Home Chef March 2016 Review & Coupon

This week’s Home Chef had a special meal for St. Patrick’s Day!  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).

Each weekly parcel has nearly every ingredient needed to make your selected meals.  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 goes above and beyond, including liquid egg when needed (other boxes often 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.

Everything arrived within well-insulated cooler padding, atop ice packs.

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.

Daily Chef has far more meal options than other meal kit subscriptions.  The meals were more accessible than the other meal kit subscription boxes, which tend to cater to 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 usually have a pro-tip or explain some cooking terminology.  The cards adhere to a standard prep order (i.e.:  preheat oven, chop veg, prep meat) — but we often switch up the order to optimize our prep time. 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 $59.40.  Unless otherwise stated, the pictures of prepared food show one of the two servings.

Korean Pork Medallions With Crunchy Rice Vinegar Slaw, Sriracha Marinade, and Red Chiles. 30-40 mins, easy, 614 cal.

We were pleasantly surprised by how very tender the pork was.  The dish was pleasantly spicy, with a wonderfully thick sauce that clung to the meat.  We also enjoyed the slaw — when a recipe calls for shredded cabbage, it is an incredible time saver to have it pre-shredded.  I was impressed at how fresh it was, as there was absolutely no browning or graying of the cabbage.  This was truly enjoyable, as well as quick and simple to make.  Pictured above are both portions, served family style.

Greek Flatbread With Artichokes, Kalamata Olives, and Arugula. 25-35 mins, easy, 801 cal.

Extremely satisfying for a vegetarian dish.  I used all of the onion, but there was plenty of flavor in the other ingredients to balance it out.  The naan toasted up well and made a superb crust. This blend of ingredients was very intense, with the briny artichoke and olive playing against the slightly tart cheese and sweet onion and tomato.  This recipe made two of the pizzas shown above, each of which was super-indulgent. It made so much food we saved an entire pizza for the next day.

St. Paddy’s Special: Classic Bangers and Mash With Roasted Pork Sausages, Shallot Gravy, Peas, and Mashed Potatoes. 25-35 mins, easy, 1049 cals.

What a superb, classic meal!   The bangers were just what we expected (delicious) — it was the accompanying items that really shone.  The peas and tomato were prepared very plainly, yet they were bursting with fresh, natural flavor.  The potatoes were super cheesy and paired well with the rich and dark shallot and beef demi gravy.  This dish is a pub fare delight, equally suitable as a St. Patrick’s feast or as an English dinner.

Last week was a real bummer – our box got damaged in shipment and we never received it. Home Chef refunded the cost of the box for us and it turned out to be ok, because we’re in the midst of a small kitchen renovation, but we were still sad to miss out on Pi Day recipes but happy we got our St. Patrick’s Day recipes. We really don’t know what happened to that box!

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!  We are also loving that they offer breakfast selections (we grab one for a weekend breakfast most weeks) and a fruit basket, since we are often too busy to spend much time shopping for those, either.

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!