I’m a Food Editor and I Tried Giada’s New Home Chef Meal Kits—What You Need to Know

5 min readI cooked two recipes from the Giada De Laurentiis collab with Home Chef meal kits.

You can expect restaurant-worthy Italian flavors with smart, weeknight-friendly shortcuts.

The downside? You need to be organized and ready to multitask and juggle a couple pans.

Craving a Roman holiday on a random Tuesday—without changing out of your sweatpants? Food Network royalty and reigning queen of effortless dolce vita glam, Giada De Laurentiis, is bringing the Italian getaway to your kitchen with her new Home Chef meal kits. The eight-week collab—available to order February 23 through April 17, with meals arriving starting March 2—features eight rotating recipes inspired by different regions across Italy.

Dishes include Weekend-in-Positano Shrimp Pasta, Veggie-Packed Beef Bolognese, and One-Pan Italian Chicken Florentine—each repeating once so fans can revisit their favorites throughout the run.

Home Chef has done celebrity tie-ins before (including Gordon Ramsay and Ayesha Curry), but Giada’s bright, polished, weeknight-friendly Italian cooking feels like a particularly natural fit. As someone who has previously worked at three different meal kit companies (though not Home Chef), and cooked and scrutinized more boxed dinners than I can count, I needed to know: Does this taste like something Giada would actually serve—or just something with her name on the recipe card? I cooked two of the dishes to find out.

About the Giada x Home Chef collab

The partnership features recipes inspired by different Italian regions, designed to deliver big, restaurant-level flavor with weeknight effort. Think: smart shortcuts, pre-measured ingredients, and just enough technique to make you feel accomplished without spiraling. The entire Home Chef x Giada menu includes:

● Cacciatore-Style Chicken Milanese

● Seared Salmon Orzo

● Effortless Parmesan Shrimp Risotto

● Giada’s Three-Cheese Baked Sausage

● One-Pan Italian Chicken Florentine

● Giada’s Veggie-Packed Beef Bolognese

● Weekend-in-Positano Shrimp Pasta

● Giada’s Creamy Chicken Scaloppine

Each meal kit contains 2 servings.

I cooked the shrimp dish: low effort, high glam

The Effortless Parmesan Shrimp Risotto was true to its name, with plenty of garlic pepper seasoned shrimp over a bed of risotto with arugula and lemon. It also felt the most “Giada.”

Good Housekeeping / Jillian Sollazzo

Unboxing the meal kit

What I loved

Quality of ingredients: The shrimp were pristine and plump, cooked beautifully. No sad, rubbery seafood in sight.

The ingredients felt fancy: Garlic pepper seasoning. Beurre blanc butter. Chicken broth concentrate. These are the kinds of things that make a dish taste like someone in a crisp white chef’s jacket finished it with a flourish.

Good Housekeeping / Jillian Sollazzo

Everything was pre-measured and organized: The only thing I had to chop was one shallot. One! It came together quickly, the directions were clear, and the par-cooked rice (a very real shortcut that restaurants use for risotto) made the whole thing feel seamless.

Multi-use of one ingredient: Some of the arugula gets folded into the risotto and the rest is scattered over the top—a chef-y little move that makes one humble ingredient pull double duty, adding both peppery freshness and that “I absolutely meant to plate it like this” finish.

It took just 20 minutes to make but tasted like it I’d been stirring at the stove for an hour.

The final result

Delicious, elegant, and genuinely more than the sum of its parts, it felt like a complete, composed dish—not just protein and carbs plopped into a bowl.

Good Housekeeping / Jillian Sollazzo

What bugged me

The recipe calls for two medium nonstick skillets. I don’t know who has two identical medium nonstick skillets just waiting around (not me). I used one medium pan for the rice and one large for the shrimp. It actually worked out better to avoid overcrowding the shrimp—but yes, I had two pans to wash and that’s the trade-off for speeding things up.

Also, the full packet of garlic pepper felt aggressive, so I used about half. And the portion ratio was…interesting. It seemed like two servings of risotto but closer to four servings of shrimp. Not exactly a tragedy (extra shrimp!), but slightly confusing.

A side-by-side comparisonGiada’sHome ChefMineGood Housekeeping / Jillian Sollazzo

One small note: the Parmesan in my kit looked a bit different from what’s pictured on the recipe card—it skewed more finely powdered than freshly grated. Not a dealbreaker by any means, just something worth flagging. That said, once everything came together, the dish looked beautiful and tasted even better—like you worked harder than you did—which is always the dream.

I also cooked the chicken dish: delicious but chaotic energy

If the shrimp risotto was calm, coastal Italian elegance, Cacciatore-Style Chicken Milanese with fettuccine, mushrooms, and fresh basil was peak weeknight multitasking. You make a cacciatore-style sauce for the pasta then top it with panko-coated chicken breasts.

Good Housekeeping / Susan Choung

What I loved

The pasta sauce: Zesty with big flavor, thanks to the packet of Italian seasoning blend. It was cacciatore-style, loaded with savory mushrooms and red bell pepper that added just enough natural sweetness to round everything out. It tasted slow-simmered—even though it absolutely wasn’t.

The clever breading hack: Using a pack of mayo to coat the chicken in panko? Genius. It’s way less messy than the classic flour–egg–breadcrumb assembly line, and it works. The chicken crisped up beautifully and stayed juicy inside.

The roasted garlic and herb butter: Melted into the pasta sauce, it gave everything that glossy, restaurant-level finish and a punch of rich, aromatic flavor. It’s the kind of small upgrade that elevates the entire dish.

What felt stressful

Again, two medium nonstick skillets. I used one medium for the sauce and one large for the chicken (which really did need more real estate), and things got hectic fast. While I was boiling the pasta and making the sauce, I had to pound the chicken breasts thin, coat them in breadcrumbs, then babysit while frying to make sure they didn’t burn. There’s a lot happening at once, so you have to stay organized and move quickly. I had three timers going, one each for the pasta, sauce, and chicken.

I was juggling so many things that I forgot to salt the chicken (that one’s on me), and there was no mention of salting the pasta water, which felt like a miss. Also, there’s a lot of sauce for the amount of pasta and once I added the fettuccine to the pan, it felt very full—like one wrong stir would lead to a stovetop spill.

Recipe notes

The pasta sauce is loaded with vegetables

Good Housekeeping / Susan Choung

Roasted garlic and herb butter rounds out the sauce and gives it a glossy, restaurant-style finish

Good Housekeeping / Susan Choung

Pro tip: use a large skillet to fry the chicken milanese

Good Housekeeping / Susan Choung

Sauce lover? You’re in luck with the amount here

Good Housekeeping / Susan Choung

Lesson learned (the slightly messy way): Slice the chicken before you plate it over the fettuccine. Trying to cut crispy chicken in a bowl of saucy pasta is not the serene Italian dining moment you’re imagining.

A side-by-side comparisonGiada’sHome ChefMineGood Housekeeping / Susan ChoungSo…is it worth it?

Overall? This feels impressive, and definitely a step above standard meal kit fare.

The ingredients taste premium. The shortcuts are smart, not lazy. And at its best (hello, shrimp dish), it absolutely channels that signature Giada elegance—bright, balanced, just a little bit glamorous. It’s impressive for weeknight dinners.

It’s not totally hands-off. You’ll need to be organized, multitask, and pay attention. But if you want restaurant-level flavor without making beurre blanc yourself, this collaboration delivers.

Would I order again? For the shrimp risotto and those chef-level compound butters—yes.

Here’s how to order (and save):

The Home Chef x Giada menu is available to order from February 23 through April 17, with meals arriving in homes starting March 2. Pricing starts at $9.99 per serving, plus shipping. New customers can use code CHEFGIADA for 50% off their first box, free shipping, and a free mini bottle of Giadzy Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

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Susan (she/her) is the recipe editor at Good Housekeeping, where she pitches ideas, parses words, and produces food content. In the Test Kitchen, she cooks (and samples!) recipes, working with developers to deliver the best written versions possible. A graduate of Brown University and a collaborator on several cookbooks, her previous experience includes stints at Food & Wine, Food Network, three meal kit companies, a wine shop in Brooklyn and Chez Panisse, the pioneering restaurant in Berkeley, California. She enjoys playing tennis, natural wines and reality competition shows.