Home Chef: Getting Started & Unboxing

What is Home Chef?

Home Chef is one of the many fresh ingredient and recipe delivery services that are offered for your culinary enjoyment, and one of the biggest. It currently delivers to 98% of the United States. Home Chef provides their subscribers with one box per week with all the fresh ingredients they need to make restaurant quality recipes, designed by their company chefs. Like all recipe delivery services, the reason to subscribe to this service would be to save time on going to the grocery store, finding new recipes, meal planning, and portioning out meals appropriately. In addition to saving money if you eat out often, and or if you are interested in expanding your culinary skills. 

When visiting the Home Chef website, you will be asked to “Set Your Taste Profile.” You’ll choose how many meals you’d like to cook each week, and how many people you'll be cooking for. This will determine your pricing. (Subscribers will have the ability to easily change this information as needed.)

HomeChef asks you to make a selection of your preference of Meat, Seafood, and Vegetables. You have the option to limit yourself to only one or select all three. Home Chef asks you to select dietary preferences such as low-calorie or low-carb as well as any ingredients that you and your family choose to avoid. The options to avoid are; Pork, Soy, Red Meat, Nuts, Wheat, Milk, Mushrooms, Shellfish. 

I appreciate Home Chef’s upfront approach to individual dietary needs. It eliminates the need for subscribers to sift through the weekly recipe offerings, to avoid certain ingredients. 

You will be asked to provide your mailing address, as well as to choose which day of the week you would like to receive your meals. You have the option to change this anytime. On this page, you will be given a special offer of $10 off your second box when you place your order within the minute. 

On the following page, you’ll see your order summary. You’ll apply a gift card voucher or discount code (first-time customers only). At this time, you will then place your first order. Home Chef notifies you that you will be charged for your first delivery upon placing the order. All future deliveries will be charged the Friday before your order arrives. Subscribers have the option to skip future deliveries only if done by Friday before the delivery date at Noon (Central Time). 

After payment, you’ll be directed to your delivery calendar page. You’ll see your options for meals to be delivered on your selected date. There will be 3 pre-selected recipes. You will be able to change this and re-select your own. A photograph will be shown of each meal offering, along with the name of the recipe. Allergy labels will be clearly listed under each photograph. You have the ability to view each recipe prior to selection. I appreciate this feature as the recipe cards give you an idea of the portion size, time spent on preparation and cooking. 

Home Chef also offers additional items such as a Fruit Basket and Smoothies, for an additional charge of $4.95 per serving. 

How Much Does It Cost?

“All Home Chef meals are priced at $9.95 per serving. Featured premium dishes are sold at market price. Delivery is free for orders over $45! Shipping is $10 for orders less than $45.” -Home Chef 

How do I Cancel? 

If you wish to cancel Home Chef, you simply pause your account online and this cancels your subscription. 

Delivery & Unboxing

This morning, my Home Chef box arrived on my doorstep. I’m totally excited to not have to plan out any meals for the next 3 days! I ordered 3 meals for 2 people. It came neatly packaged and was cold upon opening the box. On top of the box were my three recipes, underneath the recipes were two cold packs, and the interior of the box was encased with insulation to keep the food inside from spoiling. The three meals were placed within their own zip lock like plastic bags, with the name of the recipe clearly labeled. One canned item was loosely placed in the box, most likely due to the possibility that it could have damaged other ingredients within its recipe bag. 

Upon removing the bags of food you see a piece of cardboard that is covering three additional three cold packs. If you’re not careful, you may not realize that there are more items under these cold packs - items being the most integral part of some of the meals - the meat! The cardboard did state “Quality Ingredients Below” however, in my opinion, it should be labeled in bolder font or color. It would be an awful mistake for someone to throw away part of their meal if they were in a rush unloading their box. 

A rather pleasant surprise was to find a white three-ringed plastic binder with the Home Chef logo, placed in the siding of the box. I love this addition, as I’ve collected so many recipe cards from various meal delivery services, and they have been stuffed into my office desk. Home Chef has been the first, I’ve experienced to provide a solution to organize your recipe collection from a meal subscription service. Now Home Chef has a spot on my kitchen shelf, and I can revisit my favorite recipes whenever I’d like. 

Stay tuned for my reviews of the recipes inside this week’s Home Chef box.