Plated.com dinner unboxing & review! June 2013

On June 11, 2013 I received an AMAZING package from Plated.Com which included a nice meal and all the ingredients! Plated.com is a  Gourmet Meal service in which you pay per plate and have all the ingredients, INCLUDING meat mailed to your door FRESH and ready for you to prepare and cook! This is an AWESOME service and I had so much fun cooking my first meal. This had a lot of meaning for me, because the day I received and cooked it was my mom's 49th birthday, so of course I made it for her and my dad for supper :) For a Gourmet meal, the pricing is pretty amazing as well. You can purchase these plates, which change on their menu every week, on a no commitment basis, meaning you only have to pay $15 a plate, and must have an order of 4 plates, or if you order 6+ plates you can get them for $14 per plate. If that is too expensive, you can buy a monthly membership for $10 which knocks your plate cost down to $12 per plate for 4, or $10 per plate for 6+!  Now here's the awesome thing. If you use my referral link, and buy 4 plates, you get 2 of them for free!! That's right, you'll get 4 plates for $30 SHIPPED!!! I'll also receive two plates free for you using my link! But this is where it gets better, when you sign up, you'll receive your OWN link, and if you get people to buy off of yours, you'll receive free plates too! It's a win win win situation :D! Currently they're only in select cities, so you'll have to check and see if they deliver to your area. Now, lets get on with my unboxing! :)

I received the London Broil with Blue Cheese Butter and Sauteed Spinach! On my order, it said I received 4 plates of it, but only got the ingredients for 2, so I was a little bummed, but oh well, I can't complain because I did receive it to review!



The box it came in was GIGANTIC! Like literally, it took up almost all of my kitchen table. Well...not all of it, but close to it.

When you first open it, there is a silver, outer space looking bag inside that houses all of your ingredients as well as ice packs to keep them at a cool, reasonable temperature so they don't spoil until you can get them inside your fridge! It also comes with your ingredient list, directions on the back, and another little card that shows you there is more information on their website and you can use the hashtag #platedpics to show them pictures of your dish completed! Haven't done that yet, but definitely will!

This was all of the ingredients in my bag :) I'll go deeper into the items, but I did receive two of everything!

The first thing I pulled out where these 2 awesome sized bags of baby spinach. Of course I only showed this 1, because there's no point in taking 2 pictures of the same thing :) This was of course used to make the sauteed spinach, obviously :P

Next I received 2 10 oz portions of Beef Flank Steak from Mosner! These were AWESOME sized! And for paying only $15 per plate, you're definitely getting the right amount for your money.

Next were 2 bags of chives which were used in the Blue Cheese butter! I didn't end up using both bags, as 1 bag was plenty for both butter mixes, so we still have some left over :)

Next were 2 of these little green bags with a sticker that says "London Broil" on it, and inside contained a lot of the extras for the dinner.

Inside each bag were 1 Sunkist Lemon, 1 bag of spice mix (which is a ground black pepper, garlic salt, onion powder and cayenne pepper mix), 1 bag of blue cheese, 1 garlic clove, and 3 pads of butter!

The lemon is used for the Spinach, along with the garlic, to add a little flavor. The spice mix is actually the rub for the London Broil. The blue cheese is to mix into the butter with some chives in it as well.

The first thing I started making was the Blue Cheese butter which was actually really fun! This was a package of my chives all chopped up! This was plenty, and we still had enough chopped chives left over along with a whole bag of them.

I then mixed the 3 pads of butter, with about a little over half of the blue cheese, and a handful of chives. This picture shows the beginning, but as I was mixing it, I kept adding a little more of both the blue cheese and chives. I did this twice, to make 2 separate butter rolls.

This was the finished mixed process! It said to put the mixed butter onto some plastic wrap and wrap it up into a roll and let chill in the fridge before serving.

The next step I did was to marinate the steak with the spice mix. The mix consisted of, as I said before, ground black pepper, garlic salt, onion powder and cayenne pepper. This smelled DELICIOUS and tasted even better! We will be making this again, and will definitely be a go to mix from now on! I had to season both sides, and decided to let marinate for a good 10-15 minutes while I washed the spinach and heated up the pan.

