After testing five meal subscription boxes, I’ve learned that they’re not that different. You get the box (some are doing a better job of making their packaging eco-friendly than others), you prepare the food, and you eat it. Do meal kits suddenly make you enjoy cooking if you’ve simply tolerated it before? In my case, no. But do they make dinnertime easier by removing the planning, shopping, and prepping? Yes. And for me, that’s the greatest benefit. Because of its ease of recipes, HomeChef really shined in this way.
When first signing up, you can select anywhere from two to six meals per week, plus you can choose recipes for two, four or six people. This provides quite a bit more flexibility than other programs I’ve tried. After selecting three meals for two people, you’re asked if you prefer meat, seafood, or vegetables. I opted for all three. You can then choose if you want low-cal or low-carb meals (I said no, but I probably should have said yes…). Finally, you can indicate items you’d like to avoid, such as pork, nuts, soy or wheat.
After noting if I wanted a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday delivery (I imagine this changes based on your location), I got to select my recipes. I chose French Onion Shrimp and Grits; Penne Pasta with Sun-Dried Tomato Cream; and Coq au Vin. A week before I was set to receive my box, I got an email saying that because of a supplier issue, the chicken for the Coq au Vin would be boneless. Because the recipe card was already printed with bone-in chicken, they included details for recipe variations in the email.
My box arrived as expected—and it was very similar to other boxes in terms of the recyclable ice packs and limited cardboard usage. Each recipe’s ingredients were placed in a recyclable plastic bag, which may be a little unnecessary, but was nice when I went to make a recipe and just had to pull a bag out of the fridge and had everything on hand.