Home Chef Review

Home Chef has been on the market for half a decade and in that time, it has developed into a perfect example of what a meal kit delivery service should look like. It boasts a rich menu with fresh meal ideas available every week, the ordering process is quick and simple, the subscriptions are flexible, and the prices are more than fair. Learn more about how this renowned service can help you start cooking effortlessly and eating more healthily in this Home Chef review.

The first impression is a great one. No delays, our order arrived right on time, and the box is intact.

What Is Home Chef

Designed to make home cooking easy, Home Chef is a delivery service that provides original recipes and precisely portioned ingredients. It allows you to plan your meals in advance and reduces the time you spend in the kitchen to about half an hour. And that’s not all, as these easy-to-follow recipes

Every week, its culinary team crafts a vast array of interesting recipes that suit a variety of tastes and you get to pick the ones that you really want to try out. With just a few simple steps, detailed instructions, and no complex methods and techniques, the recipes are perfect for home cooks who want to cook with less effort and enjoy the whole process much more than usual.

Baking has never been easier! These biscuits took just 5 minutes to make and 15 minutes to bake and they are even more beautiful than we hoped.

It is important to note that unlike many other services of its kind, Home Chef does not exclusively focus on dinner. Its menu includes exciting extras like refreshing fruity add-ons, ready-to-cook proteins, and lunches that require no cooking whatsoever.

Furthermore, the service allows you to customize your orders in a variety of ways. It lets you freely choose the recipes in accordance with your diet. It enables you to decide on the number of meal kits in your order as well as the number of servings you get per meal. It even lets you order extra portions of your favorite dish, change or upgrade the main protein source in your meals, completely eliminate prep work, and simply tweak everything to your taste.

We love how Home Chef packs its ingredients by recipe. It may not seem like a big deal, but searching for herbs at the bottom of the box can be rather annoying. This approach really speeds up the whole process.

Thus, Home Chef can be described as one of the most flexible meal kit services on the market. Just like Sun Basket, one of its main competitors, it is always working on new ways to improve its customers’ satisfaction and it achieves this goal rather masterfully.

How Does Home Chef Work

One of the most important elements of our Home Chef review is the following one: How does Home Chef works? Well, if you would like to have these delicious recipes and pre-portioned ingredients delivered to your doorstep, the process is very simple. And to make things extra fun, Home Chef has introduced a quick quiz that will help you figure out what kind of a chef you are.

You can choose from over 30 meals and 18 Extras but keep in mind that this menu will change every week. So it’s a good idea to check out the menu section from time to time. You can order 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 meal kits and cook for 2, 4 or 6 people. Your weekly deliveries include the recipes of your choice and the required fresh, pre-measured ingredients.

Recipes – check. Ingredients – check. All we need now is a cutting board, a knife, and a pan and we can get cooking. As easy and convenient as advertised.

The company’s dinners are designed to suit even the pickiest of eaters, ranging from meat and seafood options to vegetarian, gluten-free, soy-free, low-calorie, and low-carb dishes. Home Chef lunches give you the unique opportunity to quickly make a delicious lunch wherever you are. They are ready in just 5 minutes, no cooking required.

Since Q1 2020, those who are really crunched for time can opt for Fresh And Easy meals that require no prep whatsoever. With Fresh And Easy, your meals are oven-ready, grill-ready or ready to assemble and plate. You can sit down and enjoy in no time and there is virtually no cleanup.

Finally, if you are craving something fresh, healthy, and deliciously sweet at the end of the meal, you can grab a couple of add-ons that usually come in the form of refreshing and nutritious smoothies.

Home Chef won’t ask you to commit for any particular period of time. Instead, it offers a flexible plan to suit everyone’s schedule. You can skip a delivery, edit your orders or cancel at any time, just be sure to make the desired changes before the weekly cutoff, which is at 12 pm (CST) on the Friday before the scheduled delivery day.

If you like Home Chef and would like your loved ones to try it too, you can purchase a gift card in the amount of $65, $125, $250 or your own custom value, which they can use to order meals from Home Chef’s website. The minimum gift card value is $50.

Home Chef also has its own marketplace where you can purchase kitchen dishes, utensils, and other tools needed to make its recipes. You probably already have most of these tools in your kitchen, but if you are missing something that can help you prepare even better meals, it is good to know that the service has you covered.

Home Chef is a delivery service that provides original recipes and precisely portioned ingredients. It allows you to plan your meals in advance and reduces the time you spend in the kitchen to about half an hour.

What Makes Home Chef Different

Home Chef is one of the most environmentally conscious meal kit delivery services in America. It employs impeccable sourcing practices, carefully packs its kits, taking care of both food safety and eco-friendliness, and makes it easy for its customers to minimize their carbon footprint. Here are the steps Home Chef takes to contribute to the health of the planet.

Home Chef packaging is well-designed and easily recyclable. When you order as often as we do, plastic waste is always a concern, but this time, we can take care of it in minutes.

The service makes sure to honor its 3 R rules, including reducing, reusing, and recycling its packaging. Remember, when using pre-portioned ingredients, you also eliminate food waste and help preserve the environment. This is also reflected in the company’s policy of carefully choosing its suppliers, selecting only the most prominent ones who take care not to damage the ecosystem and show that same respect toward their employees.

All the ingredients are clearly labeled, even the easily recognizable ones. What is even better, some of them are shredded, chopped, and trimmed, making prep significantly quicker.

Home Chef’s website even allows you to “meet” a few of its suppliers – you can read a little about who they are, how they work, and what their standards are. In the spirit of environmental consciousness, Home Chef also advises you to recycle all the plastic parts you find in its delivery boxes. Its produce is always shipped in insulated, biodegradable boxes with water-soluble, cool gel packs designed to keep your food refrigerated, not frozen.

