak. The produce was hit and miss. I got a yellow onion instead of the green onion the recipe called for. The tomato didn’t arrive ripe – but it was fine two days later when I went to cook that recipe. The garlic and the limes were old, however. Fortunately, I was able to get a few good garlic cloves out of the garlic for the recipes that needed them, but neither lime could produce much juice.
While some meal kits include all the ingredients you’ll need, save for salt, pepper and cooking oil – EveryPlate is more stingy. They require you to use (and have!) your own butter, sugar, flour and ketchup, for example. As not everyone has a stocked pantry, make sure you read what each recipe calls for before ordering it.
The Shipping & Delivery
EveryPlate delivers their boxes (at least to my zipcode) on Wednesdays. I got a shipping notification on Tuesday. My box was delivered in the late morning, but it’s not guaranteed that it won’t be later in the day. For that reason, it’s probably not a good idea to plan to make one of their kits for dinner that night. The problem is that kits are usually most useful during weeknights – but if you use your first one on Thursday night, you’ll either have to make the last one during the weekend or leave it until Monday. The meats seem to be vacuum sealed so that I don’t think that would be a problem – but given how non-fresh some of the produce was, I wouldn’t have wanted to wait that long.
The Packaging
Like other meal kits, EveryPlate comes in a cardboard box. This one is on the small side and came more beaten up than others I’ve gotten. It also was carelessly sealed.
The ingredients were all thrown together inside an insulated bag. Dried ingredients were in a box on top of a freezer pack, with items needing refrigeration underneath them. The carelessness in putting the materials in the box resulted in one of the BBQ packet arriving open.
Unlike other kits, the ingredients didn’t come in individual bags for each recipe and they didn’t have stickers indicating to what recipe they belonged. Rather, they were all mixed in together. This turned out to not be an issue. As there were fewer ingredients that in other kits, I simply kept the dry ingredients in the box on my kitchen counter, and put the meats and sour cream (the only ingredients that needed refrigeration) in the fridge.
As with most other meal kits (save for Sun Basket), the box can be recycled, but the liner and freezer packs cannot.
The Results
These are the three meals I made during my first (and so far only) week of EveryPlate:
All in all, I was happy with them. They were relatively easy to make, quicker than other meal kits, and they were tasty. The portions were also OK – though in some cases this was because of the empty carbs (just look at the size of that garlic bread in comparison to the beef!).
I also made a meal based on an EveryPlate recipe, and might make more in the future:
A very decent meal to put together with stuff I had at home.
Cancelling the service was also very easy – just do it online. A week after I cancelled, I got an offer to come back and get 6 free meals. Alas, I can’t find three meals that two of us would like in the upcoming menus. Update: I’ve since gotten a “come back” often a couple of times.
Tacos & fajitas seem to be one of the most common meals offered by meal kit companies. I’ve ordered them a few times, simply because I didn’t see anything else they offered that we might like, but it’s not a top choice for me. I can get three ready-made tacos of a similar size at the Mexican Restaurant in the corner for $13, and I don’t have to spend the time cooking them. Or, of course, I can make them myself for a few dollars.
Still, some of the taco recipes I’ve made have been good and I’m always up for a discovery. This recipe for carne asada fajitas with pickled onions and lime cream, however, did not produce one. The tacos/fajitas were pretty straightforward and just OK flavor wise – indeed, they might have been better without the southwestern flavoring.
They were fairly easy and quick to make and at $13 for a meal for six tacos, they were pretty cheap.
I got this kit for free, with a special one-time code that someone gave me. The regular cost for the two serving kit is $13, including shipping. Use this link to get $20 off your first box.
I didnt manage to take my own photo when I made these.
Rating: 7/10
Sometimes a meal kit fails you, and sometimes you fail a meal kit. This time I think both of us failed each other. I think this could have been a pretty good meal kit if I’d had all of the ingredients, and if I had been more careful while putting it together. As things were, my husband got a decent sandwich – but not really a sloppy joe – and I got to eat the remaining filling with a spoon. At least it was pretty tasty.
