Dinnerly Meal Kit Review (2026): Hearty Meals on a Budget

And so Dinnerly saves on costs not by reducing its protein — it’s mostly the same stuff that comes in a Marley Spoon box — but largely by keeping the flavor simple, with just a spice blend or one main herb and maybe a citrus fruit, adding both zest and juice. This doubles the good cooking. Dinnerly also saves you some money by relying on your own stock of garlic and butter and not bulking up meals with too many carbs.

When I tested Dinnerly last year, the effect was sometimes a little too simple. From the food I tasted, it seemed like they took a lot of shortcuts, which in some cases resulted in a sometimes struggling meal. This year, I didn’t get that feeling at all: I found more international and interesting flavors, and more well-rounded meals, even with preparation that mostly lasted around half an hour.

a little spice is good

Photograph: Matthew Korfage

This shift towards including a more diverse and interesting range of international food is something I also noted in Marley Spoon’s flagship meal kit last year. While Marley Spoon’s marketing director Carrie King attributed this in part to website design choices becoming more visible, the raw figures also reflect this change.

At this time a year ago, about a third of the hundred or so meals offered each week had non-European culinary roots. Now that number has almost halved, with travel to Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, whether for Baharat beef or lemongrass pork.

These are certainly somewhat touristy, with simplistic dishes that take some hit from authenticity. No one from Tunisia or Lebanon will mistake this Harissa-Marinated Vegetables and Za’atar Chicken recipe for their mother’s recipe, after an easy 30 minutes of cooking on a sheet pan. The “garlic sour cream” you drizzle over chicken is a slightly worse cousin of traditional Lebanese-style toum.

Video: Matthew Korfage

But variety and spice are welcome, whether the basic but delicious “chorizo-pepper” spice blend on pork tenderloin or the simple blend of paprika in lemon-garlic shrimp that gives it a slightly Andalusian flavor. There’s a reason a Bachelor’s fridge is often filled with sauces and spices: It’s a shortcut to a more interesting life.

That za’atar chicken recipe clearly can’t live up to its promise of less than 30 minutes of prep, when its instructions call for 30 minutes in the oven — at least, not without fiddling with time and space. But preparation doesn’t take much extra time. By the time the oven is preheated, you’ll probably have chopped your veggies and tossed them in the oil and spices.