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Home Chef – Background
I’ve enjoyed the Home Chef experience and I would like to share it. I’m hoping to be an affiliate for Home Chef.
It all started last year on my birthday when my sister gifted me a very generous Home Chef gift certificate. It took me a while to activate it and with the current pandemic atmosphere, this is the best time.
Food delivery for my wife and myself, we chose the 3 meals a week for two people.
Our delivery date is on Monday and we typically pick the recipes that say it’s best to cook within 5 days.
The recipes are fairly straightforward (though I typically forget to add the salt!). We received a box with four separate bags. One with the protein and three zip-lock-type bags with handles with the ingredients for each meal.
This week, we received two types of chicken and one sausage. You need to be careful and match the correct protein to the correct dish.
The recipes shouldn’t be surprising, they aren’t a secret since they are displayed on the Home Chef website. And the ingredients are fresh and mostly ready to use (You might have to wash produce). It will tell you if you need salt, pepper, olive oil, or some other ingredient.
Sometimes they’ll provide you with the prepared sauces and flavorings (There is a lot of interest in the Home Chef Boom Boom Boom Shrimp Sauce ingredients).
Home Chef Cost
While the cost for our service (3 meals for 2 people) is about $50 a week, it’s a lot cheaper than eating out and we enjoy cooking and the sense of accomplishment that comes with it. And since it’s a gift, it’s that much nicer. Not dealing with the grocery stores or the higher grocery delivery prices is nice too. Not thinking about what ingredients to buy for three different tasty and flavorful meals lower the stress level too.
It’s a great idea for kids to get in the act. My 12-year-old nephew Maxwell has been promoted to the family chef and typically makes three meals a week which makes life easier on my sister.
And just last week, Grandma jumped on the bandwagon too. But the website and service were too confusing for her so she is stopping after two weeks.
The Home Chef Experience
I grabbed the gift voucher and then had filled out the account creation information including picking how many meals we wanted each week and for how many people. I didn’t enter the voucher information until the last page.
It set us up for 3 choice meals but I needed to change since my sweetheart is allergic to salmon. That’s when I realized I could add or substitute the meals. To substitute them, there were many options as different price points. The salmon was surprisingly in the lower price point.
We had up until Friday of that week to change our minds and pick other meals or skip the next week’s delivery that was scheduled for Monday.
I received the tracking information on Sunday for a FedEx Monday delivery. The food was delivered by 1 PM on Monday and it was kept in such a way that it was refrigerated. (Thankfully! Because chicken doesn’t like to be kept at room temperature).
Home Chef Cooking
Each recipe has proven to be good and flavorful and has been of the BYOB restaurant caliber. One of the meals, Chicken Porcini, had two thick chicken breasts. The recipe did not say to butterfly them or use a meat tenderizer (mallet) on them. As I was cooking and constantly checking the internal temperature to hit the magical 165 deg F point, I wished I had done either of those steps. I was worried the chicken would dry out (which is typical for me) but the chicken was juicy. I think that Home Chef brines their chicken (something that I normally don’t do).
Home Chef Tips
Here are some tips I learned along the way:
- Before starting the recipe, get out all of the supplied ingredients, and all of the unsupplied ingredients (I always overlook adding the salt and pepper!)
- Read the recipe card twice
- Make notes on the card. Next time you might want to try a different protein or way of preparing it. And since you have the card, you might want to buy the ingredients yourself next time.