When I heard that Marley Spoon had come out with a low carb range, I really wanted to give them a go. I have always been intrigued by these types of meal services. They have increased in popularity over the past few years, but we have never bothered trying them as they haven’t really catered for keto or low carb very well before. So I decided to do a Marley Spoon review of their low carb meals.
Marley Spoon Review
I have never really enjoyed ready-made delivery meals like Lite and Easy or Jenny Craig, so I was really interested to try a meal delivery service like Marley Spoon, where you get all the fresh ingredients and make the meal at home yourself. It’s great that you get to cook and serve the meal from fresh ingredients and in 30 minutes you have a delicious freshly cooked meal on the table.
We are also really excited that companies like Marley Spoon have identified a market for offering low carb options. In the 3.5 years, we have been living our keto lifestyle, we have seen companies adding low carb and keto options to their product range, which is so exciting.
So Marley Spoon has 27 meals to choose from each week, of these we have found there are 3-4 low carb options each week. We only ordered the low carb options, but we recognise that you may even be able to order the standard meals and tweak them to be being low carb. My advice would be to stick to the low carb meals first.
You can check out more about Marley Spoon by clicking here.
How Does It Work?
So each week you choose from the 27 meals on offer. Once you are signed up to the Marley Spoon subscription, you will receive an email each week, letting you know when you need to choose your meals by to receive them in your next delivery. You have the option of skipping a week or putting your subscription on hold and cancelling your subscription at any time.
When setting up your subscription, you can choose between a 2 person box and a 4 person box and the number of meals per person you would like. The options are from 2-5 meals per week, per person. You also get to choose your taste profile. Currently, we have selected we like everything but you can select vegetarian or that you like any of the following –
- Pork
- Lamb
- Beef
- Shellfish
- Poultry
- Fish
- Spicy
These preferences would only matter if you don’t go and change out your meals. Unfortunately, they don’t have an option here yet to choose that you like low carb meals. So, you are always going to need to go into the website and choose your meals each week.
Price
As mentioned above, we chose the meals for 2 subscription and the 3 meals a week option. When you sign up Marley Spoon give you a $20 credit for the first 4 weeks of meals. The full price for our order would be $67.50 + $8.95 shipping. That would be a total of $76.45. That would be $12.74 per meal without any discounts.
As we had the $20 credit for the first 4 weeks, our cost was $56.45 for 6 meals. Making the cost per meal for the first 4 weeks $9.40. We felt that this was a reasonable cost for the convenience of having the ingredients delivered to your door with the recipe.
Meals we chose
Low Carb Fennel Pork Steaks
Erika made this recipe and she enjoyed the prep and cooking of it. She was able to have this meal on the plate in the recommended cooking time of 30 minutes. This meal included a really big salad and a pork steak. We both really enjoyed the flavour of this meal.
Macros
- 520 calories
- 34.1g fat
- 12.2g carbs
- 39.2g Protein
Note: Every recipe has some ingredients that you need to provide. This recipe included honey, which we subbed out for the Nature’s Hollow Honey substitute that worked very well. Using this honey substitute would have also reduced the carb Marco slightly.
Low Carb Seared Salmon
The salmon was cooked by me and I have to admit, I really enjoyed doing the cooking. I was able to cook it within the 25 minute time recommendation.
The salmon was Erika’s favourite meal of the 3 we cooked this week. We loved the flavour of the garlic oil dressing. We have never been big on eating salmon, so really enjoyed the change in having salmon as the protein. As we now have the full recipe for this, we are likely to make this one again.
Macros
- 560 calories
- 40.7g fat
- 12g carbs
- 35.6g Protein
Low Carb Coconut Beef Curry
I also cooked this beef curry and as we go forward with making these over the next few weeks, I am going to take over the cooking of these meals. I really enjoyed cooking and following the directions and also being able to plate up such a delicious meal.
I wasn’t as successful in making this one in 25 minutes and I definitely felt the time pressure because we were filming it. This was my favourite meal of the three. It had SO much flavour and I really enjoyed the curry leaves in this.
Cooking tip: I cooked the curry leaves on the stems as instructed but before serving I removed the leaves from the stems and I think that made eating the leaves a little more enjoyable.
Macros
- 500 calories
- 24.7g fat
- 14.7g carbs
- 51.2g Protein
Every recipe has some ingredients that you need to provide. This recipe included honey, which we subbed out for the Nature’s Hollow Honey substitute that worked very well. Using this honey substitute would have also reduced the carb Marco slightly.
The Things We Loved
1. Not having to go to the Supermarket
If you are a busy person and find going to the supermarket hard to fit into your week, Marley Spoon would be perfect for you. Most of the ingredients you need for the meals are delivered to you. You do need to supply some pantry staples like oil, mustard and vinegar. Once you have those staples, you will be set for quite a few weeks.
2. Variety
We absolutely loved trying some new meals. We often just have the same favourite meals on high rotation and we loved the 3 meals we tried this week. We had salmon, that we haven’t had for ages and pork steaks, which also isn’t something we would usually have. A common comment about low carb is people get a little bored with the meals. If you are bored with the meals you have been having, definitely give Marley Spoon a try.
3. Less food waste
As a family of 2, we often have some food waste, which we hate. I really loved that we used everything that was sent to us. So no throwing out half a cauliflower because we never used it before it went off, which was great.
4. Easy to prepare
All of these meals were so easy to prepare. I cooked 2 of the 3 meals and as I am not usually the cook, I LOVED that I was able to cook dinner for 2 of the meals this week. The recipe cards that are supplied with the ingredients are very well done. Every step has a picture and they are very clear on what you need to do at each step.
Each recipe also had a cooking tip, which I also loved. I found that really helpful for anyone who isn’t confident in the kitchen.
5. Flavour
We were both really surprised with the flavour. Erika was definitely concerned that these meals were going to lack flavour, but every meal we had was absolutely delicious and we would make them again with our own ingredients. We also love that we now have 3 new low carb recipes. We have decided to keep the recipe cards and we can use these recipes and buy the ingredients ourselves.
6. No decisions on what to cook for dinner
Sometimes, we struggle to even come up with an idea of what we want for dinner. One thing we noticed with this week, was there was no stress around making that decision. it was pretty much already made for us.
The Things We Didn’t Love
1. Cost
This option is definitely more expensive than if you went and bought these ingredients yourself. You are paying for the convenience and time-saving aspect of this service.
2. Low carb options are limited
This was probably the biggest negative for us. If you are picky about the foods you like or the proteins you like, you may find it difficult to find a low carb option that suits you. We found you only had 3-4 low carb options to choose from. I feel this may increase as they see more people choosing these options in their weekly meals. my guess is they are testing the waters a little bit here.
3. Ordering your meals ahead
You are deciding what you want to eat a week or two in advance. For people that like to go with what they feel like on the day this might be limiting.
4. Pantry staples required
You did need to provide some pantry staples, which we were not expecting. As this was our first Marley Spoon order ever, this did take us by surprise. We loved that we got to choose things like the type of cooking oils used, so this part was a bonus, but it was more we weren’t aware that we were going to need those.
If you hadn’t checked the recipe before going to make it, you may have been caught out if you didn’t have that ingredient in the cupboard. Now that we have done one week, this won’t be as much of an issue.
Our Final Thoughts
We were pleasantly surprised by how much we enjoyed these meals. We really enjoyed the flavours and all of the meals we had were delicious. We also found the whole thing a fun and enjoyable experience. From receiving the delivery and unboxing the meal to cooking each meal with the steps laid out for you.
Have you tried the Marley Spoon low carb meals? If so, let us know in the comments below, your favourite low carb meal you have tried.
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