We love unboxing, but we never know what to expect. Home Chef is certainly a pleasant surprise. Everything is cool, fresh, and properly sealed, with zero mess.

Home Chef offers 16 dinners, 2 lunch salads, 2 ready-to-cook protein packs, and 1 fruity add-on every week. You can order 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 meal kits and cook for 2, 4 or 6 people.

Home Chef Meals and Recipes

If you decide to register with Home Chef, you’ll be asked to fill out a taste chart, specifying what sort of ingredients you’d like to have in your meals. Home Chef offers one of the most detailed meal preference choices you’ll find, which it uses to build your taste profile.

As far as dining preferences go, you start out by choosing meat, seafood, vegetables or any combination of those. You can then specify any ingredients you’d like to avoid; for example, you can choose not to eat pork, red meat, gluten, mushrooms, soy, nuts, dairy, shellfish or any combination of those. In addition, you can choose whether you prefer a low carb or low-calorie diet, both or neither.

This is how an optimally balanced meal looks like! All the major nutrients are right there on the plate and the combo tastes amazing!

Obviously, this is especially useful for vegetarians or people with allergies. When you’re done choosing your taste preferences, you can choose whether you’d like 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 meals per week for 2, 4 or 6 people. Compared to most meal kit delivery services, this is exceptionally flexible: instead of choosing a 2-person or typical family plan, you’ve got more choices. Afterward, you choose the day of the week you’d like your meals delivered – Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays or Fridays.

In order to further improve its flexibility, Home Chef recently introduced a useful feature called Flexible Servings. This feature is available with select menu items and allows you to add 2 or 4 servings to a meal of your choice. Thus, if you are having friends over or just need more food, you do not have to modify your subscription. Instead, you can just get more servings for individual meals whenever you wish.

Perfectly portioned and great for entertaining, these mini flatbreads are absolute crowd-pleasers.

On top of that, the service allows you to customize your meals. By choosing a menu item with the Customize It label, you get the opportunity to switch, upgrade or double the star protein in the recipe. Every week, there are 26 options to choose from, including poultry, red meat, fish, and veggie proteins.

When your package arrives, just follow the step-by-step recipe cards. The preparation should be easy even if you do not have too much experience in the kitchen.

This is exactly what we look for in a beginner-friendly service. Well-explained steps, simple techniques, and accompanying photos that let you know exactly what you need to do.

If you opt for Fresh And Easy meals instead of the standard kits, the process is even simpler. Your meals come in oven-safe pans and grilling bags, so you only need to cook and enjoy. The selection also includes no-cooking salads that can be on your table in a matter of minutes. If your cooking skills are currently limited to heating, the Fresh And Easy meal kit line is a rather excellent solution.

Different Options:

• Meal Kits – Pre-portioned ingredients that can be ready in about 30 minutes
• 15-Minute Meal Kits – If you don’t want to spend too much time in the kitchen, choose this option
• Oven-Ready – Get an oven-safe tin and just pop it in your oven
• Grill-Ready – If you liked to grill, this is a great options
• Culinary Collection – Premium meals at affordable prices
• Fast & Fresh – Oven or Microwave, it’s your choice

How Much Does Home Chef Cost

Home Chef prices are around the industry average. They range from $4.95 to $9.95 and depend on item type (lunch, dinner or add-on). The prices are always the same regardless of how many kits and servings you purchase. Shipping is free on most orders.

Having covered the basics, let us examine the company’s pricing in more detail. Its dinners cost $9.95 per serving and you can choose between 2, 4, or 6 serving options. The 5-minute lunches come at a lower price and cost $7.99 per serving.

The pricing is as simple as it is transparent, so you always know the cost of your deliveries in advance.

The good news is that you can order as many different meals as you’d like. You can even purchase moothie add-ons for $4.95, as well as protein packs and premium meals on occasion. These are special meals that are a bit pricier than the standard menu items, such as holiday specials, which include multiple sides and a dessert. Next Christmas you might not have to spend time shopping for groceries and looking for recipes, as Home Chef has everything you need for the occasion.

Unlike many of its competitors, Home Chef always has something quick and deliciously fruity to boost your mood and replace unhealthy sweets.

As far as delivery itself goes, it’s free of charge for orders over $45 but costs up to $10 for orders below that price. Unless you’re eating by yourself, you’ll probably end up ordering enough to get your food delivered for free. Taking all of this into account, we can say that Home Chef definitely has one of the most flexible payment plans on the meal kit delivery market.

Where Does Home Chef Deliver

Home Chef ships its meal kits throughout the United States, with the exceptions of certain remote areas. Due to the relatively recent expansions, its delivery map no longer covers 90% of the US but instead includes approximately 98% of the country.

Its delivery range will continue to grow, so in case your location isn’t supported yet, it probably will be in the near future. Just to be safe, you can enter your zip code on the company’s website to find out whether it delivers to your area.

You should also know that you can track your Home Chef package using your account with just a couple of clicks. Log into your account, click on Order History then Order Date and under Delivery Date you’ll be able to find your tracking number. It works just like any other tracking number and if you click on it, you’ll get more info about your shipment. Just remember that this number appears after the shipment has been sent, on that particular day of delivery.

Home Chef Pros And Cons

To make sure Home Chef meets all your standards and expectations, it is important to know its biggest advantages and disadvantages. With a short overview of its pros and cons, you can easily decide if Home Chef is the right meal kit service for you.

Sample Dishes

If you subscribe to Home Chef, you can easily prepare culinary masterpieces using only the ingredients and recipes found in your meal kit box. You may not be a pro chef just yet, but with Home Chef, you can easily make restaurant-grade meals. You don’t have to take our word for it – check out the images below to get a better idea of the types of dishes you can enjoy with Home Chef.