Review: EveryPlate Meal Kit

EveryPlate is a good meal kit subscription service that can help you learn more in the kitchen while taking away the painful task of deciding what the heck to make for dinner. It’s one of the several services owned by HelloFresh, a company I’ve also tested and liked.

EveryPlate offers a few different plans. You can spend as little as $45 per week for three meals with two servings each ($7 per serving), or fully stock your fridge with six meals for six people per week, which costs $150 (or $5 per serving).

Like many other meal kit subscription services, EveryPlate has filters for things like “Calorie Smart,” “Quick and Easy,” and ingredient preferences for vegetarians. Each week you’ll choose your meals from a rotating menu with at least 20 different options. You can skip, pause, or cancel your plan at any time in your account settings.

What Makes EveryPlate Different?

There are some key differences that could make EveryPlate better—or worse—for you and your family.

Unlike most meal kit subscription services, there aren’t any plans for special diets like keto, vegan, or paleo. EveryPlate says that this is to keep prices low. Another difference is in what the company provides for you. Most meal kits require you to provide butter, oil, salt, and pepper. EveryPlate might also require you to have aluminum foil, baking paper, or flour—things most kitchens will still have in stock, but this is an important distinction since other meal kit services typically don't require you to provide those types of “extras.” Again, this helps lower the cost of EveryPlate compared to other meal kits. And, unlike some other services that group recipe ingredients together ahead of time, EveryPlate sends your ingredients shipped together in one big box or bag. I separated out the dry goods and threw everything else into one big freezer bag in a refrigerator drawer. But you’ll have to corral the items yourself, which can be a little cumbersome in a shared fridge space with other ingredients. This helps keep the prices down and reduces packaging. Generally, EveryPlate is more affordable than most other meal kit services. (And like other services, usually there's a promotion for new users to cut prices even more.)

But How Did It Taste?

During my testing period, I chose to make Pork Chops & Apricot Sauce, Garlicky Tuscan Tomato & Mushroom Penne, and Herb Butter Steak. When I test meal kits, I follow the instructions exactly, using only the ingredients provided (unless explicitly noted otherwise due to extenuating circumstances). I'm an experienced cook with an arsenal of All-Clad cookware, a trusty Kiwi cleaver, and a gas-powered stovetop. I test one service at a time and taste-test recipes with the help of my partner. I note down our initial impressions and opinions before discussing a dish any further.

All of the recipes turned out great. The pork chops with couscous and roasted carrots struck the perfect balance of sweet and savory, creamy and chewy. And the penne dish let mushrooms shine, an ingredient I think is often overpowered by strong sauces and flavors. The end results of the dishes I made were quite delicious.

EveryPlate has concise recipe cards with only six steps each. That can be a blessing in terms of counter space and text to read. I always say that meal kits require chefs to thoroughly read the instructions, and that’s even more crucial when it comes to EveryPlate. One “step” might actually have four or five tasks in it. And if you order bigger servings, the instructions can be even murkier. One card says, “Remember: Larger batches may = longer cook times, so follow the visual and temperature cues.” That makes sense to me, but it might not make sense for folks who haven’t cooked pork chops before. This conciseness can also lead to inconsistency regarding estimated cooking and prep times. I think most meal kit recipes are generous in time estimates, but EveryPlate recipes consistently took at least 10 minutes longer than the time estimate mentioned on the recipe cards.

As an example, when I made couscous, I melted my butter, added my minced garlic, added in my couscous … and realized I needed 3/4 cup of water. Picture me running to my measuring cup drawer and yanking it open while my couscous roasted away. (Luckily, it still turned out.)

A similar situation happened when I roasted the vegetables for my pasta and realized I was out of aluminum foil to roast my garlic on a sheet pan. I still just … roasted it on the pan, and it turned out fine. But the recipe didn’t warn me ahead of time, and I could have saved myself the trouble had I read the instructions 48 times. And as a counterpoint, EveryPlate could have listed “aluminum foil” on the front of the card where it says what items you’ll need to have on hand.

These complaints are small. There’s a good chance I’ve been spoiled by testing more expensive kits that essentially hold your hand throughout the process.

If other meal kits are super user-friendly, then EveryPlate is more … user-acquaintance-y. It's not the girl in the restaurant bathroom who holds your hand while you cry about your group chat drama; it's more so the stranger on the street who offers you a cursory head nod. But EveryPlate is still a great service that holds up when compared with the bigger names in the meal kit space. If you’re in the market for a meal kit subscription, EveryPlate is great for folks who want to spend consciously and don’t mind the possibility of taking their own notes on recipes ahead of time. But if you want the utmost convenience and ease of use, a more expensive kit might be a better option for your family (and your sanity).