Plated recipe review: Pan-Roasted Chicken with curried coconut rice

why plated? 

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: 

Read all of our Plated reviews here

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! 

The recipe: pan-roasted chicken with curried coconut rice

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.

A lot of these recipes will have you prep everything before you start cooking, but I find that can be a waste of time. If, for example, as in this recipe, you'll be browning some chicken breasts before you need the other ingredients, then go ahead and cut up your vegetables while the chicken is cooking. 

This is a oven-roasted chicken, so it only needs a good sear on it before it goes in the oven. Pre-salting will help give it a nice crispy surface. While the chicken is cooking, prep the next step. 

This is a fairly standard way of making a stewed sauce; cook the veggies, add liquids, simmer until it has a nice thickness and smells great. In this case, you add lots of liquid and flavors and let the rice cook as it simmers. These sauces are always to your liking! If you like onions, add more! If you like it spicy, kick in a little red pepper. Experiment with what you already know you like. The coconut and turmeric go great together, so I'm adding that to my favorite combinations list! 

While the rice and veggies cook, you can make the yogurt sauce. This is a good job for a helper! Here's another place where you can add flavors to suit your taste. Maybe a hint of cinnamon and/or nutmeg might be a nice complement to the Indian flavors. Try it! 

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When the chicken is cooked through, you can plate however you like. We sort of kind of tried to match the picture. What do you think? The spices and veggies really brighten it up! 

This recipe was really good! If we make it again, we'll either cut the onions up way smaller, or eliminate them entirely, for family-friendliness. We got one adult and one kid-sized serving at dinner, and it also made enough for two to-go lunches. The flavors go really well together, and it has enough veggies to make a parent feel good. It was easy enough to put together quickly, and anything that has a good kid-job or two is great for us! 

Read more of our Plated reviews here

our rating: 

Thanks for cooking with us, and eat well! ​