Like many others, I find myself exhausted at the end of the workday. So instead of whipping up something nutritionally sound in the kitchen, I often fall prey to the convenience and allure of Frosted Flakes. Thankfully, we live in the age of meal delivery services — and now there’s a local option based just across the river.
Beth Russell, a resident of Bellevue, started Dinner to Doorbells in November of last year. Working out of the Incubator Kitchen Collective in Newport, Ky., she and a small team of employees prepare weekly meal orders for customers within the I-275 loop, Mason and Loveland.
To order, all you have to do is fill out a form on their website. The menu options for that week are located in a bar at the top of the form. Select your meal plan — I opted for three two-person meals ($50), but larger accommodations are also available — then, input your choices in the drop-down. Payment can be made through PayPal or by check or cash at the time of delivery. Any special requests, such as swapping ground beef for ground turkey or dietary accommodations like gluten- or dairy-free, can be made in this form. Desserts are also available, including carrot cake sammies ($6 each), buckeyes ($8 for six) and pumpkin cheesecake ($9 each).
I placed my order on a Thursday and it arrived at my doorstep that Monday. All of the meals came in a reusable bag. The packaging was simple: either tin pans or tin foil with the instructions printed on top.
As far as how this local delivery service compares to options like Hello Fresh or Blue Apron, it’s in a different ballgame.
“With those meal kit services, you still have to cook,” Russell says. “You still have to sauté things and get pans dirty.”
For Dinner to Doorbells, you just pop the frozen or thawed meals in the oven, go color a mandala in your adult coloring book and come back when the oven timer beckons you to the kitchen.
The first night I made the pulled pork jalapeño flatbread to split with my sister. After removing the instructions and tin foil, we placed it in the oven and it was done, cheese bubbling and crust browned, in 15 minutes. The pork was tender and juicy and slices of jalapeño, which could have been sprinkled on more generously, gave it a half-hearted kick. A tangy sauce was slathered on so it nearly overpowered the dish and made it messy to eat, but the bread was sturdy enough to hold everything together. We each ate three pieces and had a little less than half leftover.
Russell shared with me that she tries to have a good mix of healthy and indulgent options on the weekly menus, and this one was definitely a part of the latter.
I made the second meal, the sweet Thai chili salmon with broccoli salad, solo. I also failed to keep the meals in the freezer as instructed (sigh…), so I had to guess at the cooking time. The dish came with two substantial fillets of fish with a cold broccoli salad on the side. This was made of large, raw broccoli florets, shredded carrots and whole almonds. The robustness of the broccoli balanced out the salty, somewhat bitter brown sauce it came in.
As far as quality goes, all of the vegetables were crisp and firm. The salmon was also fresh, and the sweet chili sauce was habit-forming. After plating the salmon, I dumped the remainder of it on both the fish and a side of white rice I’d prepared.
Russell makes most of the sauces herself, and I could taste this attention to detail in the delicate balance of sweet, spicy and salty. Though I feared the portions wouldn’t be enough, I ended up having a decent amount of the first fillet left and packed it and the second filet for lunch the next day.
Last up was the chicken Florentine pasta. Luckily, there were instructions listed for those who thawed the dish beforehand and I set it in the oven for 30 minutes. The penne noodles were cooked well — they were neither tough nor mushy — and square-cut pieces of bacon (my favorite part) weren’t overly crisp or gummy. The chicken was tender but I would have liked it to be cut up into smaller chunks or potentially shredded to feel more cohesive with the pasta.
All of these components were dotted with a thick, white sauce, making each bite tasty but a little dry. The flavors worked very well together though, and it was a dish my roommate and I fought over for leftovers.
With Dinner to Doorbells, you know who’s making your food; and in a society where we are becoming more and more attentive to the origins of what we eat, that’s an attractive quality. If you want a hassle-free alternative to Hello Fresh or Blue Apron that doesn’t skimp on portions or quality, this service is the answer.
Dinner to Doorbells meals are available online. For more information or to place an order, visit dinnertodoorbells.com.
This article appears in Feb 7-14, 2018.