Home Chef July 2016 Review & Coupon

Make the first comment!
Hello Subscription independently researches and reviews the best subscriptions and products. Things you buy through our links may earn us a commission.
Go to commentsNotification

Home Chef July 2016 box
This week’s Home Chef selections included some bold flavors that turned familiar dishes into exciting treats.  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.

Meal selections are suggested automatically according to a profile you fill out noting your family’s preferences, but you can change your selections any time. 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 portions are huge, and this is currently the least expensive and has the most choice out of any similar major subscriptions (for 2 people) – $9.95 per person per selection (they typically have one meal a week that’s a premium meal).

Home Chef July 2016 unboxing

Everything arrived within water-dissolvable cooler padding, atop ice packs.  The bottom padding piece usually gets a little squidgy from condensation, but our food has always arrived very cold.

The food is segregated in bags, and each bag has nearly everything needed to make a complete meal.  You have to have a basic kitchen setup (stove/oven, cookware, etc), but a couple tablespoons of cooking oil and salt and pepper are usually the only ingredients you have to have at home. Unlike other boxes, Home Chef includes liquid egg when needed rather than expecting you to have eggs on hand — once they even included a bottle of oil for shallow-frying.

Home Chef July 2016 (3)

The meat is placed in the bottom of box and packed with several ice packs.  I like that they now put all the meat in giant bag to protect against leakage and to let you get the meat out without fishing around.

Home Chef July 2016 (1)

The recipe cards display prep time, difficulty,  a “best cooked by” time frame, and even a spice level.  There is also a list of stuff you may need from your own kitchen, like cookware and salt and pepper.

Home Chef July 2016 (2)

The back of the card has the actual recipe guidance, complete with pictures and boldfacing of ingredients.  The recipes are accompanied by pro-tips and explanations of cooking terminology and techniques.  The tips appear in a sidebar so they don’t clutter the actual recipe.

The order of preparation abandons strict adherence to mis-en-place, instead instructing you to start the long lead time items first.  Although this makes the chopping slightly less efficient than doing it all at once, it gets your meal to the table faster, and with everything finishing cooking closer to the same time.  I like it for these reasons, and because it saves me from having a completely overflowing cutting board when I start cooking.  The recipe cards have pre-punched holes so you can store them in a recipe binder.

Home Chef July 2016 review

Each recipe was packed separately, and neatly, in its own bag.  Unless otherwise noted, each of the pictures of prepared food below show one of two servings made by each recipe.  Due to our selections, this box cost us $69.60.  The following pics of prepared food show one of two servings, unless otherwise noted.

Home Chef July 2016 (4)

Jalapeño Popper Stuffed Pork Tenderloin With Buttermilk Cream And Arugula Salad. 50 – 60 minutes, expert, 559 calories per serving.

Home Chef July 2016

This recipe was listed as an expert dish because it required butterflying, pounding, stuffing, rolling, and tying a tenderloin.  The far more difficult part, in my view, was neatly plating rounds of pork without losing the filling.  In any case, this dish was very delicious, and the filling was a very close approximation of a jalapeno popper.  The dish had the classic feel of a stuffed tenderloin with gravy, but the flavor profile was very modern.  The arugula salad was a nice counterpoint, with the vinegar and tart greens playing against the rich and creamy main dish.

Home Chef July 2016 (5)

Calypso Chicken With Pineapple-Red Pepper Salsa And Charred Cilantro-Lime Cauliflower. 35 – 45 minutes, easy, 442 calories per serving.

Home Chef July 2016 (1)

This dish was rather odd, as the chicken was prepared with no fanfare, with everything other than a pinch of salt residing in the salsa.  The salsa was quite good, but it lacked a sauce that might adhere to the chicken.  The latter seemed very undressed, even when the salsa was spooned on top.  The cauliflower was treated to a splash of lime juice — I’ve never thought of this preparation for cauliflower, but it was actually a very nice complement to the vegetable.  Despite the stark appearance of the chicken, this dish was tasty.  It was also very easy to prepare.

Home Chef July 2016 (6)

Coffee Rubbed Steak And Brown Butter Mashed Potatoes With Roasted Carrots And Fresh Dill. 35 – 45 minutes, easy, 882 calories per serving.

Home Chef July 2016 (2)

We really enjoyed this dish.  The brown butter added a beautiful nutty tone to the potatoes, and the coffee really kicked up the umami of the steak without overpowering it.   The roast carrots had a beautiful, concentrated flavor, and the slight sweetness paired well with the bold sauce.  Surprisingly, the coffee didn’t impart any bitterness to the steak or sauce, and the dish was even a hit with our resident coffee hater!  The dish was easy to prepare, but it did require keeping an eye on oven, pan, and pot.

Home Chef tends to be the most mainstream of the meal kit subscriptions, featuring dishes that are familiar and comforting.  Home Chef has always had a huge selection of meal options to choose from each week, and it is the undisputed portion king of the meal kit subscriptions!   They have also been adding some more exotic and adventurous offerings to the mix, with Indian, Southeast Asian, and African dishes appearing as choices.  I think they did a great job with these offerings, providing both quality and novelty.  In addition to great dinner options, they also offer breakfast selections (we are talking dinner-sized breakfast) and a fruit basket (the fruit is superb — seasonal and just reaching ripeness upon arrival).

Have you tried Home Chef? What did you think of your meals?

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!

The Subscription: Home Chef
The Description: Receive fresh ingredients and visual, step-by-step recipe cards on your selected delivery day every week. Cook like a seasoned chef in your own kitchen with ease.
The Price: $60.00 every week
See Home Chef in the Hello Subscription Box Directory!
The Categories: .
The Reviews: See all our Home Chef Reviews.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *