EveryPlate review: The best budget-friendly meal kit, perfect for families

There really is a meal kit out there for everyone. Is EveryPlate for you?

I wanted to know for myself, so I thought it was time to take a closer look at the crowd favorite — EveryPlate.

If you want to experience the popular meal kit yourself, this is the time. *Get delicious and hassle-free meals for $1.99 (regularly $5.99) with promo code NYPEP1.

(*Editor’s Note: Offer is applied as a discount on your first box.)

I’ve tested more than 15 meal delivery kit services over the course of four years, including EveryPlate. The meal kit is marketed as “America’s Best Value Meal Kit,” with affordable pricing and accessible recipes that aim to please many different tastes. With a rotating weekly menu, there’s always something to try.

I was impressed with the meal delivery the first time I reviewed it, but I know these types of services can drastically change over time. Curious to see (and taste) how EveryPlate was years after my original ‘investigation,’ I took my work-from-home test kitchen again to test the meal kit. How’d it plate? Read on for the full dish and then get cooking yourself.

How EveryPlate works

EveryPlate is quite simple and works for almost every palate.

While some meal kit delivery services will have you add some personal info before you can start selecting your recipes, EveryPlate doesn’t require that. All you need to do is visit the ‘Our Plans’ section on the home page. From there, you’ll be given a selection of the different recipe types available to try. Do you want recipes that are quick to whip up? Maybe you’re looking to eat more vegetables. Whatever it is, EveryPlate has options.

You can select as many meal types as you’d like. After, you can select the meal cadence and serving sizes. Choose two, four or six people, and then a frequency of three, four or five meals per week. The best part is that no matter the combination, each standard meal is $5.99 per serving and even less with a coupon. Plus, this is one of the few meal kits that allow for a six-person serving, perfect for larger families. There is also the option for add-ons.

EveryPlate price

This is truly one of the most affordable meal kits I’ve found, and I still don’t fully understand how they can provide such yummy, filling meals at such a low cost.

Meals start at just $5.99 or less with the introductory coupon. Should you opt for premium meal selections, there may be an added cost of $1.99-$6.99 more per serving due to the higher quality of fine cuts of meat, seafood, and more.

Shipping is a flat rate of $10.99, no matter the box.

EveryPlate meals

EveryPlate keeps costs low by having fewer options than some meal kit brands, but all are filling and delicious. There are currently five plans available:

• Meat & Veggie
• Smart & Fit
• Family Faves
• Quick & Easy
• Veggie

Regardless of the meal, I’ve noticed that the box of fruits, veggies and other ingredients always arrives fresh and quite large — no wonky tomatoes or bruised cucumbers here.

We’ve tested:

• Chicken Sausage & Tomato Soup with Israeli Couscous & Parmesan
• Brown Butter Scallops over Creamy Corn & Tomato Risotto
• Creamy Potato and Bacon Soup
• Smothered and Stuffed Meat Loaf
• Cheesy Chicken, Broccoli and Rice Casserole

After cooking up my fair share of meal kits, I would say I am in between novice and chef when it comes to home cooking. Meal kits that are easy to order, recipes that are easy to follow, and food that is easy to eat are really my three main criteria.

EveryPlate checked them all.

To get the full taste of EveryPlate’s offerings, I wanted to try a sampling of some of the different categories of options on the site. I chose two meals for my weekly picks, with a customer-favorite option of the Chicken Sausage and Tomato Soup with Israeli Couscous and Parmesan and then a more premium pick of the Brown Butter Scallops Over Creamy Corn and Tomato Risotto as a treat for the weekend.

To note, each recipe, regardless of premium or not, came with easy to follow recipe cards, printed in full color with no more than six steps. I really appreciated this, especially when cooking something unfamiliar, as the photos guided my way almost as much as the text.

Also to note were the ingredients themselves. EveryPlate does an amazing job with providing both fresh produce and high-quality proteins and also with less packaging to minimize waste. I appreciated that all the ingredients for all three meals came in one neatly packed box, with the chicken, scallops and dairy products packed below on ice to keep them fresh.

For this year of testing, I also cooked up a Delicious Creamy Potato and Bacon Soup and a homey-feeling Smothered and Stuffed Meatloaf that ended up being my favorite. While that recipe called for an oven, I ended up using my toaster oven and cooking the mini meat loaves with the fries, so they came out caramelized and delicious. One of the many things I love about EveryPlate is that you can play around with the recipes as needed since they start simple and come with very easy instructions — follow them exactly or have some fun!

Compared to other meal kits, EveryPlate is the simplest to follow and the most affordable, making it the one I, personally, would subscribe to. It may be better suited to a larger family, but for me, I was able to save the second portion of the two-person meals for lunch.

The final verdict

So how did it go once in the kitchen? According to plan! When timed out, each recipe took the estimated time listed on the card, and in my humble opinion, looked just like the pictures. The timing makes it easy to plan for family meals, as well as when you are in a rush and only have a certain amount of time to cook, while the quality ingredients made it look like I had slaved away for an Instagrammable food moment. Win-win.

Check out EveryPlate for easy dinners and lunches for the whole family, as it is available to serve up to six portions, while not breaking the bank or spending too long in the kitchen.

How we tested

• Ease of ordering: When looking at the menu, EveryPlate is simple to set up and order for each week. I always take into consideration how to customize the order, make changes, and pause a membership when testing.
• Prep, cook and cleanup time: A major selling point of meal kits is that they save time. EveryPlate takes between 15 and 45 minutes per meal, sticking very closely to what the recipe estimates. I still noted how long it took me to have a complete meal from unpackaging to cooking, eating, and recycling afterward.
• Flavor and fullness: Meal kits are meant to remove all the guesswork from cooking, including seasoning. When testing EveryPlate, I took into account if any of the dishes I ordered needed to be seasoned or altered to become more palatable. I also considered how satisfied they left me and for how long.
• Sustainability: Not all meal kits are eco-friendly or use sustainable practices. To determine where EveryPlate stood on the eco-conscious scale, I reviewed its production policy and looked into how it sourced its ingredients. Other things I took into account were its packaging and whether it could be recycled.
• Price: Meal kits typically run between $7 and $15 per serving, and so EveryPlate sits at the very affordable side of the spectrum at $2.99-$5.99 per serving. I also take into account how many meals per week and how many servings you get for the price.

FAQ: What to look for when choosing a meal kit

Diet: Pay attention to the dietary options each service caters to, from vegetarian and vegan to Keto and paleo.

Household Size: Count the number of people in your family and then account for how much they eat to best calculate how many servings you need to feed everyone. Some kits have larger portions, while others are single-serve only.

Budget: Meal kits and services have a wide range of prices. Some offer free shipping, while others have a minimum spend, and other specialty or health-related plans may cost more.

Time: Think about how long you want to cook for each night. Some meals require 30 or more minutes to cook, not including cleaning up. Others are microwavable and thus don’t require clean-up time, either.

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