Signing Up for Home Chef
Home Chef technically offers two meal plans:
- The Home Chef Plan includes meal kits with preportioned ingredients and recipe instructions.
- The Family Plan offers the same, but the meals are supposed to be a little easier to make so children can get involved in the cooking — and the meals will have simpler flavors that picky eaters may be more likely to eat. The Family Plan is also $1 cheaper per serving.
I loved that I could review the plans and the types of meals Home Chef offers — including the ingredients and instructions — before I signed up, which several meal delivery services don’t allow. This gave me a clear idea of what I was getting myself into.
I chose to sign up for the Home Chef plan. I was asked to identify my dietary and lifestyle needs, the number of meals I wanted each week, and the number of servings per meal.
Then I entered my billing information (to be charged by the purchase deadline for each week’s delivery), delivery address, and day of week for delivery. Finally, I made a login password to create an account and got to the fun part: selecting my meals.
Choosing the Meals
Each week Home Chef chose three meals for me based on my selected dietary and lifestyle needs, such as Protein-Packed Meals, Gluten-Smart Meals, or Vegetarian Meals. I wanted all the options, so I selected I’ll Eat Anything, but requested no mushrooms.
I could edit their selected three meals from more than 35 meals and 18 extras. I found their picks a little basic — like the traditional trifecta of chicken, vegetable, and potato — so I decided to choose my own meals that excited me more.
I chose:
I could have also added another meal for the standard cost-per-serving, so I added Popcorn Chicken and Mashed Potatoes. (I could also drop a meal if I wanted).
Using the Customize It tool, I swapped out the chicken thighs in the last meal, opting for shrimp instead.
Then I selected my extras. Available were bagged salads, broccoli, more proteins (such as chicken, salmon, steak, or shrimp), desserts, breakfasts, bread, and appetizers.
I skipped one week, and I added a single-serving lunch meal each week, plus a mac-and-cheese side dish for my child and bagged salads to up the vegetable content.
I was able to choose my meals up to five weeks in advance. The meal offerings change each week, so there’s always something new to try.
I chose to try several different add-ons. I have a child who is a bit of a picky eater, so I added a loaf of sourdough bread and a pint of oh-so-creamy smoked Gouda macaroni and cheese for $11.98 as a backup.
I also tried the bacon, egg, and cheese waffle sandwich for breakfast, but it was cloying and didn’t feel worth the $10.48 price for a pack of two. It didn’t feel like enough food for breakfast, so I added some spinach to it because I like a little fresh produce in every meal.
The bottled smoothies and canned La Colombe caramel lattes (two for $7.98) contained too much sugar, so I skipped those. But I was tempted by the halved Brussels sprouts, extra chopped broccoli, and bagged salads. I ended up getting two Mediterranean Mix bagged salads to add more greens to a lacking dinner. Unfortunately, the balsamic dressing also contained a lot of sugar. My desserts included fudge brownie bites, cookies-and-cream cookie skillet, and apple crisp cake.
I could’ve also added more proteins, such as chicken breasts, salmon filets, shrimp, filet mignon, and combo packs. Those combos included appetizer duos like empanadas and gyozas for $14.98; two egg, cheese, and bacon waffle sandwiches with two caramel latte cans for $17.48; and an Everything chopped salad and two ready-to-cook chicken breasts (which was sold out at the time) for $12.98.
How the Meals Arrived
The meals arrived in a big cardboard box filled with recyclable insulation and cardboard separators, plus cooling gel packs with instructions to defrost and trash the filling and recycle the plastic packs. However, the cooling gel was a heavy, goopy mess that was difficult to dispose of.
The food was mostly fresh and crisp, with a random exception of some wilting and browning, and the boxes and bags of food weren’t crushed or damaged.
Each two-serving meal was in a transparent resealable plastic pouch with a handle, and all the ingredients came in individual packs within that pouch — except for the meat, poultry, and seafood, which were packed separately from the produce, grains, and dairy. Some of the proteins also came double-wrapped for food-contamination safety purposes.
I was able to recycle the boxes, dividers, and insulation, but not the meal pouches, ingredient packages, and heavy cooling packs, which were quite a pain, although they served their purpose well.
I saw a wide selection of toppings and sauces for the meats and vegetables; more than I was used to. There was a lot of mayonnaise, sour cream, and cream cheese used for these sauces. Other toppings that added texture and interest were crispy fried onions, walnuts, and bacon — a lot of bacon.
The grains available included pasta, rice, and breads. I could choose from a wide variety of cuisines, such as Mexican, Southern, Midwestern, Californian, Tex-Mex, Italian, Mediterranean, Japanese, Chinese-American, Greek, Mozambique-African-Portuguese, German, Thai, Southwestern, New England, and Cuban.
Cooking and Preparing the Meals
Every meal came with printed recipe pages listing the prep and cook time estimates, maximum shelf life, cooking tools needed, difficulty level, ingredients, and “before you cook” tips (on preheating the oven, rinsing the produce, etc.) as well as the cooking steps. You can also find this information in the app if you lose your recipe card.
There are also photos accompanying each step on the recipe page, which makes it easy to follow along even if you’re a novice cook. The steps also clearly note which ingredients you’ll use more than once so you don’t accidentally use it all on the first step.
Keep in mind that the meal kits didn’t include basics like olive oil, salt, pepper, and aluminum foil.
Most (but not all) of the ingredients are precut and preportioned, which decreases your prep time, though there were a few instances in which I had to chop some chives or a shallot or mince some garlic. Still, even with prechopped ingredients, I had difficulty matching the cooking times listed on the recipe cards. Full disclosure: I’ve never been great at making a meal within the time frame a recipe suggested, even before Home Chef.
