I had the lucky opportunity to sample Chef’s Plate recently and am excited to tell you about them here.

If you’ve never heard of them, Chef’s Plate is a meal home delivery service in Toronto…with a twist. What I love about this is that YOU have to cook the food that gets delivered to you.

Why do I love that? Because I find it extremely empowering. We have become so far removed from our kitchens because we’re so busy, but this reliance on packaged foods or take-out is seriously damaging our health. Bringing us back into our kitchens is the key towards health. And in fact, it’s why the owners, Patrick Meyer and Jamie Shea created the company. They really wanted to fill a void they had in their own life, the constant knee-jerk reaction to take-out or prepared meals when someone mentioned dinner. With a want to learn how to cook, but no time to grocery shop each week or search for recipes, Chef’s Plate was born. Once the idea was formed, they both left their corporate jobs and began building Chef’s Plate. I love that. Resourceful and entrepreneurial. 

Most families these days have both people working outside the home, and so having a service like this takes the guess-work out of having to shop, having to troll for recipes or meal plan, and avoids pretty much any waste – like who needs 10 green onions anyway?

The concept is quite simple, you select your plan (there are 2 to chose from) depending on the size of your family and every week on a Monday you get your meal selections delivered to you in a nice little box complete with a fully insulated insert to keep the food fresh until you get home. 

Instead of a ready-made meal you pop in your oven, you get INGREDIENTS. And if you’ve been reading my blog, you know I’m a stickler for those. The ingredients are what makes us sick or makes us healthy. 

As part of this review I was given two meals to sample, I selected the salmon and their vegetable tagine. Their recipes change every week (which is also awesome) so you might not find these on the website if you check today.

On arriving home from work, I was excited to find their box and couldn’t wait for the kiddies to go to bed so that I could get into my kitchen and cook. 

I’ll admit, even though I’m a nutritionist, I’m also very busy, so any night I don’t have to think about what to prepare is a win in my book!

Once you open the box you will find all your ingredients nicely labeled along with recipe cards. Each recipe is packaged together so there is no mistaking this garlic for that dish. And each ingredient is measured exactly for that recipe. But, and this is the part I love, you’ve gotta get down and dirty. Don that apron, turn on your stove, pour a glass of really good wine and get chopping. 

The recipes were really easy to follow and with everything already pre-“packaged” there was no guesswork, or no “shit!! I forgot to buy the friggen cilantro!!”. I equate it to paint-by-numbers in the best way possible. Seriously, after a full day of work, and small kids to contend with, on a weeknight, EASY is what I want. I’ll save the complex Julia Child recipes for weekends.

The two meals I made were fabulous. I have a confession, I hate salmon. It’s one of the healthiest foods you can eat (providing it’s wild) and yet, nope, wouldn’t get it past my lips. But as part of my overcoming picky eating mission I decided to order the Salmon with Chayote and Zucchini (I also have never had Chayote!); and I had the vegetable tagine. They were both so easy to make, they really did only take me 30 mins or so, and were very tasty. I literally devoured the salmon.

As a holistic nutritionist my aim is to get us as close to whole foods as possible so there may be a few tweaks I’d make here and there (for example, the tagine had traditional couscous which is wheat; I may have swapped that for brown rice or quinoa if following a gluten free diet and for added nutrients). But this is me being UBER picky here. All in all, this was way better than take-away pizza or Chinese, or Indian food even. 

All in all, I would 100% recommend Chef’s Plate to my busy clients without hesitation. I love their entrepreneurial spirit and the fact that they are passionate about getting us back into our kitchens again. And the best part? They are offering my readers (that’s you!) $25 off their first order. Enter promo code CHEFKRISHA when ordering.

Make sure you let me know in the comments below if you use them, or what easy weeknight hacks you do to make life a little bit easier for meal prepping!