Home Chef Meal Delivery Review

Home Chef Menu

Home Chef makes it easy to enjoy homemade meals without all the hassle of meal planning and grocery shopping. They offer a wide variety of quick and easy meal options, so there’s always something for everyone.

Here’s a taste of the different meal types available with Home Chef:

Standard meal kits: You’ll choose from more than 20 recipes every week to build a menu you’ll love. Then, they’ll send simple, step-by-step instructions and pre-portioned, fresh ingredients right to your door so you can prepare your meals from scratch. For the health conscious crowd, they offer three “Calorie-Conscious” meals and at least three “Carb-Conscious” meals each week. Home Chef also offers one vegetarian option every other week, but you can easily make many of their meat-centric meals vegetarian using their “Customize It” feature, which enables members to swap proteins. Recipes in this category include meals like BBQ Pork and Pineapple Flatbread with red onion, and Tex-Mex-Style Smothered Chicken with corn and black beans.

Culinary Collection: Designed for those who are ready to take their meal-making to the next level, this special set of recipes features more premium ingredients, more complex flavors and more challenging cooking techniques. Recipes in this category include meals like Chicken Cordon Bleu and Chive Crema with wild rice and roasted butternut squash, and NY Strip Steak with Herbed Shrimp and cheesy scalloped potatoes and broccolini.

Fast and Fresh meals: Perfect for the busy crowd, these are pre-made meals that are ready in five minutes or less. They require no prep other than a simple heat-up in the microwave or oven. Examples include ​​Poblano Chicken Tacos with chipotle-lime slaw, and Creamy Tomato Pepperoni Pasta with peppers.

Oven Ready meals: These are pre-made meals that come in an oven-safe tray and require little to no preparation, making both dinner and clean-up quick and easy. Some of the meals on the Home Chef Oven Ready menu include Shrimp Penne in Tomato Cream Sauce with garlic bread and BBQ Pulled Pork Enchiladas with chipotle ranch and crispy onions.

Home Chef Meals: Nutritional Information

Home Chef provides nutritional information for every recipe and ready-made meal, and you can review it before building your weekly menu to ensure it satisfies any dietary needs.

For those watching their waistline, Home Chef offers “Calorie-Conscious” options, which are fewer than 625 calories per serving, and “Carb-Conscious options, which are fewer than 35 grams per serving.

Home Chef also offers a “Customize It” feature, which enables customers to swap out, double up, add or remove the proteins in select meals. For example, if you wanted to make a burger meatless, you can sub in an Impossible Burger. If you’d prefer organic, boneless or skinless chicken, you can make that substitution as well.

Home Chef’s Allergen Information

If you suffer from serious allergies, Home Chef may not be for you—while all of their ingredients are individually packaged, their facilities are not certified allergen-free. All of the ingredients are produced in facilities that also process eggs, milk, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat and soy. And, since all of the ingredients are packaged and shipped in one single shipping container, ingredients that don’t contain allergens may come into contact with other meals that do.

Home Chef Special Features

Here are some of the features that set Home Chef’s meal delivery service apart:

• Taste It Profile: Home Chef asks you to answer a series of questions about your taste, serving size needs and delivery preferences to create your profile and help them personalize your suggested menu. This is a particularly useful feature if there are ingredients you want to avoid due to allergies or dietary restrictions—if you indicate you cannot have a certain ingredient, Home Chef will avoid recommending any meals that contain it. You can update your profile anytime, so if you suddenly decide to go meat-free, or you learn you have a particular allergy, you can change your profile to reflect that.
• Customize It: With this feature, you can upgrade, double-up, swap or add protein to select meals. You can also use this feature if you’re hoping to go meat-free—they offer plant-based proteins as well. 
• Shopping Lists: This feature is great for customers who want to recreate a Home Chef recipe using ingredients from your grocery store. Available on the Home Chef mobile app, the Shopping List feature allows you to seamlessly create a shopping list directly from your Home Chef cookbook.

