Updated on Dec. 19, 2024
It might be a favorite among food celebrities, but Home Chef is very much made for its namesake: the average home chef. Our shopping editor attests in this full Home Chef review.
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Some people might consider meal kit delivery services a cop-out—only for lazy or uninspired home cooks. (“How hard is it to create your own meal plan?”) But Tieghan Gerard, cookbook author and creator of Half Baked Harvest, as well as Rachael Ray, iconic celebrity chef, beg to differ—at least when it comes to their Home Chef reviews. Both of these big food names have partnered with Home Chef in the past or present to offer their own recipes through the delivery service.
Call me a sucker, but these food celebrity endorsements certainly piqued my interest. (I’ll admit: Gordon Ramsay is the reason I tried and now swear by HexClad pans.) I can’t say famous chefs have backed any of the other myriad meal kit delivery services I’ve tried, save for Martha Stewart’s company, Marley Spoon. So, naturally, I had to order a box of Home Chef to see firsthand if we can trust all this fuss.
Home Chef, much like its competitors HelloFresh and Dinnerly, is a meal kit service that promises the delivery of fresh, quality ingredients for fun, new recipes straight to your door. These can be recipes for lunches or dinners, depending on which you choose. There is also an array of pre-made offerings to add on to boxes, such as egg bites, single-serving desserts, salad kits and a la carte proteins.
The Home Chef name might ring a bell, especially if you frequent Kroger grocery stores. Kroger owns Home Chef, which is stocked at select stores for one-off purchases, giving it an edge over other meal kit services.
EMIKO FRANZEN FOR TASTE OF HOME
Home Chef, backed by food celebs and thousands of happy customers, offers 30-plus new and exciting meals for the whole family each week.
Home Chef claims to be “endlessly customizable,” and it begins to back up that claim as soon as you register on the website. First, users can enter their nutritional or dietary preferences (i.e., calorie-conscious, vegetarian or keto-friendly), then their foods to avoid (i.e., pork, tree nuts, shellfish), whether for health or personal reasons.
From there, you select the number of recipes and the number of servings per recipe you’d like each week. Order between two and six recipes per week, with yields of either two, four or six servings. Next up is your billing information, and then comes the fun part: choosing the contents of your box.
Once the menu of 40-plus recipes pops up, you can click the “View Customize It Options” button to further personalize the recipe for you and your family. For example, one of the recipes I ordered was the Italian-style wedding soup with sausage. I had the option to double the amount of Italian sausage or swap out the protein for ground turkey, beef or plant-based meat. Most of the customization options entail swapping out the protein or eliminating it altogether.
When your box of handpicked recipes arrives, you’ll find the different makings divided into separate plastic bags. Deliveries take place Sunday through Friday. The proteins all show up in a singular plastic bag to keep them separated. Lastly, there are comprehensive recipe cards that include an internal temperatures chart for proteins, a recipe spice and difficulty level, when-to-cook-by date, cook/prep time, step-by-step instructions and more. Note: You need to go online to see the nutritional facts.
I love it when a meal kit takes a complicated-sounding recipe and proves that it’s simple. Cooking and “pattying” salmon from raw and making a from-scratch hollandaise sauce might seem intimidating, but you’ll quickly be proven wrong. This is one of Home Chef’s expert-level recipes, and that’s certainly reflected in the overall time commitment and multiple steps. In all, this recipe took me 40 minutes to make, and it was estimated to take between 40 and 50 minutes.
The salmon patties were fabulous. I got all the flavor notes: lemon, salt, creme fraiche, dill. The hollandaise and fresh herbs on top made all the difference, and I thankfully didn’t have too much trouble getting the patties to stay together while cooking. I even repurposed them the next day into a lox-inspired lunch with cream cheese and butter crackers.
The potatoes, on the other hand, left me a little underwhelmed. I cooked them for 25 minutes, rather than the quoted 15 to 20 minutes, and they still weren’t crispy. I think the potatoes could’ve been cut smaller and/or cooked at a higher temperature. Additionally, the chimichurri seasoning wasn’t very flavorful. The marinated feta on top was definitely the saving grace!
Although the potatoes were a bit disappointing, this recipe still proved to me that no one should be intimidated by a Home Chef meal labeled as difficult. There might be more dishes at the end of the night, but the instructions are easy to follow and the ingredients are high quality.
Next-level lunch alert! I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this meal for dinner, as it might feel a little lacking, but for an office lunch or small supper, especially on the fly, it was awesome. It took me 19 minutes to make and generated very few dirty dishes. It’s what I’d call a true one-skillet meal. Essentially all that was required of me was chopping a few veggies (red bell pepper and green onions), then browning and sauteing the ingredients in batches in a single pan.
The aforementioned produce, coleslaw and ground pork were fresh and first rate. Plus, the pre-made sauce saved time and packed a punch of flavor. However, I noticed I received white wine vinegar instead of the listed seasoned rice vinegar, but as far as I’m concerned, it didn’t affect the final outcome.
Although I would’ve liked some more textural variety (maybe a more substantial crispy noodle) and heat (this recipe is listed as spicy but falls a bit short), it was so easy, I can hardly complain. This is touted as one of Home Chef’s “express” meals—and to me, it was a major success.
I saved the best for last! This Italian-style wedding soup was a knockout, and I really appreciated the inclusion of the garlic ciabatta bread. I’ve ordered soup from other meal kit services, and it has served as the standalone dish, leaving the meal feeling incomplete to me. The perfectly garlicky, tender-on-the-inside-crispy-on-the-outside bread rounded things out.
