Marley Spoon

Pros

• Thoughtful recipes you won't find everywhere
• Even the quick recipes felt special
• Extremely fresh ingredients
• Not a lot of plastic waste

Cons

• On the expensive side
• Market add-ons are not very exciting
• Shipping is $11 per box

Sure, meal kits can save you plenty of time by reducing the hours you spend in the kitchen or at the grocery store each week, but that doesn't mean the recipes are boring. Marley Spoon offers creative and tasty meals, which may come as no surprise when you learn who the woman is behind the recipes: kitchen maven Martha Stewart.

With Marley Spoon, she has focused on targeting home cooks and foodies with inventive recipes meant for basic skills and discerning palates. While some meal kits are designed to attract newbies with simple recipes that take only a short time to prepare, Marley Spoon's meals are a bit fancier and feature recipes of Martha's own creation. Many are plucked from her cookbook or recipe Rolodex, although none are so hoity-toity that you'll need high technical skill or culinary training to make them.

Curious as we are at CNET about all things meal kits, we wanted to know just how good Martha's meal kits were -- and if they were worth the money. We tested a week's worth of recipes, once in 2023 and again in late 2025, to bring you this review of Marley Spoon's meal kit delivery service.

How Marley Spoon works

Marley Spoon operates similar to most others in the category and offers both meal kits with recipes that you cook and prepared meals that only require reheating.

After choosing between those two options, you will then answer the question, "What kid of meals do you like?" Meal kit options include everyday variety, low calorie, low carb, quick and easy, vegetarian, pescatarian and Mediterranean for two or four people and you can choose between two and six meals per week. The single-serving prepared meal options include everyday variety, low calorie or low carb and you can choose 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 or 18 meals per week.

Your box of meal kit ingredients is delivered once a week -- unless you skip a week, which is easy to do -- and you can either manually select recipes or let Martha Stewart personally choose them for you. OK, just kidding: She's not your personal meal concierge, but you can let the brand select meals if you prefer a little mystery. You can select any day of the week for delivery, and the boxes will arrive between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. 

There are now more than 100 recipes each week, and they range in difficulty levels. Before you choose a recipe for delivery you'll see all the steps involved, the estimated time it takes to complete and detailed nutritional information to help you decide. 

Prepared meals are $12.99 each and shipping is $10.99 per box.

What are Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon meals like

As you might imagine, since Martha Stewart helped design the concept and created many of the recipes, there are some really interesting, high-end and gourmet dishes to choose from. Luckily though, most are still fairly simple to make.

There are a good many healthy recipes, plus dietary preferences to choose from. However, there are only between four and six vegan options each week so if you want more options, Purple Carrot may be a better choice for you. Other services that feature built-in diet meal plans include Green Chef, Home Chef or HelloFresh.

At Marley Spoon, you'll find plenty of warming comfort dishes like French onion chicken breast and beef stroganoff, plus desserts you can add on to your box, such as baked gingerbread doughnuts, and French-style cheesecake.

On the prepared meal side of things, the recipes are just as creative. Some meals include tilapia with smoky tomato sauce and black bean street corn and merlot chicken meatballs with orzo pasta and green beans.

How easy are Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon meals to prepare?

Our meals ran the gamut from the super simple to a bit more complicated and time-intensive, but the good news is that it's really up to you on how difficult you want the meals to be when you make your recipe selections.

The skillet chicken Parmesan, for instance, had a number of steps like preparing the chicken, cooking it, making the sauce and preparing the pasta (which had its own ingredients). For someone with a decent amount of cooking experience, this isn't challenging, but some beginners might not be ready for such an involved meal. Other meals, such as the butternut squash pizza was quite simple, tasty and perfect for a weeknight when you don't feel like fussing much or taking time to cook. 

What we cooked and how it went

Beef picadillo pockets with bell peppers and cilantro chimichurri: This meal was not only delicious, but also fun to make. It was the first time I used raw dough in a meal kit recipe, and the results were well worth the effort. Although the empanadas were filling, I still would have liked it to have come with a side other than the chimichurri sauce.

Butternut squash pizza with ricotta, almonds and hot honey: I had never had butternut squash on a pizza before this meal, but I can definitely see myself making this again. It was a perfect fall meal with the onions, squash, rosemary and almonds added on top.