What Delivery Options does Home Chef Offer?

Home Chef delivers to 98 percent of the United States. To determine if they deliver to your area, you can enter your zip code during the sign-up process. If they do service your area, you can choose the day of the week that’s most convenient for you—Home Chef sends weekly deliveries Monday through Friday. The exact time of your delivery will depend on the shipping partner and your location.

Your meal kit will be delivered by the end of the day on your chosen day of delivery, and you do not have to be home to receive your order. The insulation and ice packs in your box will keep it cool for several hours.

Home Chef Packaging

Your ingredients and meals will arrive in a biodegradable, insulated box with water soluble, cool gel packs designed to keep your food refrigerated, not frozen. Most of the packaging is recyclable, and the recipe cards can be saved and reused.

How Much Does Home Chef Cost?

The cost of your Home Chef meal delivery service depends on the number of meals, the menu and the level of customization you select.

You can choose from two, four or eight servings for each meal, and Home Chef requires a four plate minimum, which means you can order two servings of two meals or four servings of one meal. The meals start at $8.99 per serving. There is also a $9.99 shipping fee for orders containing three or more meals and a $13.99 fee for those with a subtotal under $50.

Home Chef Promo Code, Coupons and Discounts

Home Chef offers a few different coupons and discounts, especially for new customers. Holidays are a particularly great time to purchase this meal kit delivery service since there are often holiday promotions and seasonal sales.

About Home Chef the Company

Home Chef is a Chicago-based meal kit subscription service founded in June 2013 by entrepreneur Pat Vihtelic. The company’s mission is simple: To improve the at-home cooking experience for customers. They accomplish this by offering a wide variety of delicious meal solutions, from recipes and ingredient bundles to pre-made, no-prep entrees.

Home Chef was honored by Entrepreneur Magazine as part of the 2018 list of the Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America, and was ranked the number one meal kit in the Customer Satisfaction category.

Home Chef Customer Service

You can reach a Home Chef customer service representative by submitting a message through their website (someone will respond promptly). You can also reach them by phone from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. CT Monday through Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. CT at the Home Chef phone number: (872)-225-2433. They also have a virtual chat assistant function on their website, which can handle most general questions about the service.

How Does Home Chef Compare to Other Meal Delivery Services?

With so many meal delivery services on the market, it’s difficult to decide which is best for you. Here’s how Home Chef stacks up against the competition:

Home Chef vs Hello Fresh:

Hello Fresh is slightly less expensive than Home Chef, with meals starting at $7.49 per serving. They offer six different meal plans, including meat and veggies, veggies, low-carb and low-calorie. Each one offers more than 27 weekly recipes to choose from.

Home Chef vs Blue Apron:

Blue Apron is slightly less expensive than Home Chef—this plan starts at $7.99 per serving. Blue Apron also offers a full vegetarian plan and there are more weekly meal options—50 compared to Home Chef’s 20.

Home Chef vs Freshly:

Instead of sending recipes and ingredients to your door, Freshly sends pre-made meals that you simply heat and eat. The cost depends on the number of meals you select, but tend to run about $10 per meal, plus shipping, which ranges from $9.99 to $11.99.

Home Chef vs Sunbasket:

Like Home Chef, Sunbasket offers recipe and ingredient bundles as well as pre-made meals. SunBasket offers more meal plan variety—they have a Vegetarian, Diabetes-Friendly, Paleo plan plus more. Sunbasket also uses more organic produce than does Home Chef. But that comes at a slightly higher cost: This meal delivery service starts at $9.99 per serving.

Overall, Home Chef is a great option for those looking for a way to elevate their home-cooking without the hassle of meal planning and grocery shopping. They offer a wide variety of menu options and their prices are competitive. They offer both recipe and ingredient bundles as well as a variety of pre-made meals, and a variety of meal configurations to suit every family size. Home Chef is best for those who don’t have many dietary restrictions or serious food allergies.