I've used them before. They're alright, can be fun, encouraged me to use things I was more reserved or unknowledgeable about before. Considering how far it may have to travel to get to you with just those cooler packs to keep things cold enough, I'd be surprised if the meats weren't frozen or near frozen at some point just to make it to you without spoiling. Better than getting to you barely cooler than room temp XD
I think your right, I opened it right as it came and now the steak, which was rock solid frozen, is already almost fully defrosted just from being in the fridge.
So far I made the chicken, which arrive fresh/thawed and that was great!
If you do it properly you can freeze and thaw meats up to 3 times without noticeable difference is what my meat science professor said.
Think about what comes into the supermarket and gets butchered into your convenient styrofoam cuts with carbon monoxide. A lot of it comes in frozen and is thawed as needed. So that's one freeze/thaw cycle before you even get a chance at it.
If they vac sealed and flash froze, I don't see any problem with it
So I made the first 4 meals. All the meats were very fresh, even the salmon (below), which I'm rather particular about.
The 4 meals were:
Chicken Marsala
Salmon Poke Bowls
Steak with Sunchokes
Truffle Oil Burrata Pizza
Overall I really enjoyed the meals, there are some ingredients you don't get to eat everyday which is a nice change, and everything's really easy to cook.
Plated seems to be the most expensive service, but their meals are higher quality/more interesting, so I think I'll stick with this one for a while.
There were 2 main issues 1. the Marsala wine for the Chicken Marsala was TERRIBLE!! I threw it out, luckily I tasted it before adding it to the sauce (I mentioned this to customer service and they said they intentionally alter the wine so its of cooking only grade), I may get the Chicken Marsala meal again, but use my own bottle of Marsala. 2. The lettuce for the salad of one of the meals was bad, all the other veggies were fresh though. (Customer service did issue a credit in both cases).
Here is the salmon poke bowl, its salmon over rice, with persian cucumber, avocado, seaweed salad and furiake spice, along with a dressing.
I find that the ends of some of the greens as well as some of the herbs suffer a bit by the time they get to me (Texas). Also, tend to totally ignore whatever their suggestions are for sesame oil in their Asian inspired dishes. It's easily 3x too much for my taste (and I love sesame oil).
Glad to hear you had an overall positive experience
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