The words home-cooked meal conjure up ideas of something delicious, hearty, and healthy. The reality can be far from it, though, with a lack of time to shop for ingredients, let alone prepare these meals on a daily basis. All too often, we reach for the takeaway menu instead.
It doesn’t have to be this way! With a great choice of meal delivery services available, we now have other options. The tasty and easy to follow recipes make home cooking much simpler.
With fresh ingredients coming straight to our door, our balanced meals now come with only little effort and much less stress.
The next question is, which service is right for me? There are different services to match different needs. It is all a case of finding the features and benefits that work for you.
We tried Fresh and Easy to find out what it has to offer. We’re sharing our thoughts in the hope that it will give you some insight into finding the right service and plan for you.
Overview
Fresh and Easy is the latest offering from the well-established Home Chef. They have gained a significant following with their signature collection, and now they have something new.
Fresh and Easy focuses on serving meals that are already prepped. There is no need for chopping, and the dish comes in a container that can go straight in the oven.
Like the other Home Chef services, the sign-up process for Fresh and Easy is intuitive. There are a few simple steps to establish your needs; these include how many you will cook for, how often you need meals, what you usually prefer to eat, and dietary preferences.
When it comes to what you prefer, you can pick between seafood, vegetables, meat, etc. Dietary preferences also cover any foods that you might want to avoid.
Next, you set up your shipping and payment information and schedule your first delivery. With the practical details out of the way, it is time to make some menu choices. Generally, you will have a choice of around 9 meals to choose from.
Each week you’ll be able to pick and choose to create your weekly plan. All meals will revolve around healthy, balanced meals that can be cooked in no time!
Fresh and Easy Menus
Home Chef has launched a meal delivery service with a difference. While many services have unique selling points, such as chef-designed menus or tailoring for dietary requirements, the Fresh and Easy plan takes it to a new level.
It is halfway house that delivers some cooked or oven-ready ingredients, but isn’t quite a takeaway, as meals still need to be assembled. It has real appeal for those who want to reduce washing up, have limited time, and don’t feel confident with complicated cooking tasks.
The Fresh and Easy meal delivery service is new on the scene. The full menu is still being determined, but we took a look at the sample menu and some dishes that caught our eye.
The meals can be reviewed in three sections: salads with no cooking involved, grill-bag dishes that are ready to cook, and oven-fresh meals.
You can expect tasty meals from Fresh and Easy, such as grilled salmon with salsa, Thai peanut steak salad, and pretzel-crusted chicken served with carrots. The star of the show was the delicious chicken parmesan penne.
The ingredients come in separate portions, ready to cook and assemble. You also receive the pan to cook all of your tasty ingredients in. We found this useful because it means your equipment won’t let you down, it is just the right size, and it is easy to prepare and clean up.
The finished dish was tasty and filling. We felt full and satisfied after this flavorsome dish and didn’t have that guilty feeling we sometimes get after takeaway food. The parmesan and panko breadcrumbs made an ordinary chicken breast into something special.
It was so simple to follow that we didn’t feel like anything could go wrong. In fact, it didn’t really feel like cooking, which will be a big plus for many.
Plans & Pricing
The Fresh and Easy plan from Home Chef is separate from their regular plans. It provides meals ready prepped for the oven or grill, as well as the components for tasty salads with precooked ingredients. The oven-ready meals come in a container that can go straight in the oven.
On the Fresh and Easy plan, you can choose between options that serve two, four, or six people. There is a wider range of recipe numbers per week than most other meal delivery service plans. Fresh and Easy offer 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 recipes per week. You can adjust the servings weekly, skip deliveries when needed, and cancel anytime.
Here are the different combinations and costs we checked out for our starter box:
|
2 people |
4 people |
6 people |
|
|
2 recipes |
$39.80 plus shipping |
$79.60 |
$119.40 |
|
3 recipes |
$59.70 |
$119.40 |
$179.10 |
|
4 recipes |
$79.60 |
$159.20 |
$238.80 |
|
5 recipes |
$99.50 |
$199.00 |
$298.50 |
|
6 recipes |
$119.40 |
$238.80 |
$358.20 |
Shipping
The two-person plan with 2 recipes a week includes a charge for the shipping of $10. Orders over $49 qualify for free shipping, which includes all other options we saw for the starter box.
Bottom Line
Fresh and Easy is sure to find popularity with its niche in the market. More than an effective meal delivery service, it is the biggest time saver we have seen on offer. It gave us an easy but effective way to make healthy meals a priority.
It was suitable for the most basic skills. If you can combine ingredients and operate an oven, Fresh and easy has you covered. The only side we missed was a little bit of creativity, but we think exploring the menu a bit more would give us a little satisfaction.
We loved how it took the fuss out of shopping, planning, and cooking.
Pros & Cons
Our Fresh and Easy plan made mealtime so simple! We loved the tasty meals we received. There was hardly any washing up, and the food was ready in a short amount of time. We missed getting creative in the kitchen, but we were happy with our choices.