Since being founded in 2013, My Muscle Chef has grown to become one of the largest and most disruptive companies in the Australian prepared meals market. The company was founded with a real focus on cooking meals that support fitness & health goals, a mission that’s still clear in their marketing today.
We all know that marketing is seldom to be believed (Milo, anyone?) so I want to investigate this mission and see what the My Muscle Chef experience is all about. I’ll dive into all the different meals, subscriptions and taste in this My Muscle Chef review.
My Muscle Chef Prepared Meals Review
My Muscle Chef Review Summary
My Muscle Chef deliver a solid ready meal subscription experience, providing seamless ordering and delivery management for customers. They stand out with the impressive quality and tastiness of their meals that absolutely must be tried!
Overall
-
Ordering - Website - 9/10
9/10
-
Food - Quality - 9/10
9/10
-
Ordering - Meal Choice - 9/10
9/10
-
Food - Taste - 10/10
10/10
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Ordering - Delivery - 9/10
9/10
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Value For Money - 8/10
8/10
Pros
- Incredibly delicious meals.
- Simple reheating process.
- Simple, easy to use website.
- No subscription lock-in.
Cons
- Limited delivery options in some areas.
- Not the widest range of meals.
Try My Muscle Chef TodayGet $20 off your first order with code WELCOME20
If you’ve never tried a prepared meals service before, they can be truly liberating! Your lunches and dinners are cooked within 2 minutes, saving you heaps of time every day. No judgement if you want to use that saved time for a quick nap.
I pulled together some of the most common FAQ’s in my guide to prepared meals services.
The main concern I hear from people is that their prepared meals won’t taste very nice. I cover this concern in detail throughout this My Muscle Chef review so read ahead to see how the My Muscle Chef experience stacks up.
Contents
Getting started with My Muscle Chef
My Muscle Chef split their offering based on your health or fitness goals. This means you need to know whether you’re looking for:
- Muscle Gain
- Performance
- Calorie Control
Once you’ve chosen your goal, it’s time to let them know your gender, average workouts per week and how many meals you want to purchase. You can go through the process as many times as you want, in case you change your mind or fitness goals.
The result is a customisable meal plan suited to your fitness goals. It’ll look something a little like this:
Planning becomes really easy when you can clearly see your calorie, protein, carbohydrate and fat intake in one single glance. You can even swap out meals however you like.
If you don’t want to commit to a sizable meal plan, it’s possible to purchase directly from their menu and customise your delivery, although there is a minimum order size of $99 (around 10 meals).
The other way to choose your meals is through My Muscle Chef Packs – a selection of 10 meals that meet a specific goal, including:
- High Calorie Best Sellers
- Low Carb Collection
- Keto Friendly Pack
- Vegan Booster Pack
Alternatively, you’ll be able to find My Muscle Chef meals stocked in local supermarkets around the country, such as IGA and Harris Farms. My local Woolies Metro also has quite an impressive range of meals stocked at all times.
My Muscle Chef meal variety and options
My Muscle Chef offers a standard menu with just over 55 meals available at any one time. However, this is a little misleading as each individual meal only comes in one size. This means that you’ll face a limited selection if you only want high or low-calorie meals. For example, at the time of writing, there were only 13 options under 400 calories and 17 options above 550 calories.
Examples of some of the meals available are:
- Peri Peri Chicken with Tomato Rice & Green Beans
- Chicken Nasi Goreng with Vegetables & Ancient Grains
- Salmon Risotto with Brown Rice & Spring Vegetables
- Naked Beef Fajitas
- Beef Massaman Curry with Brown Rice
Like most prepared meals services, My Muscle Chef meals get their protein primarily from cheaper types of meat, such as Beef and Chicken. At the time of writing, there were 14 Beef, 22 Chicken, 2 Lamb, 3 Seafood, 1 Turkey, 1 Duck and 12 Plant-Based meals available. Whilst a little uninspiring, it’s the trade-off for getting affordable meals.
I’ve found that the meals don’t rotate very often, which is both good and bad. It means your favourite meal is very likely to remain available. However, it’s likely this range could get a bit boring if using My Muscle Chef for more than a few months.
In addition to main meals, My Muscle Chef also offers quite an interesting range of sides with their PLUS+ range. These are dishes designed to accompany the main dish to build your calorie intake, such as Black Beans & Rice or Sweet Potato Mash. I review how these tasted a little later on in this article.
