Home Chef is a meal delivery service with it’s headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. The popular meal kit company delivers to 98% of the United States. You will find that their food is very tasty and menu offers a wide variety of options to meet customer’s dietary needs. You can add smoothies to your order with a different flavor offered each week. View their menu options 5 weeks in advance which is great for planning ahead.
Company Info
Home Chef was founded by Patrick Vihtelic in June 2013 and is based in Chicago. In addition to dinner selections, the company offers breakfast, lunch, and smoothies as part of their weekly menu options. You may have noticed a Home Chef display in your local Kroger store. That’s not a coincidence as Kroger acquired Home Chef in May, 2018 and is rolling out meal kits nationwide. Not to be confused though, the Home Chef meals sold at Kroger differ from the menu they offer online.
Home Chef Menu and Pricing
Coming up with the cost of your Home Chef meals is pretty simple. When you sign up you will select the number of people you plan to feed. The service offers plans for 2, 4, and 6 people. Then select the number of times you wish to cook each week. They offer dinners for $9.95 a serving, lunch for $7.99 a serving, and delicious smoothies for $4.95 a serving. You can also upgrade to premium meals which include better cuts of meat, seafood, etc. Delivery is free on any order over $49. Otherwise the delivery is a flat $10 to anywhere in the US.
You can pay for your Home Chef order using credit card (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover) or PayPal. We tend to use PayPal for all online purchases since you can manage subscriptions through their site. In addition to enjoying fresh ingredients and recipes delivered each week, you can buy gift cards to give you a friend or loved one. Home Chef recommends gift cards ranging from $60 to $240. You can select the exact amount of the gift card with the minimum being $50.
Home Chef Promo
We were excited to see that Home Chef was running a promotion when we decided to sign up for their service. At the time they were offering a discount of $80 off the first 4 orders to all new customers. That means you will save $20 off each of your first 4 orders. You will also receive free shipping as long as your order total is over $49 before the discount is applied. This makes Home Chef an even better value.
Our first order consisted of 3 meals per week and 2 servings per meal. That brought our total to $59.70 for the first order. Home Chef applied the $20 discount which made our total $39.70 which included free shipping. The same discount would apply to the next 3 orders under the promo they were offering when we signed up.
Customer Service
The Home Chef customer service team is available by phone 6 days a week. The customer support phone number is 872-225-2433. Their hours are 9 AM to 6 PM CT Monday-Friday, and 10 AM to 2 PM CT on Saturday. If you have a question on Sunday then you can submit a support request on the Home Chef website.
Hands-On Review of Home Chef
We signed up for Home Chef on Sunday, August 18th and received our first delivery on Tuesday, August 27th. You might notice that it took 9 days to receive our first meal kits. That has to do with the day of the week in which we placed our order. Home Chef locks in their menu each Friday at noon CST. That means we were ordering from the following week’s menu. You can also select the day of the week you would like to receive your meals. Home Chef offers delivery on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Just remember that holidays could impact your delivery dates.
The first step in ordering from Home Chef is to select your preferences. You will let the company know how many people you plan to feed. In this case the servings are presented in adult portions. They recommend between .5 and 1 portions for a child. You can select from 2, 4, and 6 servings per meal. You will also choose how many times a week you would like to cook with the options ranging from 2 to 6.
The rest of the preferences are optional, but they will help Home Chef in recommending the best meals and in planning future menus. Here’s a quick look at the food preferences.
Which of the following do you prefer to eat:
- Meat, seafood, or vegetables
Dietary preferences:
- Low-calorie or low-cardb
Any foods you want to avoid:
- Pork, soy, red meat, wheat, milk, mushrooms, shellfish, or nuts
Next you will enter your shipping address, and payment details. At this point you are ready to pick your meals for the first week.
We had 17 menu items to pick from. Each week you also have the option to add smoothies. The week we ordered the flavor was orange creamsicle with honey and greek yogurt. You can also add a deluxe protein pack or classic poultry pack if you ever want meat platters. Some meals can even be customized to include premium meats. For example, steak dishes can be upgraded to include filet mignon, new york strip steak, or grass fed sirloin steaks.
You can also see the details and nutritional value for any meal. This will let you know how difficult the meal is to cook, the level of spice, prep & cook time, and how long the items will stay fresh. The nutritional values include calories, carbs, fat, protein, sodium, and whether or not the recipe contains milk, nuts, etc.
We received our first shipment from Home Chef via Fedex just after lunch time.
The first thing we noticed when the Home Chef package arrived was that the box had some weight to it. As soon as you open the box you quickly find out why as Home Chef includes a lot of ice packs to keep the contents nice and cold. There were no fewer than 9 ice packs in the box. The recipes are on top along with an envelope with coupons for wine and more. We went ahead and emptied the contents into our refrigerator to keep everything fresh. Each recipe detailed how long the ingredients would stay fresh.
