Home Chef
Home Chef offers delicious, crowd-pleasing, customizable meals.
Home Chef aims to corner its piece of the meal kit delivery market by offering customers lots of options, whether that's in meals delivered per week, servings per meal, or customizable proteins. Combine this “any way you like it” spirit with recipes that feel familiar and non-challenging, and Home Chef seems like it's the service for common denominator cook.
Customers sign up for a plan depending on how many meals they want per week, and how many servings they want from each meal, and then either let the company pick the meals or choose from the weekly selection. The kits contain almost all the ingredients to prepare a meal, plus the recipe, and customers cook them at home. Signing up is easy, as is making changes, skipping weeks or canceling.
Choosing Meals, Ways to Customize
Picking recipes is easy. No matter what plan you choose — two-, four- or six-person — everyone gets the same 14 different dinner meals to choose from, three of which are vegetarian. There are also three “Five-Minute Lunch” options that are slightly cheaper at $7.99 per serving and require no cooking. The company says there are 26 meal options, but that's a bit of a stretch. It seems it's taking into account all the possible meat customizations.
If you select a recipe with a “Customize It” symbol (and most of them have it) you can swap out the default protein. Just click the Customize It link and a drop-down menu appears with other protein options the chefs think will work with the dish. Some options cost extra, such as doubling the meat, upgrading to organic, or adding meat to a vegetarian recipe.
Premium meals feature luxe ingredients and cost quite a bit more. The Bistro Filet and Truffle Frites cost $19.95 per serving — basically what you'd pay at a restaurant. But most of the recipes are geared toward making weeknight dinner easy not fancy. Those labeled Home Chef Express are ready in 15 minutes. Recipes labeled Oven Ready mean all you have to do is mix the ingredients in the provided foil pan and bake. Dishes mostly follow a pretty predictable format. They don't use interesting global or “gourmet” ingredients like some other services we've tried.
Symbols on the recipes offer insights like calorie-conscious and vegetarian. Clicking on a recipe reveals all the details so you know what you're getting into before selecting it, including allergen and nutrition information, prep and cook time, skill level and spice level. If you like letting the service pick your meals for you, you can set your food preferences when you sign up and can change them anytime in the Taste Profile section, so you don't get an ingredient you don't like.
Home Chef Delivery Locations
Home Chef delivers from coast-to-coast and you just have to put in your zip code to confirm that they deliver to wherever you're living.
Home Chef meals start at $6.99 per serving, which is pretty reasonable in my book, and shipping is thrown in for free when you spend more than $49.
Pros
- Customizing your favorite source of protein - You can use the Customize It feature which lets you decide what type of protein you'd prefer to have in your dish. Each recipe where a protein can be selected is marked in an orange "Customize It" logo.
- Super easy recipes with great instructions - Recipes have clear instructions so you know exactly what to do; they are also categorized by difficulty level so you can decide what level of difficulty works best for you.
- Super fresh ingredients all measured out - With Home Chef, everything exudes freshness and comes in the exact measurements needed. No waste.
Cons
- No specific options for vegans (only vegetarians) - Home Chef at this time does not cater to individuals who want to choose vegan meal plans