My only note about this soup is that the sausage meatballs were a bit on the large side. I ended up cutting them in half with my spoon while eating. During preparation, I formed the sausage into 22 meatballs, as instructed, and, in my opinion, the chunks were still too overpowering in each bite. But that’s only because they had so much flavor. I adored how fennel-forward they were. Everything else was perfection. The kale was tender, the pre-cut(!) carrots were a huge time-saver, and the onion and celery were a smart means of bulking up each bowl.
Although there was some downtime while the soup simmered and the bread baked, the preparation of this soup as a whole made a lot of sense to me. By cooking the orzo, browning the meatballs and simmering the soup all in one pot, hardly any dirty dishes were created. Not counting the time it took to preheat the oven, boil the water or wash the dishes, this restaurant-worthy meal took me 42 minutes to make.
We originally wrote and published this piece in 2022. Since then, we’ve tested this service again to ensure our opinion remains current. Secondary tester Sydney Manning isn’t new to Home Chef. As a former subscriber, she already has a positive impression of the service.
“I’ve used Home Chef before and have canceled it since, but I still go back to the digital cookbook that’s on my account to re-create yummy meals that I remember liking from when we had the subscription,” she says. This time around, she tried a few new dishes: roasted garlic butter sirloin, one-pan Acapulco-style steak quesadillas, one-pot zesty chicken chowder, lemon Rockefeller scallop penne, pan-seared caprese gnocchi and cherry chipotle brisket tacos.
Her favorite dish this time around? The cherry chipotle brisket tacos. “Delicious,” she says. “I loved this meal—it was perfect for lunch. I personally love corn, so I really enjoyed having the corn slaw in this dish. The sauce had some spice to it, but I personally like spice, so this was great for me. If you don’t want as much spice, I wouldn’t add all the barbecue sauce.”
Most people’s main concern with meal kits is the freshness of the ingredients, particularly the proteins and the produce. Based on my Home Chef review, I found the delivery of produce and meat to be very good quality.
Thanks to the ice packs, the kit arrived cold. The produce, such as the bell pepper, green onions, herbs and kale, was in amazing shape—free of browning, bruising or wilting. Similarly, the salmon, Italian sausage and ground pork looked, smelled, and, perhaps most importantly, tasted fresh.
Personally, I found Home Chef meals are not cheaper than my groceries. Meals range from $9.99 to $11.99 per serving, depending on how many are ordered, meaning a box is at least $48. I am very thrifty at the grocery store, and I spend about $80 per week for my two-person household.
By the time I supplemented a Home Chef box with breakfast items, lunch food, store-bought snacks, etc., from the supermarket, my weekly grocery expenses would be well over $80. However, someone who shops at a higher-end grocery store or consistently dines out might find Home Chef to be a money-saver.
Home Chef subscriptions are easy to adjust or cancel at any time. Simply visit your account page on the Home Chef website and choose to either cancel or suspend your subscription for as long as you like.
I’ve tried meal kits from six companies at this point, and truthfully, they’re incredibly comparable. Many source ingredients from the same distributors. Most are around the same price. And a large percentage offers a similar variety of recipes, sorted by equally similar filters.
Although a few meal kit services are cheaper than Home Chef (like EveryPlate), the cost is fairly on par with that of Green Chef, Blue Apron and others. Home Chef’s ingredients stack up to those of its competitors, too. Even though there weren’t as many explicitly name-brand items included with my meals, Home Chef made up for it with the standout freshness of the produce and meat.
The main ways in which Home Chef differentiates itself from the rest are its in-store availability, its celebrity collaborations (who doesn’t want a shortcut Half Baked Harvest meal for dinner?) and its slightly increased levels of customization. Read more in our Home Chef vs. HelloFresh breakdown.
My takeaway from these Home Chef reviews is that the brand’s ingredients are top tier, and its recipe cards accurately manage expectations. I loved all of the protein I received in my box, especially the Italian sausage. The quality of the ground pork for my spring roll bowls far surpassed the quality of ground pork I’ve received through other services. Moreover, the kale, dill and onion, in particular, were in immaculate shape.
Additionally, I’ve run into issues with meal kit services misquoting prep and cook times, presumably to boost the appeal of recipes, but Home Chef gives it to you straight. I’m not a professional by any stretch, but I was able to handily finish all three of my recipes in the allotted time. I received one easy, one intermediate and one expert recipe, and they all met those classifications. No surprises, just deliciousness!
After reading Home Chef reviews and conducting my own testing, I’d recommend this meal kit service to someone with a sizable food budget who’s looking to cut down on the time it takes to meal plan and prep. It would be great for young, busy singles or couples, as well as smaller families.
We back all meal delivery service reviews, including this Home Chef review, by testing from different Taste of Home team members with varying degrees of cooking expertise. Our testers’ needs, wants and budgets reflect those of the average shopper. We aren’t new to testing this product category, either. In addition to over a dozen meal kits, our team has reviewed meat and chicken delivery services like ButcherBox, Snake River Farms and Good Chop. Our testing extends to grocery services, like Misfits Market and Thrive Market, as well.
Product Tester and former editor Annamarie Higley oversees Taste of Home’s product testing team and daily operations in our testing lab. She and her team assess online trends, search traffic and audience engagement to determine which items warrant testing firsthand in our dedicated office space or our homes. This includes everything from kitchen appliances to beauty products to power tools. Knowing we sourced, saw and tested these products ourselves, readers can feel confident in our recommendations and, ultimately, secure in their purchases.
EMIKO FRANZEN FOR TASTE OF HOME
Home Chef, backed by food celebs and thousands of happy customers, offers 30-plus new and exciting meals for the whole family each week.
Buy a box of Home Chef from the company’s website or individual meal kits from select Kroger stores. Boxes cost between $48 (for four weekly servings) and $360 (for 36 weekly servings). Prices of the in-store meal kits and Home Chef products vary. Who knew eating like a food celeb could be so accessible?!
