Tired of the same old same old for dinner? Don’t have time to look for the ingredients needed to make certain meals? Hate spending money on an ingredient you basically only use for one dinner and then it sits on the shelf until you make that meal again? Looking for ways to introduce new foods to the family? I was, all of those things and more. I love to cook, but sometimes the meal planning and prep, as well as expense, really made it difficult to be the “Home Chef” I wanted to be. That’s why I was fascinated with “subscription” services where you can select meals and have the ingredients and instructions delivered to your door. After some research, Home Chef is the one we decided to try.
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How Home Chef Works
Home Chef is a subscription grocery shopping and recipe instruction delivery service. In just a few minutes your account and preferences are create online. Then you create your schedule of deliveries and pick from approximately 8 meal “kits” and if desired there are 3 add ons for smoothies, fruit and one selection which varies.
After creating your account you answer some questions. This determines the menu options which are made available to you as well as servings sizes and frequency of delivery. It also helps deal with any food allergies anyone in your family may have.
Fresh quality ingredients are individually packaged for your use. Now, this part is important – especially for those like us who live in warm weather climates – while it is packed in ice it needs to go in the fridge as soon as possible. Many menu items also indicate cook within X number of days. Don’t forget that because these are very FRESH ingredients which means there isn’t a long fridge shelf life.
Not only your ingredients are delivered, but instructions too. Simple, step by step with a picture of what your finished meal may look like. I assembled the ingredients, Chopped, mixed, sauteed and really felt like it was a home edition of the cooking show! The kids all chipped in to help and I loved that we were all having fun and cooking together. Here are a few of our meals.
Home Chef meals are $9.95 per serving. Smoothies and fruit baskets are $4.95 each, and shipping is free when you meet the $45 minimum weekly order. Every Monday, you’ll receive an email with 11 meal options to choose from. Make your choice by Friday at noon CST of that week, or go with the recommendations made for you. If you’d like to swap recipes, you can do so under “My Account”. You may skip weeks or even pause your services and pick right back up with just a click of the mouse to restart delivery.
Last but not least, it may seem like there’s a great deal of packaging to deal with with your Home Chef delivery services. But much of it is able to be recycled and box liners are even compostable or recyclable.
Have a friend or family member that may be under the weather or recovering from surgery? You can also give the gift of a meal, many of which were easy enough for my daughters to prepare with very little supervision (the biggest “deal was cutting with knives).
We have been using Home Chef for a few months now. Here are a few things we really like about it:
- I can create a schedule allowing me flexibility based on my budget. So if things are a little tight, instead of using the default scheduling systems created for my account I can choose to do every other week or other options.
- Saves me time and money at the grocery store.
- This is good for some not so good for others – but I never had left overs.
- Select from a number of different menu options including seafood, beef, chicken or vegetarian.
- It got my family trying new foods and dishes. There is LOTS of variety.
- I can change my delivery day (within a certain period of time) so if I’m not going to be home and my delivery day is Thursday, I can chance my schedule.
- No expensive ingredients. Basically everything costs the same each month no matter what meals I select to prepare.
Get started with being a “Home Chef” today and see how your family likes it.
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