I’ve always been envious of the amazing meal planning boxes in the States – I’m a single girl, and grocery shopping always yields me too much wasted food! Meal planning boxes always appealed to me, but Canadian boxes have so far been limited to the East Coast. Not anymore! In the last six months, some have made their way west and Chef’s Plate is one of the few that delivers to my area. I’m so excited to be trying their service. Like most meal plan subscriptions, it’s shipped weekly but you have the option of skipping if the recipes don’t appeal to you, you’re going to be away, or have other plans.
Chef’s Plate plans are pretty simple!
2-person plans let you choose 2-4 recipes weekly. If you only choose 2 recipes there is a $6 delivery charge. 4-person (family) plans have the same options. The recipes available differ slightly between the two. The recipes available can be customized based on your preferences; you can choose to only request recipes with or without certain meats. Gluten-free and vegetarian meals do pop up occasionally.
Chef’s Plate is sent by FedEx; I have mine shipped to my work address as I live in an apartment. Chef’s Plate provides adequate packaging to keep ingredients fresh and cold if they need to leave it at your door; the ice packs are gel-based and recyclable.
This week’s review is going to be a bit photo-light; one of the two meals was actually cooked at my mom’s house and we didn’t photograph the end product.
The first recipe I chose was Butternut Squash Gnocchetti. I’m a bit formulaic when I order from Chef’s Plate – I like to choose a pasta dish as the leftovers keep better, and then a meal that includes an entree and side for a bit of decadence.
The recipe is clearly laid out and includes photos. I love that they have a “Prepare the ingredients” step as the first step, as it gets all of the chopping, cleaning, etc done ahead of time so when you need to add the ingredients you really do just have to throw them in.
I had to make a minor tweak to the recipe; since none of my pots are oven safe, I did not bake my pasta in the oven but rather cooked it on the stovetop. It’s fresh pasta, so it only took the indicated 7-10 minutes to cook in the sauce.
Everything is included, and they even pre-diced the squash. Everything is labeled and looked/felt fresh and ready.
Here’s my completed dish! The cheese didn’t melt completely since I didn’t do the final step of baking the dish, but it was still awesome. The red chili pepper flakes added some heat. The butternut squash is actually partly mashed, so sometimes you got a whole piece and sometimes it was just in the sauce. I liked the combination of textures.
The second dish was the Butter Basted Salmon – I’m so sad I didn’t get a photo of this because it was so delicious and looked pretty much exactly how it looked like on the recipe card! I love salmon but usually, I bake it. I’ve never done it on the stovetop before. I also chose this recipe because of the garlic mashed potatoes (aka my kryptonite).
Again, the recipe required a bit of tweaking due to my lack of proper equipment. I don’t have a lemon zester, so I omitted the zest. I found there was plenty of flavor in the dish just from the juice added at the end, so this was a minor issue.
And here’s the ingredients!
This dish was amazing. The salmon was so buttery and was so tender that it fell apart when we were trying to plate it. I finished mine then tried to steal my mom’s.
What I wanted to mention about this week’s set of recipes is that you may notice both recipes include onion and shallot, respectively. I mentioned in my very first Chef’s Plate review that I hate onions, and omitted them from the first recipe I made. Since then, I have actually gone ahead and used the onion when it’s required of the recipe. I’ve actually become a bit of a fan, but only if they’re cooked and mixed in with the rest of the dish. The salmon recipe had the shallots cut into rounds and fried to put over the salmon, and I was actually eating them alone while waiting for the salmon to cook. So Chef’s Plate is actually nudging me a bit out of my comfort zone — and that’s a win!
Are you a fellow Canadian looking to give Chef’s Plate a try? They have service in BC, AB, MB, and ON. Use the promo code #3platesFromUs for three free plates to start out – you can skip weeks easily if the recipes don’t appeal to you. And yes, the hashtag is part of the coupon!
Have you tried Chef’s Plate? What recipes have you enjoyed?
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