Home Chef meal kit review: Customizable, hearty, healthy and fast – CNET

Special Black Friday offer:  Starting Friday, Nov. 20, Home Chef is offering $90 off when you sign up for four weeks of meals. That’s $30 off the first and second box (!) and $15 off your third and fourth. If you’ve been wanting to try a meal kit subscription, this is a fantastic time to give it a go. You can pause or cancel Home Chef anytime.

Our original review continues below.

With dozens of meal kit services to choose from, many brands are looking to secure a spot in the market by offering a niche meal delivery offering: A little wrinkle or differentiator that separates them from the pack. Some meal kits focus on gourmet recipes with fresh ingredients, for instance, while others stress quick and easy, oven-ready meals that take less than 20 minutes to prepare. Home Chef has set itself up to be the most flexible meal kit service, allowing you to swap out proteins in their recipes, according to preference, change the serving sizes each week or skip a delivery easily if your schedule changes. Home Chef prides itself on having the most versatile, meal kits. And let’s face it, modifications to our food is something we’ve come to expect in 2020 — I call it the “Chipotle effect.” 

Read more: Best meal kit delivery service for 2020: Freshly, Home Chef, Blue Apron and more

As a fan of meal kits and a man in constant search of a quick, delicious meal or time-saving dinner hack, I wanted to know how Home Chef meal kits compared to the rest of the growing meal subscription category. Over the course of a week, I ran a test of Home Chef’s meal kits, cooking a variety of recipes from an array of the brand’s various categories. Here’s my review of Home Chef meal kits.

How Home Chef works

In a sea of competitors, Home Chef has emerged as a leading meal kit delivery service with an emphasis on flexible and customizable meal plans. Home Chef is a subscription service, so you sign up via the website and choose how often you’d like meal kits delivered, as well as how many you’ll be cooking for — two, four or six people. You can also choose your own meals each week or let the Home Chef team pick a selection for you. You’re free to skip a week anytime you’d like and can add meals or servings (at cost) to your delivery as you go.

I found the ordering process very simple, clear and intuitive. And as promised, I was able to customize just about every meal in one way or another. Meals are delivered once a week in neatly packaged cooler boxes with ingredients preportioned and ready to go. You also receive recipe cards with helpful information including nutrition by the numbers, spice level and cooking times, so you know how long each meal will take. Step-by-step directions are also included to guide you through each recipe. 

What are Home Chef meals like?

Home Chef meals are largely easy to prepare and don’t require a ton of technical skill. The company aims to please a wide range of eaters, and that means a lot of comfort foods and dishes that are familiar to American diets. You won’t see a ton of unfamiliar flavors either, with lots of classic dinner recipes including baked chicken or pork tenderloin with vegetables and a savory sauce, pasta dishes, teriyaki steak and peppers over rice or chicken tacos. That’s not to say you won’t find some more creative menu items such as a prosciutto and butternut chowder or bruschetta shrimp over risotto. 

Home Chef offers premium meals it refers to as the “culinary collection,” but they are priced differently (more on that below). A good many of Home Chef’s seafood options, such as crusted ahi tuna and pan-seared mahi-mahi, fall into that category — as do higher-end cuts of beef. In sticking with the theme of flexibility, you can pop one of these premium meals into your weekly order anytime (at cost).

Read more: Catch the best seafood delivery services of 2020

How easy are Home Chef meal kits to prepare?

The meals I tried were easy to prepare, which seems to be a calling card for the popular meal kit service. Home Chef has quick-fire meals using fresh ingredients that take just 15 minutes or so. There are also some more complicated projects that can take as long as 45 minutes. It’s completely up to you which ones you’d like to have sent but beware: If you let Home Chef choose your meals, you might get some of the 45-minute meals in your box. There is also a category of oven-ready meals that only require assembling ingredients in an aluminum baking tray (usually provided) and popping it into the oven with almost no prep or chopping.