Finally, there’s also a Breakfast offering that means you can get all your daily food intake from My Muscle Chef. At the moment, there are only two breakfast dishes available which is a little disappointing. They have also recently released protein yoghurts for breakfast, with Mango Passionfruit, Strawberry and Vanilla flavours along with a range of protein porridge tubs.
Special diets and food intolerance
For anyone who’s vegetarian or vegan, you’ll definitely be able to enjoy the My Muscle Chef experience. There’s a range of 12 plant-based meals at the time of writing (11 of which are vegan) which is a reasonable variety although I could easily see it getting repetitive after a couple of months. To solve this, you could rotate My Muscle Chef with our recommended food boxes for vegans.
Unfortunately, My Muscle Chef isn’t able to guarantee the absence of common allergens, due to their use of a large commercial kitchen to cook all the meals. Here’s the disclaimer from their website:
As we prep all our meals in bulk within a commercial kitchen, unfortunately we cannot guarantee meals are Gluten Free/Dairy/Wheat/Crustacean Free.
If you have a serious allergy it is advisable you do not purchase meals from My Muscle Chef Pty Ltd as we cannot guarantee the complete absence of these ingredients from our products.
Product Disclaimer
On a more positive note, My Muscle Chef does a good job of providing all the ingredient details on their website ahead of purchase. This includes calling out any allergens as well as detailed nutritional information. With this information, it’s easily possible to use your own judgement as to whether each meal would be suitable for you.
Delivery options
My Muscle Chef can deliver to over 4,200 postcodes across Australia, including all major towns and cities. Use their map to see if you’re eligible to receive a My Muscle Chef delivery.
Delivery costs a flat fee of $15 or $20 (depending on location) every time you receive a box. However, you’re able to get $10 off the delivery fee if you ‘Subscribe’ to a weekly, fortnightly or monthly delivery. Even if you’re not sure if you want regular deliveries, I would still highly recommend subscribing to save yourself $10 and cancelling your subscription before the next cut-off date.
Delivery dates vary depending on where you live, with weekly cut-off dates on Saturday and Tuesday. To find out when you can get your next delivery, use the delivery area checker above.
How much does My Muscle Chef cost?
Meals are priced very reasonably between $9.55 – $11.40 depending on the meal size and cost of ingredients. This competes well with other cheap prepared meals services such as YouFoodz.
With the minimum order value of $99, you do need to order at least 10 meals to be delivered within each box. This makes the entry cost of My Muscle Chef quite high, although definitely good value for money.
There are some additional products that My Muscle Chef offer at some different price points:
- Plus+ (Meal Add-Ons) from $4.95 to $19.25.
- Breakfast at $7.95
- Snacks from $3.50 – $4.95
- Protein Shakes at $4.95
It’s also important to consider there’s a tiered saving system on all MyMuscle Chef orders as well. This gives you a higher discount percentage the more meals you order. It’s possible to save 15% when ordering 25+ meals which brings your cheapest dinners down to just $8.11 per serving. It’s hard to find better value than that.
Should I order online or buy from the supermarket?
With My Muscle Chef available at a wide variety of supermarkets, it brings into the question the value of ordering meals online. I wanted to compare the cost of different meals between My Muscle Chef and different supermarkets. Here’s what I found when I looked at a random selection of meals:
| Meal | My Muscle Chef | IGA | Harris Farms |
| Asian Chicken Stir Fry | $10.40 | $9.95 | Not Available |
| Mexican Beef Burrito Bowl | $10.40 | Not Available | Not Available |
| Mexican Superfood Bowl | $9.55 | $9.95 | $10.49 |
| Red Curry Salmon | $11.95 | Not Available | Not Available |
| Sri Lankan Chicken Curry | $9.55 | $9.95 | Not Available |
My research taught me that the real value of ordering from My Muscle Chef directly is access to the whole range of meals. You probably aren’t going to save a lot of money online, especially with the added delivery fee. However, the convenience of delivery and wider variety makes this a very reasonable trade-off.
Try My Muscle Chef TodayGet $20 off your first order with code WELCOME20
If you’re just looking to try a single meal, then it’s best to head to your local supermarket. For any larger purchases, I highly recommend purchasing from My Muscle Chef themselves.
My Muscle Chef box
My first review box arrived during the day as I selected an 8am – 6pm slot. It was left outside my door ready for me to bring inside. It had been raining during the day, so the box had got a bit wet and muddy. Fortunately, it had successfully protected the contents and everything inside was undamaged.
