Dinnerware Set Review (2026): Hearty meals on a budget

Dinerly thus saves cost not by cutting down on the proteins – they’re mostly the same stuff that arrives in a can of Marley Spoon – but largely by keeping the flavors simple, just a mix of spices or one main herb and perhaps a citrus fruit, with both zest and juice. This doubles as good cooking. Dinnerly also saves you some money by relying on you to have your own garlic and butter stocked and not overload your meals with too many carbs.

Last year when I tested Dinnerly, the effect was very slight at times. I felt like the meals I tried took too many shortcuts, which in some cases resulted in a meal that was a struggle at times. This year, I didn’t have that feeling at all: I found more international and interesting flavors, and more sophisticated meals, even with prep that often took about half an hour.

Nice little spice

Photo: Matthew Corvage

This shift towards including a more diverse and interesting range of international meals is something I’ve also noticed over the past year in Marley Spoon’s main meal range as well. While Marley Spoon’s marketing director, Carrie King, attributed this in part to the website design making the choices clearer, the raw numbers also support the shift.

A year ago at this time last year, about a third of the hundred or so meals on offer each week had non-European culinary roots. Now the number is closer to half, with trips to Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, whether seasoning beef or lemongrass pork.

To be sure, these are somewhat touristy, with simplistic recipes that achieve little in the way of authenticity. No one from Tunisia or Lebanon would mistake their mother’s recipe for harissa-marinated vegetables with thyme chicken, easily baked for 30 minutes on a baking sheet. The “garlic sour cream” you drizzle over the chicken is kind of a somewhat poorer cousin to the traditional Toum Lebanese style.

But the variety and spices are welcome, whether it was the “chorizo-chili” spice blend on the basic but flavorful pork tenderloin or the simple addition of paprika to the lemon-garlic shrimp that gave it a slight Andalusian tinge. There’s a reason why a bachelor’s fridge is full of sauces and condiments: It’s a shortcut to a more interesting life.

Which Thyme chicken recipe It categorically cannot achieve its promised preparation of less than 30 minutes when its instructions call for 30 minutes in the oven – at least, not without bending time and space. But prep does add a lot of extra time. You’ll probably have finished chopping the vegetables and adding them to the oil and seasoning when you preheat the oven.