Before signing up for the meal delivery service we decided to test a Kroger Home Chef meal kit from our local grocery store. In case you weren’t aware, Kroger acquired Home Chef in 2018 and has been rolling out their meal kits in stores across the country. In our case, a single Kroger in our area carries the Home Chef meal kits. Not to be confused with the online meal delivery service, over 1,000 Kroger stores carry Home Chef meal kits for those who do not want to subscribe to the service or do not wish to plan their meals so far in advance.
As you can see, our Kroger has a display case featuring a selection of Home Chef meal kits. At the time of our visit the meals ranged from $8.50 a serving. Most meals are for two people so you can expect to pay around $17 for a kit. There were a few exceptions with single servings but for the most part you can expect the meals to feed two people.
The picture above covers half of the display case. Meal selections included Tex-Mex Chicken, BBQ Ranch Porch Chops, Crispy Caesar Chicken, French Onion Chicken Penne, Bruschetta Chicken, Mini Pesto Chicken Pizzas, Parmesan Stuffed Chicken Bracoila, Korean BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwich, Sirloin Steak and Cilantro-Lime Crema, and Ginger Steak and Peppers.
We decided to keep it simple and went with the Mini Pesto Chicken Pizzas. The box clearly showed that the meal kit included 2 servings, would be ready in 15 minutes, and would require both stove and oven to complete.
Kroger Home Chef Mini Pesto Chicken Pizzas
Our Kroger (Home Chef) meal kit included two servings and the retail cost was $16.99. At the time we purchased the kit Kroger was offering a 20% discount so we saved some money. As the box mentions, we had everything we needed. Actually all the food ingredients were in the box but be aware that you will need olive oil and salt. This was not mentioned on the box. Instead it was listed on the recipe card inside the meal kit.
We started by emptying the contents of the box on to a cutting board and taking everything except the chicken out of its packaging. As you can see we had all the ingredients including flatbread, diced chicken breast, tomatoes, parmesan, mozzarella, and pesto. While the chicken breast was partially diced, we still had to cut one of the pieces as it was not fully cut. You may also prefer smaller pieces of chicken for this dish.
The recipe was quite simple and only required about 15 minutes to complete. You will multi-task. While cooking the chicken you will also be slicing tomato and broiling (or toasting) the flatbread. As the instructions clearly state, watch the flatbread closely as it is easy to burn. In our case it took less than a minute to brown the edges.
Once the flatbread is toasted you will remove it from the oven and top it with the sliced tomatoes, chicken, and mozzarella cheese included in your kit. Then you will put it back into the oven to melt the cheese. The recipe says to broil 2 to 3 minutes but ours took less time to complete. When finished you will drizzle pesto and top it with the parmesan cheese.
We decided to make one serving at a time. You can see the portion size was good considering the kit makes twice this amount of Mini Chicken Pesto Pizza. It was delicious from the first bite. We cooked the second serving the following night and it was even better as we knew what to expect when broiling the flatbread. We enjoyed the Kroger (Home Chef) meal kit and would recommend you give them a try.