The steak was packaged separately from the seafood. Each bag clearly shows which meal kit the ingredients will be used in. Home Chef provides a three ring binder to store your recipes. Each meal kits comes with its own recipe card. The front includes a picture of the dish along with prep & cook time, difficulty level, spice level, and ingredients. It also shows any other items you might need along with how many days you have to cook the dish.
Meal Kit #1 – Salmon with Dill Crema and Green Beans Amandine
We started by trimming the ends off the green beans. There were a few that we pitched because they were mushy. Even so, there was plenty of green beans for our two servings. We then stemmed the dill and minced the garlic. The recipe said to zest the lemon and cut it in half. You will then cut one half into wedges and use the other half to juice. Rake the salmon out of the package and pat it dry. Season the flesh side with salt and pepper.
We worked on the green beans first. We found it easier to place them in a bowl rather that use a baking sheet to prepare them. Add garlic, olive oil, salt & pepper, and mix it all into the green beans. Then spread them out on a baking sheet to cook. We baked them for 12 minutes the first round. Next you will fry the salmon and then place it in the oven to finish. While the salmon bakes, you can work on the green beans again. Add the parmesan, salt, almonds, and bake until finished. The last step is to make the dill crema. Combine sour creme, dill, lemon juice, olive oil, and lemon zest. Finally add a pinch of salt & pepper and mix. Spoon the dill crema on to the salmon and enjoy the dish.
Meal Kit #2 – Toasted Coconut Fish Tacos with Pineapple Slaw
Please note that the recipe called for a lime but it wasn’t listed or included in the ingredients. Even so, the dish was quite tasty without the lime. We started by by dryng the pineapple, chopping, and setting it aside. Next prepare the jalapeno. You will remove the seeds and mince. Then fry the jalapeno with a little bit of olive oil for a minute. Then set it aside. Next, put the tilapia on a cutting board, pat dry, season with salt, and cut.
Heat oil in a large frying pan while you prepare the batter for the fish. Mix tempura, water, salt & pepper in a bowl. Then coat the fish with the batter and fry. This will take approximately 3-4 minutes depending on how big your pieces of fish are. Next comes the slaw. Combine the slaw mix, sour cream, lime juice (if you have it), salt & pepper, pineapple, and mix it all up. Finally add the slaw to your fish tacos and enjoy.
Meal Kit #3 – Steak with Sauce Robert and Spinach Scalloped Potatoes
This was our favorite dish. We got started by cleaning the vegetables, slicing the potatoes, cutting the onion, and seasoning the steak with salt. We had to throw away half of a potato because it was rotten, but still had plenty for the dish. When frying the steak we noticed that it took less time than the recipe called for. Perhaps this is based on how we wanted our steak prepared. We prefer our sirloin medium. Frying the steak for 5-7 minutes per side would have been too well done to meet our tastes.
We fried the potatoes in oil for about 4 minutes, until lightly browned. The spinach and onion was added to the potatoes next. Then cream, water, and half the parmesan was stirred in and cooked until tender. Finish the potatoes by putting them into a casserole dish and cover them with foil to bake for 10 minutes. Remove the foil, add the remaining parmesan, and bake for an additional 10 minutes. Fry the steaks to your preference. Make the sauce by combining the onion, wine, and simmer. Then add mustard, demi-glace, and remove from the heat. Add butter and plate the dish.
Desert – Orange Creamsicle Smoothie with Honey and Greek Yogurt
What better way to end our meals than will a nice desert. Home Chef offers a different flavor of smoothies each week. We added two servings of their orange creamsicle smoothie to our first order. As you can see the package included everything we needed. Ok, so perhaps we had to add the ice but that’s to be expected. The ingredients included honey, greek yogurt, orange juice, banana puree, and an orange.
As you might expect this one was very easy to make. We simply added all the ingredients except the ice to the blender and mixed them for 3 minutes. Then add ice and blend for another 3 minutes. So in well under 10 minutes we had some delicious orange dreamsicle smoothies. They were a nice compliment to our steak and potatoes. Note that the ingredients include greek yogurt which can be an acquired taste. We loved it.
Conclusion
Perhaps you’ve seen Home Chef meal kits at your local Kroger. These meals differ from those offered online but they give you an idea of what Home Chef has to offer. We have tried both the in-store and mail order meal kits and to be honest you can’t go wrong with either option. We prefer the online meal delivery option for convenience. It’s hard to beat selecting your meals (and perhaps a treat) and having it delivered directly to your home.
Kroger Home Chef meals range from $7.95 to $9.95 per serving and Home Chef will include 2 or 4 servings per meal based on your preference. You can order from 2 to 6 meals per week which is great as most meal delivery services max out at 4 meals a week. We did 3 meals a week for 2 people which included free shipping. The food was delicious. Definitely some of our favorite meals. We highly recommend Home Chef. Don’t forget to take advantage of their promotion to save $80 off your first 4 orders.