Supporting materials

As mentioned, each meal comes with a comprehensive description, nutritional facts, prep time and recipe card with ingredients and directions. The recipe card features a nice big glossy image so you can visualize the dish and know what to aim for. There’s also a Home Chef mobile app that is helpful and easy to use. On it, you can see your order, make changes, log the meals you’ve cooked and bookmark ones you liked.

Home Chef allows you to swap proteins and change portions

Home Chef’s big claim to fame is that meal kits and plans are highly customizable. You can swap the protein in many of the weekly meals, but not all. If a meal includes a “customize it” button, that means you can jump in and swap the chicken for pork, for instance. Some proteins, like salmon, steak and plant-based proteins, trigger an up-charge of $3 per portion. 

You can also double the total portion of any meal kit, also for $3 per portion. So, let’s say you’re having the Schwegmans over for a socially distanced dinner next week. You can double the portion of just one of the meal kits and not have to change your entire subscription. The dashboard showing all your meals is user-friendly and gives you a good view of what’s on deck. You can skip a week, swap meals, make changes or add meals until the last minute. You can also track your package easily to monitor its journey.

Who should consider Home Chef

I’d suggest Home Chef for anyone trying to learn to cook from scratch or lighten their meal-planning load. Because many of Home Chef’s meals are fast and easy to prepare and can feed up to six people, this is one of the best meal kit services for families. It’s also good for people who are fairly specific about what they like to cook and eat since you can make so many different changes and swaps. Because Home Chef makes it so easy to skip weeks — and won’t charge you for skipping — it’s great for those who travel or have unpredictable schedules.

Who should probably skip Home Chef

There are not a ton of vegetarian options when you order meals through Home Chef. In fact, the company only offers three plant-based meal kits a week so I wouldn’t recommend this service for vegetarians, vegans or anyone looking to add plant-based meals in heavy rotation. Home Chef is also probably not ideal for experienced chefs looking to improve their skills.

Read more: The best healthy meal delivery services for 2020: Blue Apron, Sun Basket, Home Chef and more

How much do Home Chef meal kits cost?

Most of Home Chef’s meal kits are about $9 per serving, but there are categories like easy lunches and entree salads that are as low as $7. Some are more expensive — between $11 and $18 per serving — and often include nice cuts of beef or seafood recipes, but it’s completely up to you which ones you’d like. Shipping is free for any order over $45 — which is most of them, though it varies depending on your selections. A box of three meals that serves four people each will run you about $120. You can also order protein packs of raw meats including beef, steak, chicken and salmon, that range from $60 up to $75.

What I cooked and how it went

Moo shu pork tacos: This recipe was super fun, quick and easy meal kit to execute. It took less than 20 minutes and the flavors were balanced and interesting, thanks to the toasted sesame oil and spicy sriracha. Honey sriracha chicken with crispy wontons was an oven-ready meal, meaning all I really had to do was assemble the chicken breast, pre-cut vegetables and edamame in a baking tray (provided) and cook for 20 minutes. The temperature and timing were on point and the chicken came out perfectly tender, while the vegetables kept a snap. The Bruschetta shrimp risotto was the most complicated Home Chef meal kit I cooked. Risotto famously requires a bit more attention than most dishes, but it was still fairly easy to make and came out great. I might have wanted a bit more detailed instruction on tending to the risotto, especially if I were a beginner, and there was a bit too much garlic for me. 

Home Chef packaging and environmental friendliness

The cooler box and ice packs were mostly recyclable. While there is always some waste in packaging the individual ingredients, it wasn’t egregious. I did notice that each meal was packed in large plastic bags, unlike most of the other companies which use more eco-friendly paper bags. 

The verdict 

I’ve used quite a few meal kits at this point and I enjoyed Home Chef a lot. I thought it struck a solid balance between being easy to prepare but also featuring interesting meals and recipes that I hadn’t made before and may not have thought to make, like the moo shu pork tacos and bruschetta shrimp risotto. I would contend that some of the culinary collection meals aren’t quite worth the price per serving, but at just $9 a serving for most of the meals, it’s definitely cheaper than takeout, easier than hunting down all the ingredients at the grocery store and a low-stress way to get homemade meals on the table in around 30 minutes total.