By now we have probably all seen our favorite social media influencers do a sponsored post with HelloFresh, Blue Apron, Plated and more. Every I time I watch one of these I think, “that looks easy, but is it really fresh?” Something about sending fruits and vegetables and meat through the mail seems odd to me, but I suppose it has to be or thousands of people wouldn’t order it every week. When I watch the video clip or see the picture, I find myself doubting if the food is actually good or if they are just being paid so much they don’t care what they say.
Preston and I have seen the Real Home Chef section at Kroger all summer and have been so curious about it. We would look at the different meals every time we went, but get too intimidated to try it each time. It was finally the perfect occasion one night last week, and we picked up the ginger-scallion chicken with coconut carrots. They also had a steak meal and a shrimp meal, but we thought the chicken would be a good first try.
I really like that you can buy the meals and cook them within four nights. They are really easy to just run in and pick up, but buying one in advance would also be handy. The one we chose had two servings (not sure if they sell four serving kits in Kroger), but we were unsure the serving size would fill Preston up. I had some quinoa at home so we decided to make that to go with it.
We opened the kit up and got to work! It says it should only take 10-15 minutes, but as I am a new chef, I have not yet mastered the art of multi-tasking, and I would say it took me more around 25 minutes. It came with the chicken, green onions, carrots, coconut, ginger, teriyaki sauce and sesame oil. The nice part about this is the portions of each ingredient are exactly what you need so no measuring is required. I also hate buying something I am going to use for only one recipe like the coconut, ginger and sesame oil. This helps us save space in our small kitchen!
The meal kit assumes that you have the basics like salt and pepper, which I did, but somehow at my brother’s apartment (where I am staying this summer), I didn’t have any olive oil, which the recipe called for to heat in the pan with the carrots. Luckily I had butter, but I would just be aware that the meals call for salt, pepper and other basics in case you don’t have those!
The quality of the meat and vegetables was really nice. The chicken might be one of the best stove top chickens we have made! The sauce was delicious, and at first I didn’t think there was going to be enough of it, but it was the perfect amount. I don’t like coconut flakes, but the way they crunched with the carrots was actually delicious. Preston and I both took our first bites and immediately looked at each other because we were so surprised that it was good.
I don’t know why it took me so long to try these meal kits, but now I want to taste every meal! I kept the recipe card in case I want to make it again without buying the kit, but it’s one of the more popular ones at our Kroger so I would probably just buy the kit again.
I believe it was $16.99, and with the addition of our quinoa this meal totaled to just under $19. We probably couldn’t go to a sit down restaurant for that little, and I doubt that if I purchased full sizes of all those ingredients it would cost less than that– I haven’t researched that, but I am assuming.
That’s it for my review of Real Home Chef! Have you tried any meal service kits or are you a doubter like I was? Let me know by reaching out on Instagram! Once I get better at cooking I will try to do an Instagram story walk through of cooking one of the kits, but for now I don’t believe I can Instagram story while cooking, hah!
