February 2016 Home Chef Review & $30 Coupon

This week Home Chef offered a Valentine’s day extravaganza, and we couldn’t resist it! Home Chef is a meal in a box subscription – every week choose from a variety of recipes and have all the ingredients and preparation instruction delivered to your door.  It’s similar in concept to other weekly meal delivery services, but it has its own unique features and perspectives.

When you sign up you fill out a mini profile of your family and tastes so Home Chef can automatically suggest a weekly menu for you, which you are welcome to change. The selections for this meal subscription are much larger than what is available for other meal kits.  While most meal kits focus on a handful of elegant dinner entrees and the occasional desert, with each designed for two people, Home Chef offers an incredible 10 selections available for 2, 4, or 6 people, a breakfast choice, a smoothie choice, and a fruit basket selection.  The plethora of great choices has us loving this subscription — currently this is the least expensive and has the most choice out of any similar major subscriptions (for 2 people).

As an added bonus, our box included a wonderful little gift — some extra dark matcha-infused chocolate!

Your weekly parcel contains your recipe cards and all the ingredients for your meals, bundled inside insulated packaging with big ice packs to keep it cold.  Home Chef usually requires very little from your own pantry — while every box has you provide a couple tablespoons of cooking oil and salt and pepper, Home Chef has gone out of its way to provide everything else you need.  They usually include liquid egg when needed (other boxes expect you to have an egg or two on hand), and they even sent a bottle of oil when we were shallow-frying our hushpuppies in a previous box.

The meat is placed in the bottom of box and packed with several ice packs.  I suspect there are enough to keep it cold for a long time, even when Summer arrives.

We totally went insane with the meal selections this week.  We picked out a handful of things that looked good…

…And then we also grabbed the Holiday meals — a Chinese New Year dish and a couple Valentine’s Day specials!

We have been impressed with the recipe choices — they have really tasty sounding recipes for offering so many options!  We also thought the meals were more accessible than the other meal kit subscription boxes, which tend to use lots of ancient grains, alternative greens, exotic spices, and likes to target the foodie crowd.  This subscription has plenty of flavor and variety, but it uses more familiar ingredients.

The recipe cards that come with each box have all the info we like to see — prep time, difficulty, and allergen and nutrition info.  They also included a drink pairing suggestion (something other boxes have dabbled in but not stuck with), and a “best cooked by” time frame.

The back of the card has the actual recipe guidance, complete with pictures and boldfacing of ingredients, and an inventory of everything provided.  The recipes had great hints littered throughout — either expanding your cooking vocabulary by explaining cooking terminology (often medieval French) in layman’s terms, or expounding on the benefits of specific techniques.  The only minor annoyance is the adherence to a standard prep order (i.e.:  preheat oven, chop veg, prep meat) — we switch the order a bit where it makes sense.  If you’re an experienced cook we do recommend cooking in the most efficient order (e.g. not pre-heated your oven thirty minutes prior to warming a few tortillas), but for novices we recommend following the directions exactly so you don’t get flustered or lose your place. The recipe cards have pre-punched holes so you can store them in a recipe binder.

Each recipe was packed separately, and neatly, in its own bag.  We like to unpack a bit, separating the refrigeration-required and pantry-permissive items.   FYI, this box cost $149.30 (about 2x as much as we normally order).  We really did get a ridiculous amount of food this week!  Unless otherwise stated, the pictures of prepared food show one of the two servings.

Valentine’s Day Breakfast: Chocolate Strawberry Crêpes With Cream-Cheese Strawberry Filling and Chocolate Syrup. 40 mins, intermediate, 911 cal.

These were absolutely decadent and delicious.  I can’t believe that this was intended as a breakfast for two (both portions shown above)!  We feed our whole family, plus a guest on this, since one crepe was enough for a meal.   The crepes took awhile to cook, one at a time, but the rest of the assembly was very easy and quick.

Valentine’s Day Filet Mignon with Sour Cream and Chive Mash With Red Wine-Chocolate Bordelaise, Green Beans, and Chocolate Mousse. 40 mins, easy, 1192 cal.

As expected, the main course was divine.  We loved every bit, and even my five year old said the gravy was good!  The steak was super tender, as a filet should be.

The dessert was a nice touch, but it was super dark, to the point of being bitter.  The recipe didn’t call for any sugar, other than the syrup on top (which wasn’t sufficient to sweeten the whole serving), so the mix may have accidentally omitted some sweetener. We reached out to Home Chef and they said there was definitely a mixup and if you got this item, to put in a help ticket.

I remixed it with a bit of whipped topping and sweetener — we got four pony glasses worth of mousse out of it.

Sherry Wine Demi-Glace Flat-Iron Steak With Whipped Potatoes and Balsamic Brussels Sprouts. 35 mins, easy, 911 calories.

The answer is yes, we intentionally ordered a second steak, potato, and wine sauce dish.  This one was very good, though the meat and potato were less supercharged than the Valentine’s dish.  A good, classic dish, the Brussels sprouts were a perfect counterpoint to the rich, sweet sauce. They were the best Brussels sprouts we have ever eaten.

Chinese New Year: Dim Sum Pork Dumplings With Spicy Sesame Spinach and Rice. 50 mins, expert, 858 cal.

This dish was lots of fun.  It did take a bit of time to prep, since I had to fold all the dumplings (I made 25 of them with the recipe).  The rice was nice and sticky, and the spinach had a mild bitter that did a good job countering the greasy dumpling.  We received a ponzu vinegar instead of a ponzu sauce, so our dipping sauce was not as intended.  It still worked out okay, and the dumplings themselves were tender and perfect — none burst during cooking.

Chili Rellenos Tacos With Garlic Black Beans. 30 mins, easy, 907 cal.

I loved this simple solution to the difficulty of making chili Rellenos — simply deconstruct them!  The peppers were fantastic fried up, and the beans were a nice thick side to have with the chili, which would have been a bit heavy on its own.  I left the first batch of tacos in the oven a bit too long, so we had some tostadas to start!  The meal came with a twelve pack of tortillas, and a big serving of beans, so we got a few extra snacks out of the batch.

South American Chicken Chupe With Cilantro, Corn, Red Peppers, and Mild Chipotle Cream Sauce. 30 mins, easy, 612 cal.

The chipotle sauce on this dish was actually quite spicy — not mind-numbing, but certainly not “mild,” as in the description.  The sauce had great flavors and was really thick and creamy.  I haven’t had this exact style of dish before, and it was a great way to get the comfort food feel of a casserole (in fact, Brandy thought the chicken could have just as easily been prepared in the sauce) with the never-boring flavors of the Southern hemisphere.

Strawberry Malt Smoothie With Yogurt and Oats. 400 cal, 5 mins, easy.

This went over fabulously with the kids.  I put the drinks in a couple of nice beer glasses for the photos instead of dividing the batch into four smaller servings — and the kids nearly finished it off before I could wrestle it away for a taste!

This made a cute breakfast alternative to the huge crepes, though it was pretty rich itself.  I love malt, and this hit the spot — the combo of vanilla almond milk, malt, oats, and strawberries made this taste just like a blended up strawberry cheesecake!

Home Chef has been an incredibly enjoyable subscription for us — the food has been great, and relatively easy to prepare.  The hardest part is picking out our meals from so many delicious options, and not overeating, because the portions are very generous!

Visit Home Chef to subscribe or find out more! Get $30 of free food when you sign up – just use this link to get the deal.