This EveryPlate kit consists of ground pork which is supposed to be cooked with BBQ sauce and ketchup, potato buns, an onion to quickly pickle and sweet potatoes to bake. One of the two packets of BBQ sauce my kit came with was open, so I had to toss it away. Unfortunately, when I went to make the pork, I realized I didn’t have any more BBQ sauce at home. Even worse, the kit called for using my own ketchup – and I was also out of it. At the end, I was only able to cook the ground pork in a the single packet of BBQ sauce. Amazingly, this still gave a very nice flavor to the pork.
I didn’t try the pickled onions, but my husband raved about them. I’m thus including the recipe below.
As for the buns, I burnt my first two when I put them in the toaster – and then dropped them (thus my lack of a sandwich myself). I also managed to burn the sweet potatoes. Indeed, one of the things that did not work with this kit is that the sweet potatoes require that you preheat the oven (something which takes at least 15-20 minutes) and then you cook them for 20-25 minutes. The rest of the meal takes a very short time to make. So we were ready to eat far before the sweet potatoes were ready – which is why I forgot about them.
I got this kit for free, with a special one-time code that someone gave me. The regular cost for the two serving kit is $13, including shipping. Use this link to get $20 off your first box.
Quick Pickled Onions
1/4 cup thinly sliced red onion
1/4 tsp sugar
juice from one lime
pinch of salt
Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Let to pickle for at least 10 minutes.
Sloppy Joes
drizzle of oil
1 red onion, chopped
salt & pepper to taste
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb ground pork
1/3 cup BBQ sauce
1/4 cup Ketchup
1/3 cup water
1 tsp lime juice
Heat oil in a large saute pan over medium-high heat. Add the onion, season with salt & pepper, and fry, stirring frequently, until soft – 4-5 minutes. Add the minced garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Add the ground pork and cook, stirring and separating, until browned, about 4-5 minutes. Add the bbq sauce, ketchup, water and lime juice. Cook, stirring frequently, until it thickens. Taste and adjust seasoning. Serve in burger buns topped with the pickled onions.
Last week I tried EveryPlate meal kits. At $39 a week for three 2-serving meals, it’s one of the cheapest services out there – though when shipping is included each portion is $6.50, not the $5 they advertise. Premium dishes (those including steak, I’m guessing) are $3 more pp, or $9.50. My first week was free, as I got a one-time promo code from a current user.
Of the three meals I had, the Steak Tagliata with Tomato Jam, Creamy Kale and Garlic Bread (a premium kit) was by far the best and as good as any meal I’ve gotten in a meal kit. The beef was ranch steak, a cut I’ve mostly gotten in meal kits, and it was tender and delicious – certainly a cut above the meat I get at Safeway. I also very much enjoy the tomato jam. It was easy to make and delicious. There was too much of it for the steak – but I liked it so much that I ate it by itself.
The garlic bread consisted of two buns (they called them demi baguettes but they had a sweeter, softer consistency – they were clearly buns); each was individually wrapped in sealed plastic. They were surprisingly good as well.
Finally, while I didn’t like the kale – not a surprise, as I don’t like most vegetables – my 14-yo ate it.
The portion size was just right, neither of us were left hungry – though it may have been because of how much garlic bread we got.
The ingredients were mostly fine, though the garlic was old and it came already sprouting. The tomato wasn’t ripe when it arrived, but it was just right two days later when I actually cooked this meal. Of course, by then the kale was just starting to dry out.
Note, this meal kit requires the use of your own butter – most more expensive kits include it.
I got this kit for free, with a special one-time code that someone gave me. The regular cost for this two serving kit is $19, including shipping. Use this link to get $20 off your first box.
RECIPES
Tomato Jam
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 small yellow onion, chopped
1 Roma tomato, chopped
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup water
1/2 tsp sugar
salt & pepper to taste
Pour oil in a saute pan and heat over medium-high heat. Add the chopped onion and cook until softened, stirring often. Add the tomato, vinegar and water. Cook, stirring frequently, until very soft – about 4-5 minutes. Stir in the sugar. Season with salt & pepper. Turn off heat and serve as a relish.
