Score Breakdown

Taste/results 7/10Value 9/10Ease of recipes 8/10Recipe variety 9/10Healthiness 7/10

Pros

• Recipes are highly customizable
• Boxes arrived organized with all the necessary ingredients
• Oven-ready meals require almost no prep
• You can easily skip a week at no cost or penalty
• Tons of speedy recipes that are easy to execute
• Website and ordering is easy

Cons

• Best value of any meal kit compared with grocery prices
• Very few options for vegetarians or vegans
• Some recipes are clunky and lack creativity
• Too much plastic is used in packaging
• $11 for shipping on every box

There’s a clear trend in the evolution of meal kits and it bends toward speedy meals. Nearly every service now has a section of its menu with recipes that can be made in under 30 minutes, some as quickly as 15. To find the best meal kit services, we tested every one we could get our oven mitts on. In doing so, we found a clear favorite for quick, uncomplicated meals that still taste great. 

As a busy person with mouths to feed, I appreciate speedy, simpler recipes. As a former recipe editor and seasoned meal kit tester at CNET, I also have high standards for meal kits. Ine service I’ve tried is best at threading the needle between convenience and quality,

Home Chef sets itself apart with dozens of meals that can be made in 20 minutes or less. The service also has some of the most customizable recipes, allowing you to swap one protein for another or replace meat with a plant-based alternative. And in a recent evaluation, we found that Home Chef offered the best value (tied with HelloFresh) compared with the cost of making the same meals with groceries bought at the store.

After two rounds of cooking meal kits from the popular subscription service, here’s a firsthand review of Home Chef. 

What is Home Chef, and how does it work?

In a sea of competitors, Home Chef has emerged as a leading meal kit delivery service, emphasizing flexible, customizable meal plans with speedy recipes tailored to your taste. The service launched in 2013, just a year after Blue Apron, and was acquired by grocery giant Kroger in 2018. 

Home Chef is a subscription service for weekly meal kits, so there is no option to buy just one or two meal kits online. New customers sign up via the website or app, and a short quiz helps determine which meal plan is best for you, as well as which recipes and ingredients should be avoided. 

Then you’ll choose the number of recipes per week — as few as two or as many as six — as well as how many servings you’d like per recipe: two, four or six. Subscribers can choose their own meals each week or let the Home Chef team pick them. 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 meal plan selection and ordering process simple, clear and intuitive. When selecting meal kits, a major differentiator between Home Chef and others is the ability to swap the protein in just about any recipe. Alternative ingredients include several steak cuts, chicken, shrimp, scallops, mahi mahi and Impossible meat. Certain premium swaps will incur a few-buck upcharge, while others won’t.

Meals are delivered once a week in neatly packaged cooler boxes, with each ingredient pre-portioned in separate plastic bags and ready to be cooked. In our first delivery, we also received a small Home Chef binder designed to keep your recipe pages for future use when you want to recreate meals, which was a nice touch. Meals should be made within a few days of arrival, as many ingredients are not suitable for freezing. 

What Home Chef meals are like

Home Chef keeps things approachable — meals are straightforward to cook and don’t demand much culinary know-how. The service caters to a broad audience, leaning into comfort food and dishes that feel familiar on an American dinner table. 

Expect plenty of classics: burgers with potatoes, baked chicken or pork tenderloin with vegetables and a savory sauce, pasta, teriyaki steak with peppers over rice, and keto pork lettuce wraps. That said, the menu isn’t without its more inventive options — prosciutto and butternut chowder or bruschetta shrimp risotto, for instance, offer a bit more culinary ambition.

Home Chef offers premium meals, which it calls 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 the premium meal 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 a cost) if you’re feeling fancy. Below is an overview of Home Chef’s meal categories. 

• Culinary Collection: Premium meal kits with higher-quality ingredients.
• Express: Ready in 15 minutes or less.
• Fast & Fresh: Oven-ready meals that require almost no prep.
• Oven-Ready: Meals that arrive in an oven-ready tray.
• Family: Dishes available only in four-plus servings.
• Plus: Include premium ingredients and recipes.
• Tempo*: Premade meals (heat-and-eat)

Read more: Purple Carrot Review: Healthy Plant-Based Cooking Made Simple

Home Chef is great for speedy meals

The meals we tried were easy to prepare, which is one of the calling cards for the meal kit service. Home Chef offers quick-fire meals made with fresh, pre-portioned ingredients that take just 15 minutes or so to prepare. There are more complicated dinner projects that can take up to 45 minutes, but I loved how easy it was to make Home Chef’s quickfire recipes and I liked nearly all of the ones I whipped up. 

