DINING WITH HOME CHEF

After weeks of wanting to try out the fresh meal prep delivery service, Home Chef, I finally was able to find a coupon and give it a shot. It was wonderful! Before going into all the crazy details I'll take the opportunity to explain what exactly Home Chef is and how it works.

What is Home Chef?

Home Chef is a fresh ingredient and recipe delivery service that delivers ready-to-cook portioned meal packets directly to your door once per week. Recipes are created by professional chefs and the ingredients provided are selected from some of the nation's highest quality food suppliers.

The goal in all of this is to provide fresh, delicious quality meals for their customers. Using Home Chef saves time by cutting out all of the grocery shopping, recipe finding, meal planning and portioning.

All ingredients needed for each meal are included in the weekly delivered box along with easy to follow picture recipes and a Home Chef recipe book to keep your recipes in.

This company is centered in Chicago, IL and employs over 800 employees nation wide. It was founded by Pat Vihtelic in the year 2013. As of February 2017, Home Chef delivers meals to over 2.5 subscribers monthly and is still growing. Distribution centers are located in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Chicago and is able to deliver to all lower 48 states.

How does Home Chef work?

Sign-Up: Signing up for Home Chef is a simple process broken down into 4 easy steps. After providing your email, you will be taken to a page where you can put meat choices, mark any allergies and choose food type preferences. Different combinations of options can be used to cater to all of the following types of dietary preferences: gluten-free, dairy-free, low-carb or low-calorie. Diet profiles such as omnivore, meat, seafood, pescatarian, vegetarian and Vegan can also be met.

Portions are divided into a 2 serving option or a 4 serving option depending on how many people you will be cooking for. You will also be able to choose how many meals you want delivered for that week: 2, 4 or 6. These preferences can be changed each week depending on what you would like.

Lastly, a shipping address will be selected, a password for your Home Chef account will be created and the information for the first week's payment will be put in. After this step you will be taken to your account where you'll be able to choose what meals you would like in your box.

Ingredient layout for Sunday Supper "Pot R

Meal Selection: Each week Home Chef provides 10 difference meal options for you to choose from. These meals range tofu to steak and Latin to oriental. Each meal option has photos that you can view, a list of ingredients, a PDF of the recipe card itself and levels that mark the difficulty level, a spicy meter and how long the meal will take to prepare.

All meals need to be selected the week before and then over the weekend before delivery the choices become set and those are the meals that will be delivered. If you're up for an adventure you can let the system randomly pick each week for you or if you have a more selective palette like I do then you can pick each individual meal.

There are also different fresh fruit and smoothie options each week that can be ordered by serving for a small extra cost.

Pricing: Here's the make it or break it for most people. Home Chef is a wonderful service but the real question is whether or not it is an affordable service. The starting price of each serving is $9.95. Don't let this scare you away! This price includes all the fresh, quality ingredients you'll need to make delicious meals, recipe cards, a recipe binder and the weekly packaging of each box. There are no sales taxes and all orders over $40 receive free shipping. Any orders under $40 will have a $10 shipping fee added to them.

Compared to other meal kit services, Home Chef is the most budget friendly option. Below shows a price breakdown for the same meal option of three, two-serving meals a week at the competing companies:

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Blue Apron $59.94

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Hello Fresh $69.00

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Plated $72.00

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Home Chef $59.70

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In my opinion, the key to this service is using online discounts and credit that can be earned by referencing. These little discounts and deals make the service much more affordable if price is an issue.

By signing up on using this link you'll automatically receive a $30 credit to your first purchase!

Skipping Deliveries: This is probably one of my favorite features about Home Chef. Going out of town? Only interested in trying out the service for one week? Not interested in any of the meal options that week or maybe you just don't want the delivery? SKIP IT! Skipping deliveries or canceling the service is completely free. There are no hidden fees and no cancellation fees.

Delivery: Meal box deliveries can happen any time between Tuesday and Friday. You can select which ever day is most convenient and the boxes will be delivered some time during the day. Don't worry about having to be home during delivery time. Each box is designed to keep the ingredients cool through out the day while you're at work or out running errands. Available delivery days can differ depending on your location.

Cooking: Preparing each meal is very straight forward. The recipe cards provided with each week's box has step-by-step instructions with pictures to make cooking each meal as easy a possible. Meals are all supposed to be 30 minutes or less to prepare which is a pretty sweet deal in my opinion!

Enjoy!

Mozzarella-Stuffed Meatball Sliders

My Experience

This service is amazing! I found that the whole experience was straight forward and direct. Sign-up was simple, delivery was flawless and, I'll be honest, the meals were much better than I expected them to be. The meat was all really good quality and had no grease cooking out of it. Produce was fresh and the spices were delicious.

Now my husband and I are both 6'1 and normally eat a good amount of food so I was a little skeptical as to whether or not the serving sizes would be filling enough. To our surprise, all of the meals that we've tried have left us both perfectly full. Not over filled but not under satisfied.

If price is an issue then look into the coupon below and skip weeks in between credits and other coupons. If nothing else, the month of recipe card PDFs that can be downloaded is almost worth it.

Whether you hate to grocery shop or if your a busy college student trying to balance life this service is such an amazing help and is one I would recommend.

Join the Club!

If you're interested in becoming part of the Home Chef family or if you're just interested in trying out Home Chef for a week to see whether or not it's right for you, click the link below! By using this link you'll be given a $30 credit towards your first purchase which can equal up to 50% off your first order.

SIGN UP NOW AND RECEIVE A $30 CREDIT TO YOUR FIRST ORDER!!