Inside the box were all my meals, stacked neatly inside an insulating bag with freezer gel packs. My Muscle Chef guarantees the shelf life of your meals for up to 8 hours after delivery if left in a shaded area.
I’ve now had multiple deliveries from My Muscle Chef and never had any issues with late/mistimed deliveries. Nor have I had any contents missing or damaged. The insulating packaging works really well and I’d be comfortable leaving the box unpacked for quite a few hours.
Recycling the contents
Everything in the box is 100% recyclable, although there are some things you need to be aware of:
- Cardboard Box – Recycle in normal recycling collection.
- Thermal Liner – Recycle in a soft plastics recycling bin found at most supermarkets.
- Freezer Gel Packs – You need to empty out the contents (recommended to mix with salt before pouring down sink) and recycle the plastic in soft plastics.
- Black Meal Trays – Recycle in normal recycling collection.
- Vacuum Seal Film – Recycle in a soft plastics.
- Cardboard Sleeve – Recycle in normal recycling collection.
The sustainability credentials of My Muscle Chef meals are fairly standard within the prepared meals industry. Check out my blog on on the environmental impact of food boxes for more information and inspiration on re-using materials.
Are My Muscle Chef Meals Good?
All I can say is WOW. Most of the meals I’ve eaten have completely redefined my expectations of a microwave meal.
Whatever magic My Muscle Chef applies in their cooking process is really working. They managed to consistently provide really strong, delicious flavours whilst maintaining the texture / mouth-feel you’d expect.
One meal that surprised me the most was the Salmon Risotto. I expect microwaved food to be mushy/soggy, which is how most risottos are (badly) cooked. Not with My Muscle Chef! This risotto was cooked to perfection with a great bite to the rice, whilst also packing a punch on flavour from the salmon and seasoning. Delicious.
I have always found Portion Sizes to be very reasonable and I found myself feeling comfortably full after each meal. It’s great to know exactly how many calories you’ve just consumed and see how satisfied it’s made you feel.
The overall experience with My Muscle Chef meals is positive, with some star meals. However, there are some common disappointing factors. Firstly, some meals can be quite watery which I attribute to the water content of vegetables when they’re reheated. Secondly, a few meals are quite acidic in flavour which really isn’t to my taste.
The Plus+ Add-Ons were very interesting, and the portion sizes were incredibly generous. Adding those to your main meal will definitely satisfy all but the biggest appetites. I was a little disappointed by the Kidney Bean Mix as it tasted very heavily of vinegar, which isn’t exactly what I expected.
I have summarised my opinion on plenty of the current My Muscle Chef meals, reviewing each one and rating them out of 10. Check out my favourite My Muscle Chef meals.
Protein Porridge & Yoghurts
Recent innovations at My Muscle Chef have focussed on expanding their range of protein porridge and yoghurts. The yoghurts come in 3 interesting flavours and are very delicious (it’s hard to go too far wrong!). Yoghurt is naturally high in protein and healthy fats, so it’s a great addition to the My Muscle Chef lineup.
Each tub of yoghurt comes with a lid filled with nuts/flakes/seeds to mix in with the yoghurt. Simply pull off the lid, take off the foil and pour in your extras.
The protein porridge is equally delicious, with deceptively large portion sizes. Similar to the yoghurt, each porridge pot comes with a lid filled with various seeds/nuts/flakes that really level up boring porridge.
You may want to experiment with how long your microwave needs as I needed to cook mine for around 15 seconds longer than the recommended time. Be careful though, cook for slightly too long and they will boil over (trust me).
Snacks & Protein Shakes
Along with the interesting porridge & yoghurt range, My Muscle Chef has also been working on a strong range of on-the-go protein snacks. The snack range consists of:
- Protein Bites
- Protein Cookies
- Protein Muffins
- Low Carb Bars
I must admit that I’m rarely a fan of food that has been stuffed with quite fake-tasting whey protein powder. My Muscle Chef does a good job of hiding the flavour in most of the Bites and Bars, delivering a reasonable amount of protein per serving.
The Protein Cookies are, in contrast, quite disappointing. They’re quite dry and crumbly, with a very artificial taste. In particular, the Choc Chip cookie was quite bland and I think I found about 4 choc chips in the whole cookie. Then again, I’ve never found a good protein cookie before so I appreciate how hard it must be!