Still, I don’t know if the extra time some of these meals took was all on me. For example, the Creamy Chive Mahi-Mahi was labeled as being intermediate difficulty, with a prep and cook time listed as 30 to 40 minutes. But it took me more than an hour to make the dish because the prechopped cauliflower still needed to be cut into smaller pieces.
Meanwhile, the Hatch Green Chile and Garlic Salmon was categorized as an Express meal and supposed to only take 15 minutes. It took me 37 minutes in total because, despite being easy and coming with precubed butternut squash, I had to cut the poblano and mince the garlic.
The Butternut Squash, Fig, and Blue Cheese Risotto was not easy (or quick) to make either. No matter how time-saving a meal kit is designed to be, risotto must still be stirred repeatedly as it absorbs each infusion of boiling water or risk being ruined. Thankfully, it worked out, but the estimated 40 to 50 minutes of prep and cook time was far too short for risotto. This meal ended up taking 90 minutes to cook.
Some of the extra time it took to cook some of the meals may have been because I was making four servings and the recipe directions were written for people preparing two servings. This meant that I had to remember to double the oil, salt, pepper, and ingredient packages, which made it easy for me to make mistakes that had to be corrected on the go. And sometimes cooking more food just takes more time.
For example, the instructions and photos for the Sheet Pan Bacon and Cheddar Pork Meatloaf showed two pork loaves, but I was making four and was worried that they wouldn’t bake all the way through in the 20 to 22 minutes specified. So I added a couple of minutes, and they turned out fine.
The extra time also applies to cleanup. While some meals had a quick, easy cleanup, most required three or four pots and pans, which was just too many on a busy weeknight.
For example, the Popcorn Chicken and Mashed Potatoes (for which I had swapped the chicken thighs for shrimp) required a large pot, a mixing bowl, two medium nonstick pans, and a microwave-safe bowl. It also took me about an hour to make — double the recipe’s suggested time.)
The good news is that most of my meals turned out like the photos, and I learned some good tips and tricks that I plan to use again in my day-to-day cooking.
Tasting the Meals
As I tasted the Home Chef meals, it was clear that a lot of thought went into flavoring these meals. Almost every protein, vegetable, and grain had a sauce, spice mix, or topping.
Our favorite dish was the Butternut Squash, Fig, and Blue Cheese Risotto, which showcased the ideal balance of savory and sweet with creaminess galore — without actual cream, just a few pats of butter. It may have taken me a while to make it, but the results were worth it. The dish felt so rich that we didn’t care that there wasn’t an animal-based protein, and the portion sizes were just right. The blue cheese, which can be an overly strong flavor, was used sparingly so that its signature mustiness didn’t overpower the dish, adding just the right amount of savory tang to complement the sweetness of the squash and fig jam.
Another winner was the Hatch Green Chile and Garlic Salmon. It was labeled as spicy, but I didn’t notice that much heat, just flavor from the included Amarillo seasoning and taco seasoning. There was good flavor from the whole ingredients and dry spices. We eat salmon every other week in my family, so I was actually surprised that I enjoyed the meal as much as I did, and I’d like to try copying the chile topping again sometime.
The Sheet Pan Bacon and Cheddar Pork Meatloaf was another meal that I chose for pure pleasure over nutritional benefits. The meatloaf was made with ground pork threaded with melted salty cheddar, then topped with ketchup, more cheddar, and bacon bits — and it was divine. Dolloping the baked potato wedges with the buttermilk-dill crema was a next-level step up in taste, but with the loaded meatloaf and the potatoes coated in buttermilk-dill seasoning, it maybe felt like a bit too much.
The Chipotle Beef Tenderloin Burrito featured colorful mixed bell peppers, tender shredded beef, and a delicious chipotle crema that added a good dimension to the burrito. Two servings would have sufficed, but with our four servings we had leftover lunches for a couple of days.
With the Fig Mostarda Chicken, I loved the idea of mixing mayo, mustard, and fig jam for a sauce to spread on top of the chicken breast and finishing it with a sprinkling of fried onions. I could easily repeat that concept when I cook from scratch. But the Parmesan on the included broccoli side dish tasted like cardboard and was almost inedible.
To be honest, though, most of the cheeses I received from Home Chef weren’t the quality I had expected. In addition, several of Home Chef’s single-serving portions weren’t enough to satisfy me. This is why I ordered four servings for three people —even when one of those people was a 4-year-old child. If I had wanted leftovers for lunch the next day, on most days there would have been enough.
The Home Chef lunchtime microwave meals — Sweet Soy Chicken and Cheddar Bacon Ranch Chicken — were my least favorite. The Cheddar Bacon Ranch Chicken was soggy, and the garlic broccoli side was oversaturated with butter. The chicken in the Sweet Soy Chicken had a texture that felt processed and had a few gelatinous bits that I preferred to avoid. I much preferred eating dinner leftovers for lunch instead of the microwave meals.
Why Trust Everyday Health
Amy Sowder
Author
For more than two decades, Amy Sowder has dedicated her journalism career to covering food, fitness, health, and lifestyle topics. Her work has been published in Bon Appétit, Women's Health, Men's Health, USA Today and its regional newspapers, Farm Journal, The Packer, Greatist, Chowhound, Verywell Fit, Eat This, Not That, and Brooklyn Magazine.
Prior to this, she worked as managing editor at Westchester Magazine in the greater New York metropolitan area, covered the national fresh produce industry as a magazine and newspaper editor, worked as an associate editor at Chowhound, a food trends consultant with Food Network, and as an editorial assistant at the award-winning blog and two-time bestselling cookbook Smitten Kitchen.
In addition, she's completed courses at the International Culinary Center in New York City and worked in numerous restaurants. She's run two New York City marathons and countless half-marathons, 10Ks, 5-milers, and 5Ks, as well as mud and obstacle course runs.