Ok…I’ll admit it, I was totally influenced by influencers!! I had never even thought about trying a meal kit, after all I’m a pretty good cook. I thought they were aimed at people that didn’t like to cook or didn’t know how to. Then I saw a few different Instagram stories of people cooking Home Chef dinners and saying how good they were and they really looked yummy!
I had been on the dinner struggle bus for awhile. During the day I have a small home childcare, Even though I work at home, there was never any downtime to prep/ put dinner together during the day. By the time the kids left, the last thing I wanted to do was come up with a dinner plan…and everyone in my house was starving by then!!
After a night of scrambling to put a healthy dinner on the table I decided it was time to check out their website.
Ordering
The way it works is Home Chef offers a weekly menu selection of about 18 different dinners. The choices range from no prep, 15 min. meals, and meals that take 40-50 minutes.
Their website and app are super easy to navigate; definite plus for me! You can even read the recipe instructions before you order.
Most of the meals are $8.99 a serving but can go up to $13/serving for some of the steak or seafood selections, You order meals by 2 serving sizes.
Another cool feature is you can substitute the protein in the meal kit for something else.
First Home Chef Delivery
One of the things I was concerned about was if the food would stay cold during shipping…no worries!! The box has a layer of this cool insulation that can be recycled and at the bottom of the box there are 2 big ice blocks. Everything was super cold!
We have 4 people so I ordered 4 servings for each meal….so 2 bags for each meal. (The proteins are packaged separately from the meals.)
Literally everything you need to prepare the meal is already measured in the bag! I was impressed with the freshness of the produce too.
Cooking First Meal
I started out with the Balsamic-Bacon Jam Sirloin Steak meal kit. This is one the meals that takes about 40 minutes to cook and involves both the oven for the potatoes and stove top for cooking the sirloin steaks.
One thing that I appreciated in the kits were the packages of fresh herbs. In this kit there was fresh parsley…how many times have you bought a bunch of parsley at the market, used a little for a meal, then found the yucky remnants in your produce drawer a week later??
The steaks were nice thick cuts of beef! All the Home Chef proteins are packaged in vacuum sealed packages too.
And here is the finished meal!! Seriously, how good does this look…next stop “Chopped”.
My review of the first meal…. two thumbs way up!! Yes, there were a few steps to this one (chopping, making the sauce, etc) but I found that having everything all measured out for me saved me so much time!!
Not having to think of a yummy meal on my own was also such a relief!!
What About Portion Sizes??
Honestly, this was one of my biggest concerns…was there going to be enough food to feed my husband and two hungry boys! The answer is yes, I’ve incorporated Home Chef for the past 3 weeks and have tried 12 meals and I have never been short on food to feed them.
Did Your Family Like Home Chef?
The true test…did my picky teenage son like the meals??? Happy to report that he did! My husband and other son also liked all the meals.
What I really liked was that I was making meals that I hadn’t thought of before on my own!
Last week I made these Argentinian Steak & Potato Tacos…and honestly, I was like “potatoes in a taco…ummm not sure about that one”.. OMG, it was one of my favorite meals so far!!
Just take a look…
Final Thoughts On Home Chef
Overall, I was really impressed by Home Chef. From the packaging, to the freshness of the produce, to the meals and flavors everything was a winner for me.
I’m planning to keep Home Chef in my weekly rotation. My kids were asking me to make a couple of their favorites this week so I skipped a week of delivery.
Also, I forgot to mention that you can order however many meals per order as you like. You can order as few or as many meals in your kit as you would like or just skip a week entirely.
It was also nice not to have to do a huge food shopping on the weekend for meals! I’m usually going to 2 grocery stores to grab what’s on sale that week. I hit one store to grab the other food we need to get through a week.
Let me know if you decide to try Home Chef! Leave me a comment if you have any questions.
