Plated's best feature is its flexibility. The range of recipes encompass all tastes, serving needs (they will send you anywhere from 1-8 servings!), levels of kid-friendliness, difficulty, and more. There's just enough repetition that if you like a recipe you can get it frequently enough, but no so much that you get bored. If you're someone who loves a little of everything and wants to try new things, Plated is for you! Hear more from Chef Nick: 

The cost of Plated varies based on servings you need, and how many recipes you get in a box. We usually get three servings of two recipes, and sometimes one of their dessert add ons (see this review of the cherry cheesecakes from this same box). Including the shipping charge, our box this week was $67.65 for six dinner and four dessert servings. 

I also like that they track your Chef Stats, counting how many recipes you've cooked, and how many unique ingredients you've used. As of this writing, we are at 34 recipes and 188 ingredients! 

This recipe was way simpler than I expected. Sometimes I think that I think that the more words in a recipe's name, the more complicated it will be. And maybe that can be true, but here Plated makes it easy! 

Plated's ingredients are a mix of prepared, semi-prepared, or completely DIY. Here, we got pre-shredded carrots and a premade sauce, but everything else was whole or raw. For us, Plated's main drawback is the amount of plastic they use. Everything comes in one large bag (not shown), and then nearly everything inside is contained in plastic too. Each piece of chicken is individually wrapped - and none of this is recyclable. I hope they are working on this! It's the main reason we don't get Plated as frequently as some of the more environmentally friendly options, such as Green Chef or.

We LOVE Hello Fresh! It may be among our favorites. This meal came in a box with Ground Beef Bulgogi Bowls and Moroccan Sausage Chicken Tangine.

Read more of our Hello Fresh reviews HERE.

The BEST part of Hello Fresh is they beat all other services on variety and choice. There are 15 recipes to choose from in the Classic Plan, six in the family plan, and three in the veggie plan. That is more choices than any other meal box service. And you're not ever locked in! You can mix and match the plans each week, and choose different numbers of servings per meal, and even choose a different number of meals each week. Their "Dinner 2 Lunch" options supply creative ways to transform leftovers into new lunches! Hello Fresh definitely wins here. 

​Hello Fresh is also one of the most environmentally friendly services. The whole kits come in recyclable paper bags, and they keep the plastic to a minimum. Compared to some of the other services, this is a really nice feature. They've even partnered with GiveBackBox.com so you can ship used packaging to be donated - free! 

Read more of our Hello Fresh reviews HERE.

This one came together easy peasy! Sheet pan dinners are great because you can basically just throw everything in the oven and come back to a full meal. Hooray for time savers!

1. Prep all the produce and herbs and start the oven to 450.

2. Start the potatoes. Remember, olive oil spray is gold!! Instead of dirtying up extra bowls and making a mess "tossing" stuff around, just hit the pan and its contents with a spray of this stuff.

4. Prep the sauce. In a lot of meal boxes, it will tell you to add a bunch of things to a pan all at once to make a sauce - but you have to do it in a certain order and quickly to avoid splattering,  burning or over-evaporating in a hot pan. It's often easier to mix the sauce ingredients first and then dump them in later. So here, mix the chicken base, the fig jam, the vinegar and water together first so it's already ready when you are.

Also move the pork pieces from the sear pan to the sheet pan. Spray the shallots too.

Dang those porks look good.

8. Make the sauce. Heat up the pan with the meat drippings still in it. Don't burn any bits, just make it hot. Add your pre-mixed sauce ingredients. Use a hard edged wooden spatula to dig up all the gunk from the bottom of the pan. That's the good stuff! Let it boil down until it's thick and sticky.

9. A nice serving platter looks fancy, but it's really just a short cut for the cook. Dump it all on a platter and let your fam help themselves. Cut the porks into pretty slices and dump all the sauce into a serving thingy. Gorgeous! and delicious too!

10. EAT.

Read more of our Hello Fresh reviews HERE.

This meal was awesome! Tasty, easy, and a crowd pleaser.

Here's some of things we used for this recipe:

Thanks for cooking with us, and eat well!