While letting the steak marinate to give it more flavor, I started washing, straining and patting dry the spinach! This took a while because there was so much spinach! It was well worth it though :)

Here is the spinach air drying a little so it wasn't sopping wet...yes I took pictures of EVERYTHING :P

While the spinach was drying a little more, I decided to throw the steak on because it was getting late and we were having a birthday party for my mom! :) This is the delicious meat simmering and cooking! It smelled fantastic, but as you can see in the pictures to come, some of the spice mix got burnt on top, so we were choking and dying in the house while it was cooking! The pepper on top was burning, but it didn't affect the taste! The recipe called for making this in olive oil, we didn't have any so my dad said that butter should work fine...well, it didn't! Like I said, it still tasted the same, but just the spice mix burnt a little ;)

Here's the side where you can see the little black patches! Rest assured, as I stated above, it was just excess spice mixture :) It came off very easily with the slide of the knife.

Here's the finished steak! This is the bad side, the other side was clean and didn't have a lot of burnt mixture on it :) We let it sit for 10-15 mins to soak up all of the juices and flavor!

While the steak was soaking up that delicious juice, I started getting the oil heated so I could sautee the spinach! This is where you throw the garlic in, so it starts to simmer with the oil!

Then, with the garlic still in the pan, you just sautee it until the spinach is wilted! Before it's fully done, you cut a lemon in half and squeeze some juice onto it to give it a nice fruity flavor. We used a whole lemon on ours, but didn't use the other one as it would have been overkill.



This is the finished meal! :) Of course, on the picture it showed only one pad of butter, my parents couldn't resist the blue cheese butter and wanted it all on their steak. So I slathered it on, and my dad zapped it in the microwave for a couple seconds, the result was an amazing, delicious, sopping in juice, most fabulous piece of meat you will ever see:

Look at how delicious that is...oh my God.

So now the reviews...what did was the verdict?

Well, I heard a lot of "Oh wow...this is amazing." "I can't stop eating this, I want more" "Hey, where's the steak *after eating it all* I thought you were making steak".

My parents told me, mind you this is the first time I've EVER cooked anything in my life, that this was the best dish they've ever had. They weren't sucking up to me either because almost a week later, they're STILL talking about it! They said the steak was so tender and juicy, that it was BETTER than visiting a steakhouse. They told me that the seasoning on top really kicked it off, and my dad and I even kept it from my mom that there was cayenne in it because she HATES spice. We told her afterwards, and she still said she loved it! The spice mix really pulled the whole dish together.

As for the spinach, my parents adored it. They loved the lemony touch to it, and said they never would have thought of putting it on. They did wish that it came with a baked potato, which I never even thought of doing, so next time this dish is made, we'll be adding a baked potato or little red potatoes to the mix :) They said that the spinach was nice and fresh, and very light! They loved it!

The Blue Cheese Butter was also a main hit...possibly the biggest. After eating it, my dad told me he wanted me to make more of it! He said that he didn't think that it would all come together as well as it did. The chives really gave it that kick while the cheese made the texture a little different than normal. They really seemed to like it. I was shocked at how much they liked it, because it never really came to me that it would be that different than regular butter...I mean sure you were adding cheese and chives, but it was still butter. Needless to say, this will be one of our new favorites at the house.

I really really LOVE this service, and will most certainly be a customer for as long as they're a business. I want to make this a tradition for my parents birthdays by ordering them a meal to make for their special night.

I think that anyone who has NEVER had an interest in cooking, or who LOVES it needs to try this program. It's perfect for beginners or experts! This was my first cooking experience ever, and I've been itching to do more. I made my grandmother pancakes with strawberries and bananas in it last night! Yes...I'm getting fancy! :)

Thank you to Plated.com for the wonderful box! I will be returning to you very shortly!

I will leave you all with this quote from my dad at the end of dinner:

"I honestly was contemplating licking my plate clean..."

My Referral link!: https://www.plated.com/invites/48dcbc

When you click the referral link, add 4 plates into your cart, 2 will be free! :)