The EveryPlate meal kit offers affordable vegetarian options

Each week, there are 36 meals to choose from, including about 10 weekly vegetarian options (I skipped my vegetarian diet for this week because EveryPlate’s vegetarian options rely heavily on butter and cheese). You can see choices for the next three weeks, and each meal has labels like “calories,” “sodium,” “carb smart,” “quick prep,” “25 minutes or less,” or “veggies.” Although the recipes are repeated over time, there are always new meals rotating each week.

You’ll need to choose whether you want three, four, or five meals a week, or portions for two, four, or six people. (As mentioned earlier, my two-person meals often stretch to three or four for me as a single person.) You can also do a CustomPlate, which allows for adding or swapping ingredients, such as adding chicken breast or ground beef to a vegetarian pasta or rice dish.

Once you set your meal preferences, you’ll create an account, fill out your shipping information, and choose a delivery date. The earliest available delivery date was four days later, and deliveries were possible daily for the first 15 days thereafter, between 8am and 8pm daily. You will need to enter payment details to reserve your first box, and you will be charged four days before delivery. EveryPlate, like most meal kits, is an auto-renewing subscription service model, but you can skip, cancel, or pause it in advance without penalty by 11:59 p.m. PT five days before your next scheduled order.

Let them cook

Although I was happy to see fewer single-use plastic meals, the EveryPlate ingredients arrive together in one cooler box, with one page for each recipe included inside. You’ll need to distribute and match the ingredients to each recipe yourself.

You don’t have to hold the recipe cards in your hand too much either, as one side is for ingredients and the other is for prep and cooking directions. Under each ingredient picture, brackets show two amounts indicating how much you’ll need for each serving size. In many cases, you will need a certain amount of spices for a recipe, but they come in a bag with no information on the amount. For this, you will need to measure it yourself. Each recipe requires you to source the basic nutrients yourself, such as S&P, sugar, flour, butter, oil, mayonnaise, and eggs. This is also where you can see why EveryPlate has a cheaper price point.

Photo: Molly Higgins