Assembled Off Site, the Somewhat Homemade Family Dinner

MEALS can get a little fraught around our home. I like cooking, but often run out of time and creativity. My younger son has become increasingly picky, so that he now suspiciously examines every morsel of food, worried I have slipped in an onion or maybe polonium.
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Alan S. Orling for The New York Times

Eager to abandon the takeout treadmill, or even worse, the expensive eating-out habit, I was looking for different dinner options. I had heard of places that supply all the recipes and ingredients. You just put the components together and bring the meals home to cook.
While searching for these places on the Web, I had to figure out what they were called. Prepared meals? Meals to go? No, it is meal assembly, a strange phrase, but one that has become increasingly popular in the last several years. There is even an association, the Easy Meal Prep Association, that says about 1,149 such stores exist nationwide. That is up from four stores in 2002.
I went to www.easymealprep.com and clicked on Directory. A search showed five meal assembly places within a 20-mile area.
I called my friend Nancy Winkelstein, who has a certificate in holistic health counseling, to join me.
While I sometimes read the ingredients on cans — although not with the microscopic intensity of some of my friends — and I more or less know (if not always adhere) to what is considered healthy, she could offer the more critical insight.
We went to Let’s Dish in Scarsdale, N.Y., part of what is now the sixth-largest chain of meal assembly places, with 33 outlets across the country. Dream Dinners is No. 1, with 225 franchises, and Super Suppers, with 207, is No. 2, according to Bert Vermeulen, founder of the Easy Meal Prep Association.
Let’s Dish required a four-meal minimum for $94, with each meal serving four to six people; I had ordered ahead on their Web site (www.letsdish.com). Other places like the Super Suppers near me (www.supersuppers.com) do not have minimums and welcome walk-ins.
Nancy and I were allowed to share the meals. Each recipe, propped up on the counter where we were preparing the meal, has two sides — one for the whole portion and one if you are splitting it.
We were first asked to don bandannas and aprons and wash our hands, and also instructed to wash our hands between each meal we prepared. We went to the first station, where the raw pork cutlets awaited for our pork piccata with linguine.
The measuring spoons are color-coded for size; the necessary ingredients were all sitting out in plastic containers, chopped or grated as dictated, or in the refrigerated compartment below the counter.
It felt a bit like playing house. Measure, mix, put in the plastic bag, set aside, measure, mix, stir. The closest we got to cooking was melting butter (precut) in the microwave.
At the end of an hour, we had four meals, wrapped in plastic and foil containers labeled with cooking instructions. We left the dirty bowls and measuring spoons for someone else to wash.
Nancy was pleased that the ingredients at Let’s Dish, like chicken base, were mostly natural and did not have a lot of additives. Nutritional information for all meals is listed on the Web site.
But she did not (and I agree) like the environmental waste. In many cases there seemed to be an excessive use of plastic bags to wrap items.
“My bottom line is there is nothing I did there that I couldn’t as quickly and as easily do at home in the same amount of time,” she said. “It didn’t have the fresh herbs and had less fresh vegetables than I had hoped for.”
She acknowledged, however, that she probably cooks more at home than most people, and “it’s a step up for people who don’t cook,” she said.
But those who like such places really like them. Suzanne Kelly and Lisa Marinelli, both elbow deep in raw meat, said they had been coming to Let’s Dish for about six months, often with five or six friends.
“It’s a lot easier than going to the cookbook,” Ms. Kelly said. “And for the cleanup, we just walk away. And I haven’t made one thing that my children say is icky or yucky.”
Like many such places, Let’s Dish will cater to specific diets like wheat-free or kosher, and play host to meal-making parties. I did wonder about the quality of the meat; the owner, Terese Hunersen, said the chicken was free of hormones and antibiotics, although the beef was not.
“We’re working on that,” she said. All the meat is also fresh, not frozen, although some of the vegetables are flash frozen.