I Tried Home Chef's Skinnytaste Meals—Here's Why They're Perfect for Families Who Want to Eat Clean

If eating clean is one of your New Year's resolutions, Home Chef's collaboration with Skinnytaste author, recipe developer, and mother of two Gina Homolka is an excellent way to ease into healthy cooking. This month, Home Chef customers can add up to three Skinnytaste recipes to their orders each week. The company sent me three different Skinnytaste meals, and the portion sizes, flavor, and ingredient freshness was on point.

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What Is Home Chef?

Home Chef is a meal delivery service that makes it easy for busy families to sit down and enjoy a quality meal. Even former Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson and her husband, Andrew East, said Home Chef was "the miracle we needed" after giving birth to their newborn girl. The parents of two love how health conscious the recipes are and how easy the company makes it to whip up a home-cooked meal within their busy schedule.

Home Chef's menu features around 20 different options every week, including 15-minute meal kits, oven-ready entrées, and under-one-hour dishes. Plus, Home Chef offers lots of flexibility to make your meal subscription as stress-free as possible. You can pause, skip, and cancel orders as well as swap (think: Impossible Burger instead of ground beef) or double up on proteins.

When designing your weekly meal plan, you can receive between two and six recipes to feed two, four, or six people. The website says that one adult serving equals two kid-size servings (which I stand behind), so you can make your selection based on how big of eaters your kids are and if you like to have leftovers. As far as pricing goes, Home Chef costs between $50 and $332 each week (including shipping), which is about $9 per serving. Right now, you can save $90 across your first four deliveries automatically at checkout.

Home Chef and Skinnytaste Collaboration

Eating healthy doesn't mean you have to sacrifice flavor, and that's exactly what Skinnytaste author Gina Homolka has been preaching to her readers since 2008. Homolka has published several best-selling cookbooks and has her own website, Skinnytaste.com, that you've probably come across while searching for recipes online, considering it's reached more than 17 million people.

Home Chef and Skinnytaste teamed up last year and received so much positive feedback that they decided to collaborate again this month. Home Chef's weekly menu regularly features calorie- and carb-conscious meal options, but January's lineup has even more balanced options thanks to the Skinnytaste recipes. There are Skinnytaste oven-ready meals that are as easy as throwing prepped ingredients in the included aluminum foil pan as well as Skinnytaste meal kits that require a little more effort, like chopping vegetables and searing steak in a pan.

My Experience

Like a lot of people, I make an extra effort to clean at the beginning of the new year. The holidays are filled with sweets and comfort food, which I thoroughly enjoy, but I always look forward to January as a time to fuel my body with foods that make me feel good long term. When I heard about Home Chef's partnership with Skinnytaste, I was so excited to start off 2022 with under-500-calorie, chef-crafted meals delivered to my doorstep. And after trying three of the Skinnytaste options, I'm telling everyone I know to sign up for Home Chef ASAP.

The three Home Chef Skinnytaste meals I tried were Mahi-Mahi Florentine, Chicken with Mushroom-Shallot Sauce, and Jumbo Turkey Meatball Bake. Each dish had two servings, one for me and one for my fiancé, and featured flavors from familiar favorites with much healthier ingredients and ultra-satisfying portions. Sometimes healthy cooking seems limited to chicken and vegetables, but these recipes reminded me how much more you can do with your meals. Other Skinnytaste meals on January's menu include Basil-Parmesan Crusted Salmon and Baked Chicken Parmesan.

Mahi-Mahi Florentine: This meal combined two of my favorite foods: seafood and potatoes. I usually don't pair those two dishes together, but now I know it's a winning combination. The mahi-mahi filet's topping was an easy and delicious way to sneak in vegetables. The sauce featured sauteed spinach and bell peppers, plus light cream cheese and parmesan. The whole meal took about 40 minutes to make (I left my potatoes in the oven longer so they were extra crispy) and provided 43 grams of protein in a 480-calorie portion.

Chicken with Mushroom-Shallot Sauce: This dish was very tasty, but, honestly, I wasn't super impressed with it, considering the price per serving. The chicken was incredibly flavorful and better than my usual basic oven-baked recipes, but the rice was kind of bland and took a lot more effort cooking it on the stovetop than the microwavable pouches I always have on hand. Since mushrooms might not be everyone's cup of tea, this recipe makes it super easy to leave them off of any family members' plates. You can simply leave the chicken plain and give mushroom lovers a little extra sauce. Each adult serving had 470 calories and 41 grams of protein.

Jumbo Turkey Meatball Bake: This oven-ready meal was exactly what I needed at the end of a busy workday. It had a perfect balance of protein and vegetables, featuring hearty-yet-lean turkey meatballs and a mix of broccoli and red peppers. The meatballs were very large (one would be plenty for a child), and there was the right amount of sauce and cheese. I loved the side of vegetables, as I'm trying to eat more veggies right now, but the meatballs would also be amazing on top of chickpea pasta. One adult portion had 470 calories and 40 grams of protein.

Bottom Line

Signing up for a meal delivery service is the best way to get started on your goal of eating healthier as a family. You get to skip the meal planning, grocery shopping, and food prepping and then still provide everyone with a nutrient-rich dinner. Home Chef is an excellent choice for families because it has flexible plans, a versatile menu, and oven-ready recipes that require zero prep. Its collaboration with Skinnytaste is the perfect time to try Home Chef because there are additional healthy options on the menu this month. There is a limited-time $90 discount across your first four deliveries, so hurry and place your order today.