Seared salmon and citrus butter sauce with smashed potatoes and shaved Brussels salad: The Brussels sprout salad helped elevate this simple meal and take it to the next level. I cooked the salmon on the stovetop and the smashed potatoes in my air fryer.

Skillet chicken Parmesan with casarecce and sautéed spinach: This recipe was good and very comforting, though it certainly had a healthy share of carbs and calories. The red sauce was very simple and the chicken cutlets weren't breaded so it felt a little healthier than normal chicken Parm but not quite enough to be really, truly healthy. I had lots of leftovers, which was nice. 

Honey miso salmon with roasted carrots and Brussels sprouts: This one was great and healthy, but it wasn't a very out-of-the-box recipe. The salmon was high-quality and tasted super fresh.

Restorative chicken soup with sweet potato kale and quinoa: A very tasty and hearty soup I made and ate all week. The shredded chicken was already cooked, which I was surprised by but also appreciated since it was still moist and flavorful. This entire meal was simple to prepare and felt like nourishing medicine with all those superfoods. 

Marley Spoon support materials 

I found the recipes clear, concise and easy to follow. There's some nice background on the ingredients, too: My salmon recipe provided some context on miso for anyone who may be unfamiliar with the fermented paste, for instance. The Marley Spoon app is also helpful with lots of information about each recipe and gives you the ability to order, pause, cancel or skip a week right from your mobile device. 

What makes Marley Spoon different from other meal kit services?

One thing to like about this service is it doesn't try to be anything other than good. There's no pandering to fad diets or giving too much autonomy to users to change recipes or swap out meats. The meal kit service's proposition is that the culinary team has come up with thoughtful, mostly healthy recipes they think you'll enjoy -- and they ask you to put your trust in them. I wouldn't go so far as to call it stuffy or stubborn, but there is something very Martha Stewart about it. 

In that respect, it reminds me a bit of Sunbasket. That meal kit service also tries to keep the integrity of the original recipes they've created and while it might not please everyone, I think it pays off in the end for those who appreciate good food.

Who is Marley Spoon good for?

This is one of the best meal kit services for foodies and experienced cooks looking to shake up their week night dinner rotation. If you're looking to learn interesting new recipes that are gourmet and approachable, Martha Stewart's meal kits are a good pick. It's also a solid choice for a home cook who's looking to hone new skills or work with new ingredients. 

A lot of the recipes are kid-friendly so these meal kits would also work well for families up to four people. And with as many as seven plant-based recipes each week, this is a good meal kit service for vegans, vegetarians or those trying to sprinkle in a few more non-meat dinners per week.

Who is Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon not good for?

If you're an extremely picky eater, a very new cook, or are trying to keep a gluten-free diet, I would not suggest this meal kit. It's also not a good meal delivery service if you're simply looking to get dinner on the table each week and don't care about the cooking process, since some of the recipes are involved.

Packaging and environmental friendliness 

I found Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon to be on the eco-friendly side of the meal kit spectrum. There was some single-use plastic waste, as there always is, but nothing excessive -- and the ingredients were not individually packed in disposable bags as of 2025. The boxes, coolers and ice packs were also recyclable.

Changing, skipping or canceling your meal kits order

Between the website and mobile app, Marley Spoon makes it very easy to skip weeks, change out recipes or pause your subscription. Any changes must be made six days prior to the delivery date.

The final verdict on Martha Stewart & Marley Spoon

Being a Martha Stewart-conceived meal kit project, I had lofty expectations for this service and it mostly met them. When I flip through the menu each week, it boasts one of the highest percentages of recipes that make me go "ooh, that sounds good" right up there with Sunbasket. Most importantly, all the recipes we made delivered on the promise of a tasty and interesting meal. There was not a lot of blah factor, and we very much appreciate that.

The meal kit service also includes some thoughtful touches that others don't, like the quick explainers for ingredients new chefs might not be as familiar with and different chefs behind some of the recipes. The produce, meats and fish were also some of the freshest we'd received from a meal kit service and that goes a long way in creating a truly delicious dinner. The pricing is fair for what you get, and if you're cooking for a large group, it actually gets rather affordable per serving. The market add-ons have also grown over the years.

If you've been wanting to try a meal kit service with a range of healthy, hearty and comforting meals and you already have the cooking basics down, I'd say give Martha's meals a whirl.