Plated Subscription Box Review + Coupon – October 2016

This week’s Plated had a fresh take on three iconic dishes!  Plated is a weekly dinner kit subscription box 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.  Though most dishes are relatively upscale in appeal, they also offer some familiar comfort food type options each week.  You can swap out your recipes and skip any week you don’t want.

Plated insulates the food with padding filled with recycled thread material.  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.  This week’s box included a card announcing three-serving meals!  This is a great option for guaranteeing leftovers for a tasty and easy lunch!

On-card information is now streamlined and includes only prep-time, number of servings, and calorie count.  Most of Plated’s meals serve two people.  Unless stated otherwise, the pics of finished dishes show a single serving.

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.

Cauliflower Carbonara With Bacon And Spinach. 45-55 minutes, medium, 800 calories per serving.

This dish was very tasty, with nice firm noodles and a creamy sauce.  The bacon added superb flavor, but the cauliflower just added bulk and detracted from the sauce.  I would also have supported using cream for added deliciousness!  I did appreciate the minimalist preparation, using the same water to cook the cauliflower and pasta, as well as cooking the baking in the pot used for the sauce.  Very filling, too, with the rich sauce making a little bacon go a long way.

Cheesy Squash Chilaquiles With Avocado And Lime.  45-55 minutes, medium, 700 calories per serving.

Chilaquiles is a favorite among fans of authentic Mexican cuisine – it’s homestyle dish that incorporates the previous nights tortillas in much the same spirit as French toast using day old bread.  This version swapped in roasted squash and Swiss chard for the traditional red or green sauce.  The result was tasty, aided by a sprinkling of Monterey Jack and Cotija cheeses.  The tortillas were tough to get just right, as they tend to go directly from uncooked to overcooked.  Mine ended up a tad dark, and I did miss the sauce, as it is the interplay of the sauce and chips that is really the heart of the dish.  All in all, a good dish, with tons of nice avocado chunks!  I love being able to do the stovetop to oven preparations, now that I have a cast iron pan (courtesy of my August Bespoke Post)!

Beef Moussaka-Stuffed Delicata Squash With Greek Yogurt Sauce. 40-50 minutes, medium, 590 calories per serving.

Moussaka is a popular Greek dish, typically consisting of seasoned eggplant smothered in a white sauce and served as a casserole.  This version uses a small squash and ground beef.  I loved the presentation afforded by the halved squash. We sccoped out some of the baked squash and stirred it into the filling, but the part of the squash that remained intact wasn’t particularly enticing compared to the filling.  The stuffing was awesome, and easy to make — we also ended up with an entire additional serving, which we baked in a tiny casserole dish.  Simply dressed spinach was the side.
We enjoy Plated and order it frequently.  Of the three meal kits we regularly order, Plated shoots for the most upscale image, echoing popular trends in food culture.  When we first started ordering Plated, they would employ a French sauce with nearly every dish.  They’ve since incorporated more international flavor and included many simplified and more mainstream offerings.  They’ve broadened the appeal while still offering top notch fare by incorporating more restaurant favorites and classic dishes with a twist.

What do you think of Plated?

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).