And so Dinnerly saves on cost not by downgrading its proteins—it’s mostly the same stuff that arrives in a Marley Spoon box—but in large part by keeping flavorings simple, just a spice mix or a single main herb and maybe a citrus fruit, with both zest and juice coming into play. This doubles as good cooking. Dinnerly also saves itself some money by relying on you to have your own garlic and butter in stock and not bulking up meals with quite as many carbs.
Last year when I tested Dinnerly, the effect was sometimes a little too simple. The meals I tried felt like they took a few too many shortcuts, leading in some cases to the occasional struggle meal. This year, I didn’t have that feeling at all: I found more international and interesting flavors, and more fully developed meals, even with prep that mostly hovered around half an hour.
A Little Spice Is Nice
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
This shift toward including a more diverse and interesting array of international meals is something I’d also noted over the past year in Marley Spoon’s flagship meal kit as well. While Marley Spoon marketing director Carrie King attributed this in part to website design making options more visible, the raw numbers also bear out this shift.
A year ago at this time, about a third of the hundred or so meals on offer each week had non-European culinary roots. Now the number is more like half, with excursions to Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, whether baharat beef or lemongrass pork.
These are somewhat touristic jaunts, sure, with simplified recipes that make few stabs at authenticity. No one from Tunisia or Lebanon will mistake a harissa-spiced veggies and za’atar chicken recipe for his mother’s, after a 30-minute easy-bake on a sheet pan. The “garlicky sour cream” you drizzle over the chicken is a bit of a poor cousin to a traditional Lebanese-style toum.
Video: Matthew Korfhage
But the variety and the spice are welcome, whether a “chorizo-chili” spice mix on a basic but delicious pork tenderloin or the simple addition of paprika to the lemon-garlic shrimp that gave it a slight Andalusian tinge. There’s a reason a bachelor’s fridge is often so full of sauces and condiments: It is a shortcut to a more interesting life.
That za’atar chicken recipe categorically cannot achieve its promised under-30-minute preparation when its instructions call for 30 minutes in the oven—at least, not without bending time and space. But the prep doesn’t add much extra time. You’ll probably be done chopping your veg, and tossing it in oil and spice, by the time the oven preheats.