It’s up to you which types of meals you’d like to have sent, but beware: if you let Home Chef choose your meals, you might get some 45-minute meals in your box.

Our Flex Editor received two simple meals to try: a baked chicken dish and burgers with carrots and fries. They were both extremely easy to prepare and tasty, and she had no qualms about the quality of the meat or produce. In fact, it was even her first time making burgers, and she considered it a success. 

Because the simple chicken dish was a one-pan meal, it allowed plenty of time to clean up any small messes made during preparation while the dish baked in the oven. She appreciated how seamless the recipes were. For example, she made the tomato topping for the chicken while the veggies baked, so there was no wasted time between steps.

If you want something even simpler, though, there is also a category of oven-ready meals that require only assembling the fresh ingredients in an aluminum baking tray (provided) and popping it into the oven with almost no chopping or prep. These are about as quick and easy as meal kits get, but your bragging rights for a home-cooked meal stay firmly intact. Some meals labeled express plus take only 20 or 30 minutes to prepare, and those labeled family meals can be assembled simply in one pot and are designed to feed up to six people.

Support materials

Each meal kit comes with a comprehensive description, nutritional facts, prep time and a recipe card with ingredients and directions. It was especially nice to have a section on the recipe card that detailed what ingredients would be used more than once, so you’re aware beforehand of what you might need to preserve. 

The recipe card features a nice, big, glossy image so you can visualize the dish and know what to aim for, plus photos for each step of the process. There’s also a Home Chef mobile app that’s helpful and easy to use. All Home Chef recipes can be found online in a pinch. The instructions for each dish I made were easy enough to follow, but at times, a bit wordy. Home Chef tends to provide more information than the average home chef needs, perhaps with true beginners in mind.

Our wellness editor wishes that Home Chef provided more information about where the produce and other ingredients come from, or at least what they are made of. For instance, when making the elotes quesadillas, to see what was in the Chipotle crema, she had to look at the nutrition facts online.

Home Chef allows you to swap proteins easily 

Home Chef’s big claim to fame is that its meal kits and plans are highly customizable to suit you or your family’s rhythm. You can swap or upgrade the protein in most of the weekly meals. If a meal includes a “customize it” button, you can swap the chicken for pork, for instance. Some proteins, like salmon, steak and plant-based proteins, trigger an up-charge of $3 or $4 per portion. 

Who is Home Chef good for?

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

Don’t expect many plant-based options

Our wellness editor, a 20-year vegetarian who often eats plant-based foods, tried three vegetarian meals from Home Chef. While they were tasty, the meals were all on the more indulgent side with plenty of cream and cheese. As a result, this would not be a good fit for vegans, as Home Chef doesn’t offer vegan recipes. She also doesn’t think Home Chef would be a good choice for vegetarians seeking healthier, non-comfort-food options.

Is Home Chef healthy?

Though Home Chef offers calorie-conscious, carb-conscious and vegetarian meals, based on the three vegetarian meals our wellness editor tried, she wouldn’t say Home Chef is healthy. She wishes her recipes had less cream, cheese and pasta, with more of a focus on healthy grains and produce. However, this depends on the recipes you get and your dietary preferences. As a result, she recommends checking the nutrition facts for each recipe online.

How much does Home Chef cost?

Home Chef’s meal kits are purchased per kit, and you can order up to 6 per week. The per-serving price is $10 to $12 for nearly every plan. The larger plans cost $10 while the smallest — two meals with two servings each — costs $12. This puts Home Chef right in the middle when compared with other services. Home Chef is a few bucks more expensive per serving than Blue Apron and EveryPlate, but cheaper than premium services like Sunbasket, Marley Spoon and Green Chef. 

New customers get 30% off their first order, which brings the price down to $7 per serving, plus free shipping (which is originally $11 per delivery, one of the more expensive surcharges of any meal kit service) and the service offers frequent discounts and promotions that could bring the price of your box down.

What I cooked and how it went

The three of us cooked 11 Home Chef recipes. Ingredients arrived fresh and intact with no spills or spoilage. Most of the meals I made were sufficient, and some were better. But a few proved a bit clunky or overly simple and not worth the cost, especially since you can buy the same ingredients for about 50% less (I did the math). 

Here’s a full breakdown. 

Piri Piri chicken topped with feta and fried onions: The only real labor in this recipe was prepping the fresh green beans before baking them with the chicken. It was a huge hit.

Keto BBQ pork lettuce wraps with spicy slaw and fried onions: Fresh and flavorful, this was one of the best, simple meal kits I’ve ever made. 

