March 2016 Plated Subscription Box Review + Coupon

This week, our Plated delivered some real comfort food.  Plated sends weekly dinner kits with high quality ingredients and chef-created recipes. Each week you’ll choose from a variety of quick gourmet meals that range from meats, chicken, seafood, and purely vegetarian options. There’s enough selection to please all palates, and the recipes are seasonally focused.  We love the way each meal incorporates only a couple key herbs or spices; the flavors shine through, and the recipes remain easy to follow.  We love getting boxes most weeks to try new recipes — our favorite recipes always remain available in our account if we want to look them up to make again ourselves.

Important to note: whereas Plated has been a subscription, you could previously turn off auto-shipments. You can no longer do that. No big deal for us, because we like to go in and select what recipes we’re receiving anyways. You can skip at the click of a button.

Plated uses recyclable/compostable jute for its insulation. I have a stack of it in the garage that I’m planning to use to border some trees in our yard and create a weed barrier in some of the plant beds.

Boxes are always packed with the meat on the bottom, underneath a few big ice packs — the rest of the food is set on top with more ice.

Plated sends a weekly email — it doesn’t tell you much about your meals, other than what you need from home. There’s now no reminder of the ease of preparation and all the other subscriptions provide some version of that.

We get asked a lot – Sometimes we order Plated and sometimes Hello Fresh. It just depends on what meals we’re interested in. [Hello Fresh: Take $40 off your first box with coupon code 7UT7K8] We have also started ordering Home Chef ($30 off with link). We love all of these boxes – try them out and pick your favorite.

Plated has new branding – but we’re still bummed they don’t put the ease of preparation on the recipe card.  They could put it right there where it says serves 2 people – because [nearly] all of Plated’s meals serve two people! The past two weeks they have added recipes with 3 person serving sizes.

Plated’s recipes rely on mise en place and then cook – we often mix up the steps from how the recipe is written, but we’re both experienced cooks and know what can be accomplished while something else cooks. So, read your cards if you need the step by steps.

All the food comes bagged up and separated (mostly) into the recipes — meat and some large or delicate items are bagged separately.

Pulled Chicken Sandwiches with Homemade Barbecue Sauce. 20-30 mins, 770 cal.

This dish was amazingly simple to prepare, despite the vast array of ingredients.  The chicken was shredded and bathed in a sweet, tomato-based homemade BBQ sauce, and the slaw had a mustardy dressing with celery seeds and a good creamy and vinegar balance.  Pre-shredded slaw mix arrived in superb condition and made prep a breeze. Shown above is one of two servings.

Shepherd’s Pie with Beef, Carrot, and Chives. 40-50 mins, 580 cal. This recipe is noted as serving three people.

This recipe made three servings, with the nutrition information adjusted to reflect that.  It made a lot of food, but that is the case with many Plated recipes — I suspect the extra portion was noted to bring the calorie count down a bit.  We really loved the dish, even if it was extremely rich.  The filling was not a loose beef stew; it was a viscous and truly indulgent near demi, riddled with chunks of tender vegetables.  Because we baked the assembled pie, this dish does take a while to make, but it is well worth it!  This picture shows about 1/3 of the total recipe — a mid-sized portion that is, nonetheless, extremely filling.

Upside-Down Apple Cobblers with Whipped Cream. 25-30 mins, 390 cal.

Fun and relatively simple to make, this is an elegant and tasty dessert.  It also comes with a hefty dollop of whipped cream — it takes some elbow grease, but the spray can variety can’t compare tot he rich, whipped butter consistency of homemade.

The cinnamon sugar topping was straightforward enough to let the flavor of the apples shine through, and the upside-down construction preserved the natural beauty of the toasted slices.

What tasty dishes these were!  I liked both the adherence and departure from tradition in these comfort foods — the BBQ had a sweet sauce, the traditional sandwich-BBQ style of sauce, and the shephard’s pie took a haute cuisine approach, doubling down on the near-obscene richness of the gravy.  The cobbler was perfect, too — not to heavy, yet really delicious.

Plated has been offering both middle-of-the road and very creative options each week, so we nearly always find a few things that suit our tastes.  Our choices this week were interesting spins on classic comfort food dishes, lending some sophistication to American mainstays.

Visit Plated to find or more or to subscribe. Currently you can get 2 free plates when you buy 4 when you sign up with this link (no coupon code required).