Food Finds: Home Chef Meal Delivery Service

Food Finds: Home Chef Meal Delivery Service

Home ChefHave you tried Home Chef Meal Delivery Service? It’s a weekly meal kit delivery that delivers a box of pre-portioned ingredients and recipe cards to make weekly cooking easier.

I’ve been wanting to try these meal delivery services for awhile now, but never got around to it until this month. I love grocery shopping, yet I was curious how delivery services work. What’s more, it’s pretty difficult to narrow down which services to try. They seem to be a dime a dozen nowadays. Home Chef is the first such service I’m trying here in the U.S. According to their website:

Home Chef is a fresh ingredient and recipe delivery service. Subscribers receive one box per week with all the fresh ingredients you need to make restaurant quality recipes, designed by our chefs. We save you the time of going to the grocery store, finding new recipes, meal planning, and portioning.

We give you direct access to some of the nation’s highest quality food suppliers with recipes created by seasoned chefs. We source from only top quality vendors, giving you the freshest ingredients possible.

Sign-up: I signed up on March 6 and created my personal taste profile. I had a bit of a glitch during the process since I was trying to tick off dairy and wheat, but the system wouldn’t let me. I indicated dairy-free in my choices, but found out that their weekly menu only offers two dairy-free dishes. As it turns out, “If you’re not assigned your default number of meals, that may be an indication that the current menu doesn’t feature enough meals that match your preferences.” Mystery solved! I unclicked Wheat and bypassed that hiccup. I ended up ordering a dish with dairy, which my husband can eat anyway.

Delivery: Delivery was scheduled for March 13, which was yet another snow day for us here in the Northeast. I got an email from Home Chef around 8 AM informing me of the delivery.

“Your Home Chef order is on its way and is scheduled to arrive Tuesday, March 13, between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Remember, you do not need to be home to receive your delivery.”

They gave a Fedex tracking number, which I checked. It did say it was out for delivery. The box arrived around noon.

Home Chef box
Home Chef box

What’s Inside:
This is how the insulated box looked like with ice packs on the top and bottom.

What's inside the Home Chef box
What’s inside the Home Chef box

Here are the three recipe cards for the food I ordered.

Home Chef Recipe Cards
Home Chef Recipe Cards

It’s a double-sided “card” – actually a three-hole punched paper – that has a detailed ingredients list, nutrition information (surprisingly no information on fiber content), prep and cook time, difficulty and spice levels, plus information like “Cook within 5 days”. On the other side is the recipe! I ordered three dishes for two:

  1. Smoky-Sriracha Pork Tenderloin with roasted broccoli
  2. Creamy Parmesan Steak Penne with peppers and onions
  3. Dublin Coddle with Sausage and ciabatta garlic bread

The ingredients for each dish were individually packaged and labeled. . .
Home Chef Packaged Ingredients

Home Chef

Home Chef Packaged Ingredients

. . . while the meats were packed in a separate bag.

Home Chef meats
The meats

Tasty Meals

Let’s start with this Smoky-Sriracha Pork Tenderloin. Looking at the ingredients, the only thing I don’t have at home is the rub. The rest of the ingredients, we do keep in stock.

Ingredients for Smoky-Sriracha Pork Tenderloin
Ingredients for Smoky-Sriracha Pork Tenderloin

This was a good starter dish to make. It was easy, especially since the recipe was quite straightforward.

Home Chef Smoky-Sriracha Pork Tenderloin
Smoky-Sriracha Pork Tenderloin

Next, we have the ingredients for the Creamy Parmesan Steak Penne. This one, we actually didn’t have most of the ingredients, so this is where the service came in handy.

Ingredients for Creamy Parmesan Steak Penne
Ingredients for Creamy Parmesan Steak Penne

Even if I’ve been avoiding dairy lately, I tasted this dish because it looked so enticing!

Home Chef Creamy Parmesan Steak Penne
Creamy Parmesan Steak Penne

So enticing that one picture wasn’t enough! Hubby ate the rest of it though.

Home Chef Creamy Parmesan Steak Penne
Creamy Parmesan Steak Penne

The last dish I made is Dublin Coddle with Sausage and ciabatta garlic bread.

Ingredients for Home Chef Dublin Coddle with Sausage
Ingredients for Dublin Coddle with Sausage

Making this dish was a tad more involved than the first two. What took me some time was removing the Italian sausage from its casing, but there was also quite a fair amount of slicing and dicing done.

Home Chef Dublin Coddle with Sausage
Dublin Coddle with Sausage and ciabatta garlic bread
Home Chef Dublin Coddle with Sausage
Dublin Coddle with Sausage
Home Chef Dublin Coddle with Sausage
Dublin Coddle with Sausage

Verdict: After trying three dishes from Home Chef, I can highly recommend them with confidence. The food quality surprised us because we didn’t really know what to expect. I ended up saving the recipes, so I can make it again in the future. Who doesn’t like tasty meals anyway? What’s more, their meals are priced at $9.95 per serving. I love how the ingredients are pre-portioned, which means you don’t waste anything. You use exactly what you need – no more, no less. What I don’t like is the plastic packaging. I’m trying to think of good alternatives for that, but I’m coming up empty. When I think of something, I’ll definitely send them my feedback. By the way, delivery is free for orders over $45. Shipping is $10 for orders less than $45. While you definitely have to do the work to eat, it’s easy, easy, easy. If you don’t like cooking, trying Home Chef might change your mind. Eating delicious food for $9.95 per serving is truly a great deal, IMO.

Curious to try Home Chef? Click this link to get $30 off your first box!

Disclaimer: I received a voucher in exchange for writing a review on the blog. All opinions are my own.

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