Recipes
Meghan Markle uses the warmth of the sun to brew lemon hibiscus tea, makes PB&Js with homemade raspberry preserves and a perfectly sheer manicure, and whips up coffee creamer from scratch. As audiences have seen in her new Netflix show, “With Love, Meghan,” the Duchess of Sussex believes in putting a little extra TLC in all of her recipes, especially when she’s sharing them with friends. Throughout the episodes, she opts for fresh, high-quality ingredients wherever she can, using elevated versions of pantry staples in her recipes like Diamond Crystal kosher salt, “natural” rice vinegar, and edible flowers instead of sprinkles.
While Markle does not explicitly label any of her recipes as “healthy,” her ingredient choices and approach certainly make it seem that way. But how do these dishes actually stack up nutritionally? We asked a registered dietitian to analyze the Duchess’s go-to dishes.
Experts Featured in This Article:
Maggie Michalczyk, RD, is a Chicago-based registered dietitian and recipe developer.
Recipes How Healthy are the “With Love, Meghan” Markle’s Recipes?
It’s hard to define what healthy even means, but in general, it means incorporating a variety of nutrient-dense, whole foods into your diet. So when it comes to Meghan Markle’s recipes, Chicago-based registered dietitian Maggie Michalczyk gives them a thumbs up. “Her emphasis on the fresh vegetables from her garden and how that inspires what she’s going to make is something we could all take away from in terms of eating healthier,” she tells us. While you can’t go wrong with any of the Duchess’s plates, here are the ones that stood out to Michalczyk from a nutrition standpoint.
- Salt-Baked Fish with Roasted Tomatoes: For this dish, Markle stuffs branzino with fresh herbs and lemon, then bakes it encased in a salt crust before serving it with roasted tomatoes. According to Michalczyk, this recipe is worth re-creating because it’s a nutrient-packed meal with minimal effort. “I think a lot of people are intimidated by cooking fish in general, and so I hope that seeing how easy it was to cook a whole fish at home will inspire people to want to cook and reap the benefits of it,” she shares. “Fish is a great source of healthy omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals.”
- Garden Salad: To make this salad, Markle combines red gem and little gem lettuce picked from her garden and dresses it with a homemade vinaigrette. “Eating seasonally when possible — going to a farmers market or planting a garden — and making a simple salad like she did with Alice Waters, is a great reminder to incorporate seasonal vegetables into our diets in ways that don’t have to be complicated,” says Michalczyk. Pro tip: While leafy greens alone are full of fiber, vitamins, and antioxidants, the addition of some color could further elevate Markle’s salad. “Adding more color to our plates by way of different veggies is especially great for gut health, since our gut needs diversity from different plant foods to keep our microbiome populated with good bacteria,” Michalczyk says.
- Crudité Platter: Markle’s crudité platter from episode one, made with carrots, cucumbers, watermelon radish, peas, parsley, edible flowers, and hummus, “makes for a great high-fiber snack,” Michalczyk tells us. “This is a beautiful practice because you can incorporate seasonal veggies which are higher in nutrition and just increase the amount of veggies you eat in a day by having them out as a snack.”
- Fruit Preserves: Using the berries in her garden, Markle makes fruit preserves instead of fruit jam, because she believes added sugar only serves to mask the flavor of the fruit. “From an RD perspective, I can really appreciate this because why add sugar if you don’t have to?” Michalczyk shares. Fruit is already a natural source of sugar, and during the cooking process, the sugars caramelize, acting as a built-in sweetener.
- Fruit Rainbow: Don’t knock the fruit rainbow until you try it. Most people wouldn’t be surprised that fruit is a great source of vitamins and antioxidants, but Michalczyk says this recipe is worth highlighting specifically because it’s approachable for children (and kids at heart, too). “Although the idea feels like something we’ve seen on Pinterest before, I do think it’s a fun way to get kids excited about eating the different colors of the rainbow and easy for little hands to grab,” she says.
Recipes Are There Any “With Love, Meghan” Recipes You Should Avoid?
Ultimately, no recipe from the show, even the honey lemon layer cake (with six sticks of butter), is truly off-limits from a nutrition standpoint. Just have a slice versus the whole cake. And with a few simple tweaks, you could easily turn Markle’s other dishes into a more balanced meal, too — the single skillet pasta being a great example, as Michalczyk points out. Made with tomatoes, kale, and arugula, it’s not inherently “unhealthy,” but it’s also not a protein-rich meal. “You could make it even more of a balanced meal by adding chicken, using higher protein pasta, or serving it with white fish,” Michalczyk suggests. Instead of focusing on what to avoid, consider how you might adapt the ingredients to better suit your nutritional needs and personal health goals.
Kalea Martín writes primarily about food and cooking for PS, but as a former figure skater and hockey player, she covers fitness, too. Prior to becoming a lifestyle writer, Kalea covered hotels, restaurants, and travel for Luxos Magazine in Milan and worked in marketing at HarperCollins Publishers.