Kits in the kitchen
Store-bought meal packages make life easier for busy single dad
Germantown - How I became the chief, and then only, cook in the family isn’t necessarily pleasant. ❚ My wife died two years ago after a spirited 61⁄2-year fight with ovarian cancer, leaving me two preteen boys to raise. Not just a single parent, I became an only parent on a sunny June morning. ❚ Along the way on this journey, it dawned on me that even when happily-ever-after goes haywire, you still have to eat. ❚ For years, friends and family brought meals to the house on a rotating schedule. This was nourishing, life-sustaining food amid a dizzying series of major surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation and, ultimately, hospice care. ❚ We might have been facing a life-shattering illness, but we sure didn’t go hungry. ❚ Even after the funeral, those meals kept coming, providing sustenance amid staggering grief. ❚ But there comes a point when taking advantage of such overwhelming kindness becomes just that: taking advantage.
It was time for the three of us to venture out on our own. The boys took food classes at Kennedy Middle School in Germantown. I tried new recipes. We were successful to a point. Like so many other busy families, scheduling cooking time around practices, games, student council, work, laundry, etc., while still trying to get a few hours of sleep at night, was nothing short of impossible.
A deer hunter, I can cook up some pretty good venison dishes. But time is my enemy. I might be able to make a venison Stroganoff or goulash on the weekend that gets us through the first part of a week.
The rest of the week, well, we’ve had breakfast cereal for dinner a couple of times. I’m not proud of it, but It happened.
I am not alone. The Pew Research Center says its survey research indicates balancing work and family poses challenges for parents. “In fact, more than half (56%) of all working parents say this balancing act is difficult,” the organization says. (“Difficult” is putting it mildly.)
Which is why the meal kits sold at a couple nearby grocery stores caught my attention recently.
Meal kits are not new. There are a number of different services and brands on the market. What is relatively new about them is their expanding role in the aisles of the local grocery store.
But can they be a solution for time-starved families who face the constant challenge of putting nutritious food on the table?
For us, the answer is yes. We tried a couple of kits purchased at two local grocery stores and liked what we ate.
Home Chef teriyaki chicken
Kroger, the Cincinnatibased grocer that is the world’s third largest retailer, operates the Pick ’n Save, Metro Market and Copps stores in Wisconsin.
In May, Kroger purchased Chicago-based meal kit company Home Chef for $200 million.
Home Chef meal kits have been initially rolled out in the company’s Wisconsin and Illinois stores. The Home Chef products will eventually be rolled out in Kroger markets across the U.S.
“This is really a big opportunity for us to get in front of a lot more customers,” said Pat Vihtelic, founder and CEO of Home Chef.
The Home Chef kits include portioned, packaged ingredients with a step-by-step recipe card with pictures and bullet points.
Vihtelic said he founded the company after seeing a void in the marketplace. “There were companies in Europe playing in a similar space,” but not necessarily in the U.S., Vihtelic said.
“I looked at the market a little over five years ago and really saw that there was no one taking a mainstream familiar approach to cuisine,” he said. “Some other players in the market have really been more focused on kind of exotic or adventurous cuisine.
“I really saw an opportunity to put meals together that were approachable with a little bit of a twist on them so you really feel like you are eating a restaurantquality meal but doing it in the comfort of your home and saving yourself some time in the process.”
The meals are designed by a chef and then rigorously tested. “For every 100 recipes we design, we only end up putting 10 in front of our customer base ultimately,” Vihtelic said.
The Teriyaki Chicken Thighs with Smoked Almonds meal kit purchased for $16.99 at the Germantown Pick ’n Save came complete with all the ingredients needed to make the meal, including boneless, diced chicken thighs, green beans, rice, smoked almonds, seasoned rice vinegar, brown sugar, teriyaki sauce, green onions and sriracha. (Not included in the kit but also required for the recipe were olive oil, salt and pepper and a couple tablespoons of water. I had all of those ingredients on hand already.)
This kit requires some rudimentary cooking skills, including slicing the green onions and cutting the ends off the green beans. The rice had to be cooked properly, and I used a meat tenderizing hammer to break the almonds into smaller pieces suitable for a teenager with braces on his teeth. The brown sugar, rice vinegar, teriyaki sauce and water had to be combined and reduced slightly.
The instructions were clear and easy to follow. The prep time on the package said 30 minutes, but I got it done in about 25.
The portioned ingredients meant there was no food waste.
The $16.99 kit said it was a meal for two, so I bought and made two kits, figuring I would need that to feed three people and whoever else happened to show up for dinner. Invariably, one of the boys’ friends will be over and the question is, “Can (insert name here) stay for dinner?”
The portions in the kits were quite generous, with enough left over to feed three of us for another complete meal the next night. One kit would have sufficed for the three of us. If you have older teenagers, two kits would be needed.
The verdict? The teriyaki chicken garnered rave reviews. (My oldest, who generally considers all vegetables poisonous, actually commented that the green beans were “pretty good.”)
Total cost for two kits was $33.98, and that got us two dinnertime meals.
The company is also expanding its offerings, introducing Home Chef Express, which has a 15-minute prep time vs. 30 minutes.
“It’s always going to be an evolving product offering to some extent because consumer preferences are evolving very rapidly,” Vihtelic said.
“It really feels like we have an actual opportunity to change the way Americans eat,” he added. “It’s going to be a lot of fun over the next several years building that.”