Fresh & Easy in a Nutshell

Fresh and Easy lets you choose an even more convenient delivery service experience. All the meals are fully prepared and designed to be placed directly in a microwave, oven, salad bowl, or a grill or stovetop. Home Chef’s Fresh and Easy plan is a new addition to save you more time and effort.

What’s on the Menu?

Since the Fresh and Easy plan is geared toward ease of use and efficiency, the meal categories are based on their mode of preparation: 

• Fast & Fresh comes in a microwave safe dish
• Oven Ready includes a disposable, oven-friendly pan
• Grill Ready features a bag that can go directly on the grill
• 15 Minute Meal Kits come with materials for the stove-top, but mostly prepared
• And then there’s Entreé Salad, which merely requires a bowl for combining ingredients.

There are 25+ meal options each week, if you include the “Customize It” feature that lets you change the protein for certain meals. When selecting your meal plan, you can indicate if you would prefer meals that are calorie-conscious or carb-conscious and also if you would like to avoid any of a number of common allergens (like shellfish or tree nuts).

Sample Recipe:

Let’s take a closer look at one of their Oven-Ready meals: 

Bacon and Creamed Spinach Chicken with Green Beans

Cook and prep time is 35-45 minutes and you end up with two servings.  

In the box you get all the major ingredients plus a disposable tray.

From your own kitchen you need olive oil, salt, pepper, and a mixing bowl.  

The recipe is broken down into three basic steps: 1. Cook the green beans, 2. Add the chicken, and 3. Bake the Meal. But there are sub-steps and fairly detailed instructions with each step. 

• You need to preheat the oven and rinse the green beans. You use the tray provided to coat the green beans in garlic pepper and olive oil then cover them and bake for 15 minutes. 
• In the second step, you take the tray out and push the green beans aside to make room for all the other ingredients. You use your mixing bowl to make the cream sauce, then you put everything in the empty tray space: first spinach and bacon, then sauce, then chicken (“customize it” options include organic or antibiotic free boneless, skinless chicken breasts, or boneless pork chops). 
• You will bake everything for 25-30 minutes, or until the chicken’s internal temperature reaches 165 degrees Fahrenheit (presumably you need a meat thermometer to check this). Then you plate the chicken and green beans, stir the sauce to put on the chicken and add crispy fried onions to the green beans (a favorite and frequent Home Chef addition according to customer feedback). 

As far as recipes go, it’s certainly simple and straightforward, but slightly more complicated than just throwing a pan in the oven.

Plans, Prices & Delivery

As with Home Chef, you can order between two and six Fresh and Easy recipes a week for two, four, or six people. The cost is $6.99 per serving for standard meals (customizing can increase cost).

Delivery is possible Monday through Friday to 98% of the United States, but days may vary by location. Some of the products are also available in certain grocery stores if you want to pick them up in person. 

Every Monday you get an email with 20+ meal options and you select your meals by Friday at noon CST of that week. Before this deadline, you can also choose to skip or cancel deliveries for any reason. If you want less frequent deliveries, you can opt for a bi-weekly or monthly subscription.

Customer Service

Appropriately, it is easy to reach Customer Service either by email or phone. Under “FAQs & Support” you can click “Get in Touch” to send an email by completing a form on their website. Calling is also possible if you want to speak to a representative and a toll free number is available. We tried calling and they were quick to respond and quite friendly.

Overall Impression

Fresh and Easy makes its appeal very clear – same ingredients as Home Chef with less for you to do. Busy people will appreciate the quick preparation times and minimal clean-up requirements. With deliveries available 5 days a week to 98% of the US population, Home Chef delivered 10 million meals last year alone. Fresh and Easy can be accessed through the Home Chef website or mobile app. And, while it doesn’t cater to many particular diet plans, the meal options, from spaghetti bolognese to a spicy Korean-inspired beef and broccoli bowl, provide a good variety for a general diet.