I found the Protein Shakes to be quite delicious, albeit still with an artificial flavouring. Getting 30g of protein into an easy-to-drink format is quite impressive and is reasonably priced at $4.95. These are designed to be drunk on the go, so aren’t a direct alternative to buying your own tubs of protein powder.
Cooking the prepared main meals
Cooking a My Muscle Chef meal is just about as simple as you get. The instructions for every meal are exactly the same.
90 seconds in the microwave.
I found that this can vary depending on what Microwave you use. At home, I gave it 2 minutes to make sure everything was steaming hot. In the office, it was definitely very hot after just 90 seconds (and slightly burnt after 2 minutes).
A unique innovation for My Muscle Chef is the vacuum-sealed pack that expands during cooking. This primarily removes all the oxygen from the food and helps prevent it from spoiling, with a secondary benefit of making cooking very simple.
It’s fun to watch the vacuum seal expand as your meal cooks, trapping all the steam and helping your food heat up.
Expectations vs Reality
How your food looks is part of the experience of eating, so it’s important to see how My Muscle Chef meals match up to their marketing material.
Overall, I was impressed by how each meal looked. They have managed to maintain the colour and vibrancy of the ingredients, reasonably distributed across the container. Of course, they aren’t going to look as good as when they’re on a plate but I was still impressed!
As I’m quite lazy (especially when hungry), I always ate the meals directly out of the container. No shame!
Dishes I loved
- Salmon Risotto
- Korean Beef
- Peppercorn Steak
- Burrito Bowl
- Chicken Nasi Goreng
Dishes I wouldn’t recommend
- Falafel & Chickpeas (an odd texture).
Anything Else?
My Muscle Chef support Zip Pay so if you’re a little short on cash when your subscription is due, you can always pay with an interest-free Zip Pay account. Find out how that works.
There are some great articles about fitness and nutrition on the My Muscle Chef blog that is worth checking out. Including a post on healthy tips for working from home, featuring an ironic photoshoot from Observatory Park in Sydney. Not somewhere I could afford to live!
My Final Thoughts on My Muscle Chef
My Muscle Chef provides a great overall experience when you subscribe to their prepared meal delivery service. I found ordering from the website and managing my order very easy, whilst the delivery options and price are on par with their competitors.
However, My Muscle Chef stands out above the rest on the incredible taste of their meals. I’ve never had such delicious ready meals before and I could scarcely believe the food had just been reheated in a microwave. Clearly, the development kitchen at My Muscle Chef is doing an incredible job. I’d certainly be very happy to try any new recipes they come up with.
They would score even higher if they could provide a bit more variety of meals (plant-based, different protein sources), provide more delivery options and make the subscription experience more focused on achieving your goals. If they want to be 100% fitness focussed then I’d want to see some more features in my account to help me achieve my fitness goals.
My Muscle Chef Discount
Use the link below to score your exclusive My Muscle Chef discount on your first order.
Try My Muscle Chef TodayGet $20 off your first order with code WELCOME20
I hope you enjoyed this My Muscle Chef review. If you have any questions about, or experiences with My Muscle Chef then let me know through the comments below.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Woolworths stock My Muscle Chef?
Yes, you can currently find My Muscle Chef meals at more than 3000+ supermarkets across Australia, including Woolworths. If I ever run out of meals from my latest delivery, there’s a good range at my local Woolies Metro.
Who owns My Muscle Chef?
My Muscle Chef was founded by Tushar Menon with his brother Nishant. It’s a family business, with their mother and father playing their part in helping run My Muscle Chef. From starting in 2012, they’re now selling over $100 million dollars of meals each year. An incredible success for an Aussie-based business.
Are My Muscle Chef meals frozen?
No, My Muscle Chef meals are never frozen before being delivered to you. They are freshly cooked and vacuum-sealed quickly so they last at least 7-10 days once delivered. You can freeze My Muscle Chef meals to extend their shelf life for a few months. Just make sure to fully defrost the meals before cooking them.
How long does My Muscle Chef last in the fridge?
Each meal will last 7 – 10 days after being delivered. I’ve never had any problems with meals having short ‘Best Before’ dates and you can always freeze them if you don’t think you’ll be able to eat every meal in time.
Is My Muscle Chef high in salt?
According to our research, the average My Muscle Chef meal has 943mg of salt. That’s about 45% of your daily recommended allowance which is definitely fairly high. I would not recommend My Muscle Chef for anyone who needs to be on a low-salt diet. Consider a service like PWRMeals instead.