May 2016 Green Chef Subscription Box Review & Coupon

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IMG_4925Green Chef is a weekly meal kit delivery service that sends recipes along with organic and sustainable ingredients to your home. Green Chef estimates that 95% of the included ingredients are organic.

Examples of ingredients that are not organic include fish, which currently have no organic designation option. Instead, the fish included is sustainably sourced. The beef is grass fed.

Each week Green Chef produces between 6 and 9 recipes, so there is some choice in what you receive. Unlike services like Home Chef, however, your choices are not unlimited: you may choose among the vegetarian, carnivore, omnivore, gluten-free and paleo boxes. Each two-serving box of three entrees ships for $9 in addition to the costs per serving listed above, bringing the total box costs to $71.94 (vegetarian), $80.94 (omnivore), $89.94 (carnivore or gluten-free) and $98.94 (paleo).

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Although I’ve elected the carnivore option, I’ve also asked for no pork. On weeks where one of the entrees includes pork, Green Chef substitutes a vegetarian selection and charges me for an omnivore box. That’s what happened this week.

Regardless whether or not I receive strictly carnivore options, though, all of the entrees includes a hefty amount of veggies, legumes and/or grains with each meal. This is where Green Chef really shines. Green Chef typically includes roughly twice as many veggies, legumes and/or grains as some of their competitors. And they’re all organic! This makes for delicious, healthy, well-balanced meals.

IMG_4927Each week’s package arrives well insulated, sandwiched between ice packs.

IMG_4928The ice packs are separated from the food by cardboard to help protect the vegetables, which I appreciate.

IMG_4929The meat and dairy are at the bottom, sandwiched between two more ice packs. They are separated from the vegetables by another cardboard sheet.

IMG_4931 (2)All the ingredients come color-coded for easy coordination with recipes. I appreciate this. I think it offers great flexibility for storage. If you’d like to group them all together by recipe in your refrigerator, you’re free to put them in a zip lock bag. If you only have a little space here and a little there in your refrigerator, you can store them individually. The recipe cards tell you how many ingredients to look for if you need to store the ingredients individually.

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This week I received ingredients for the following recipes: Buffalo-Blue Sweet Potato with Blue Cheese, Black Bean and Corn Salsa and Spinach (30 min); Creole Sole with Smokey Red Beans and Quinoa, Sauteed Squash and Greens (35 min); Buttermilk-Brined Chicken with Mushrooms, Potato and Peas, Arugula and Fig Salad (40 min).

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This Buffalo-Blue Sweet Potato Dish (30 min) was the vegetarian substitution for the pork dish normally available this week with the carnivore box. It sounded good, even if I never would have come up with it myself.

IMG_5073This meal was very filling, and the sweet potatoes were unbelievably good! My son demanded more sweet potatoes within minutes. Clearly I need to stock my pantry with Green Chef’s harissa spice blend! The sweet potatoes were super easy to prepare–just slice them up and mix them with the harissa blend, canola oil and salt and put under the broiler for 18-20 minutes. While the rest of the dish was fine, the sweet potatoes were definitely the star here. We had enough toasted walnuts left over for an extra snack.

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The Creole Sole looked great! I loved the playful thoughtfulness behind the red beans and quinoa.

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This dish was very easy to prepare. While I loved each of the components individually and I thought that the red beans and quinoa and the fish went really well together, the acidity in the squash and mustard greens was just too big of a departure for me from the other components. I ate the fish and quinoa first and then moved on happily to the squash and greens.

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I couldn’t wait to try the buttermilk brined chicken!

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I loved everything about this dish except for the sauce on the chicken. The chicken came out moist and perfectly done. I loved the addition of the dried figs and sunflower seeds to the arugula salad. The radishes added a nice touch to the roasted veggies. I just found the sauce slightly disappointing. It had a honey mustard base, which isn’t my favorite. Honey mustard is, however, my husband’s favorite sauce, so he was a big fan of this! Still, the sauce had enough other things going for it (butter, mushrooms, thyme, pan juices, scallions) that I was able to enjoy it. I just wish they had left out the honey mustard.

It makes me so happy to know that my family loves eating what I cook at home thanks to Green Chef. I love how filling the serving sizes are, and I’m happy knowing that I’m feeding my family using organic, sustainable ingredients. I look forward to many more weeks of cooking with Green Chef!

Visit Green Chef to subscribe or find out more! Get four free meals when you subscribe – no code needed, just use this link!

The Subscription: Green Chef
The Description: Each Green Chef delivery comes with the recipes and ingredients you need to cook three meals for the week. Some of the ingredients are prepared for you so that you can cook dinner in 20 – 30 minutes. Each recipe is color coded for easy sorting and contains easy to follow directions. Each meal is designed to be well-balanced and healthy. There are vegetarian, omnivore, carnivore, gluten-free and paleo meal options. All ingredients are fresh and sustainably sourced. The only thing you need at home is olive oil, salt, and pepper.
The Price: $71.94 every week
See Green Chef in the Hello Subscription Box Directory!
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The Reviews: See all our Green Chef Reviews.

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