In-Home Cooking vs Meal Delivery: What's the Difference?

Meal delivery is everywhere now.

There are ready-made meals, meal kits, frozen meals, fresh meals, high-protein meals, low-carb meals and meals that somehow contain 14 ingredients but still fit into a tiny plastic tray.

So where does an in-home cooking service fit into all of that?

The biggest difference is pretty simple.

Meal delivery brings food to your house.

In-home cooking brings the cook to your house.

We cook your meals, using your groceries, in your kitchen.

And that changes quite a lot.

With meal delivery, you're choosing from someone else's menu

Most meal delivery services work from a set menu.

You choose from what's available that week, place an order and the meals arrive ready to heat.

That can be incredibly convenient.

But you are still choosing from somebody else's food.

If you don't like capsicum, but the dish contains capsicum, you either avoid that meal or spend your evening picking around it.

If your family likes a particular curry but wants twice as much sauce, that's probably not an option.

If your child has suddenly decided that peas are offensive, you may also be out of luck.

With in-home cooking, the menu is much more personal.

You choose the dishes.

The food is being prepared specifically for your household.

That means there is generally far more room to work around preferences, dietary requirements and the way your family actually eats.

The groceries are yours

This is another important difference.

With I Hate Cooking, the groceries belong to you.

You can organise them yourself, have them delivered or use a shopping option where available.

Then our cook comes into your home and turns those ingredients into meals.

That means you know what's going into your food.

You can choose the brands you prefer.

You can choose the quality of meat.

You can use the ingredients already sitting in your pantry.

And if there is an ingredient you absolutely hate, we don't need to sneak it in there and hope you don't notice.

Portion sizes can actually suit your household

Ready-made meal delivery usually comes in predetermined portions.

For one person, that might be perfect.

For someone with a bigger appetite, perhaps less so.

Families can also find themselves dealing with lots of individual containers when what they really want is one big dish they can put in the middle of the table.

With in-home meal prep, you can generally decide how you want things portioned.

A family might want a whole lasagne stored together.

Someone living alone might prefer individual portions for the freezer.

A couple might want two serves per container.

The food can be packed in the way that makes sense once the cook leaves.

Because the goal isn't just to make the meals.

The goal is to make them useful.

Meal kits solve a different problem

Meal kits sit somewhere in the middle.

They take away a lot of the planning and shopping.

You receive the recipe and the ingredients, usually in the right quantities.

Then you cook it yourself.

If you enjoy cooking but hate deciding what to make, meal kits can be brilliant.

If the thing you're trying to outsource is the actual cooking, they're less helpful.

You still have to chop.

You still have to cook.

You still have to clean up.

And somehow there are always more little packets than you expected.

In-home cooking takes away that part too. (And we can cook whats in the box if you need us to!)

In-home cooking is still home cooking

This is probably one of the biggest reasons our clients choose it.

You're not replacing home-cooked food with ready meals.

You're outsourcing the person standing at the stove.

The meals are still being cooked in a home kitchen, using the ingredients you've chosen and recipes that suit your household.

For people who like home-cooked food but don't particularly enjoy producing it, that's a pretty useful distinction.

What about dietary requirements?

This is another area where the two services can feel very different.

Some meal delivery companies have excellent dietary ranges.

Others may only offer a handful of options.

And if someone has multiple requirements or very specific preferences, finding meals that tick every box can become difficult.

In-home cooking gives you more flexibility because meals are being made specifically for you.

That doesn't mean every recipe can suit every dietary requirement, and allergies or complex dietary needs always need to be considered carefully.

But there is generally much more room to modify a recipe, swap ingredients or choose dishes that already fit.

What about food waste?

Meal delivery can be very good for reducing waste because the portion is already prepared.

Meal kits can also reduce waste because ingredients arrive in measured quantities.

In-home cooking approaches it differently.

Because several dishes are being prepared in one session, ingredients can often be used across multiple meals.

If one recipe needs half a bunch of herbs and another needs the other half, excellent.

That's much better than finding a liquefied coriander science experiment in the back of the fridge two weeks later.

You can also make use of ingredients you already have at home.

What about the washing up?

This deserves its own section.

With ready-made meal delivery, there isn't much cooking mess.

That's a definite win.

With meal kits, the cooking mess is yours.

With an in-home cooking service, we create the cooking mess, then we clean it up.

Which is how it should be.

Otherwise we'd be offering a fairly questionable service.

Which option is cheaper?

That depends completely on what you're comparing.

Ready-made meals can range enormously in price.

Meal kits vary too.

In-home cooking includes the cost of somebody spending several hours in your kitchen preparing multiple dishes, portioning them and cleaning afterwards, plus the cost of your groceries.

So it isn't always going to be the cheapest option on paper.

But price per meal isn't the only thing worth comparing.

You also need to think about:

• how many serves you're getting
• whether the portions suit you
• whether you're likely to actually eat the food
• how much takeaway you're replacing
• how much food gets wasted
• and how much of your own time is involved.

For some households, ready-made delivery will absolutely make the most sense.

For others, having someone come in and cook a larger amount of personalised food works much better.

So which one is right for you?

If you want to open the door and have individual meals arrive ready to heat, meal delivery is probably your thing.

If you enjoy cooking but want someone else to organise the ingredients and recipes, look at meal kits.

If you want home-cooked food but would really prefer somebody else to do the actual cooking, in-home cooking might be the better fit.

That's essentially what we do.

You choose the food.

We come to your kitchen.

We cook it.

We clean up.

Then we leave you with the useful bit.

If in-home cooking sounds like the better fit for your household, you can request a quote.