One-pot pork chili con carne with bacon bits: This pork chili seemed overly simple at first, but turned out to be one of the best of the bunch. Let’s just say I will be adding bacon to my chili from here on out. 

Sweet potato bowl with poblano pepper and cilantro-lime rice: This recipe was very clunky and definitely not worth the per-serving price. The poblano was far too big. I only added three-quarters of it after dicing, and the finished dish was still way too hot, even for a spice lover like me.

Moo shu pork tacos: This recipe was a 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. 

Keto-friendly pork-stuffed peppers: I liked these low-carb Italian-style peppers just fine, but, again, with such simple ingredients, it’s hard to stomach paying $10 to $12 per serving.

Honey sriracha chicken with crispy wontons was an oven-ready meal, meaning all I really had to do was assemble the chicken breast, precut 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 tender, while the vegetables kept their snap. 

Bruschetta shrimp risotto: This recipe 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 a delicious meal in the end. I might have wanted a bit more detailed instruction on tending to the risotto, especially if I were a beginner learning the ropes of the rice dish.

Minecraft mushroom fields beef burger with truffle potato and carrot “torch” fries: This recipe was our Flex Editor’s introduction to burger-making, and she was thoroughly pleased with how they turned out. And you can’t go wrong with pairing a burger with fries, but the carrots were a nice addition. The kit provided enough beef for four burgers, and the produce and ingredients were all fresh. Although it was a fairly simple meal, the simple mushroom sauce helped fancy it up and added a tasty flavor. 

Sheet pan tomato salsa chicken with roasted butternut squash: This meal was even simpler than the burgers, as it was a one-pan dish that required minimal prep and cleanup, making it an ideal weeknight dinner for a busy household. The chicken was tasty, but the cutlets were much thinner than the photo Home Chef provided, so it wasn’t the most filling dinner. 

Vegetarian Home Chef recipes

Mexican-style elotes quesadillas: While our wellness editor found this recipe simple to make in about 35 minutes and delicious, it was on the more indulgent side. Though each serving was 610 calories, it contained 71% of the daily value for salt and 80% of the daily value for saturated fat. As a result, our wellness editor went light on the salt, cheese and crema. She also added pinto beans for more variety and fiber.

Cozy gnocchi soup: Again, while tasty, this recipe was on the heavier side with a cream sauce base, Parmesan cheese and gnocchi. Our wellness editor had trouble finishing the dish because it was so filling. It also contained 80% of the daily value of sodium, so she was careful not to add extra salt during cooking.

Cheesy baked spinach rigatoni: Like the other two vegetarian meals, this was on the heavier side with the cream sauce base, butter, Swiss cheese and a French roll. It was tasty, but after two other indulgent meals, our wellness editor wanted something a bit lighter and more produce-forward.

Home Chef packaging and environmental friendliness

In a previous study, Home Chef received the worst green score among four major meal kit services tested for plastic waste in their packaging. Each recipe is housed in its own plastic bag, and there are numerous small plastic bags and containers within them. Besides the excessive plastic associated with each meal, most of the rest of the packaging is recyclable, including the boxes, insulation sheets and ice packs. 

Our wellness editor thought that Home Chef could do a better job packaging its ingredients, since some of the same ingredients were repackaged two or three times for one recipe. Personally, she also found the binder to be a waste because it’s not something she needs in her kitchen and would have preferred the recipe cards on their own. (However, if you plan to stick with Home Chef for a long time, she acknowledges that the binder could be nice to have on hand.) Similar to other meal kits she’s tested, she wishes there were more biodegradable or compostable packing, or a method of sending the ice packs back for reuse.

The final verdict on Home Chef

This user-friendly service struck a fair balance with consistently good meal kits that were unpretentious and easy to prepare. I appreciate the ability to change proteins in nearly any recipe, and I’m sure families with picky eaters will, too. This time around, most of the meal kits I prepared were good or better, even if one or two were bland or uninspired. The produce was fresh, and the boxes arrived organized and without missing items.

In our most recent tests, Flex Editor Corin Cesaric, a self-proclaimed amateur cook, found the ease and speed of her two meals refreshing. As for Anna Gragert, our wellness editor and a vegetarian of 20 years, she found that Home Chef isn’t the best meal kit service for vegetarians or vegans.

Compare that with Blue Apron or Marley Spoon, two meal kit services we’ve tested that offer high-end recipes such as bistro steaks and roasted trout, but cost more than Home Chef. Blue Apron and other meal kit services also don’t allow for as much customization as Home Chef. If that’s important for you and the crew you’re feeding, Home Chef could be the right fit to make your dinner routine a breeze. 

Watch this: How to Cook a Whole Chicken in an Air Fryer in 60 Minutes

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