Home Chef August 2016 Review & Coupon

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Home Chef August 2016 box

This week’s Home Chef delivered some of my favorite dishes yet!  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 August 2016 unboxing

This week, our food was packed within an arrangement of puffy, padded cooler pads.  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, and they even include a bottle of oil for shallow-frying when a recipe calls for more than a few tablespoons worth.

Home Chef August 2016 unboxed

The box is always packed with a sufficient number of ice packs — the meat is placed in the bottom of the box with several of them.  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 August 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 August 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 August 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 $89.60.  The following pics of prepared food show one of two servings, unless otherwise noted.

Home Chef August 2016 (3)

Summertime Fruit Basket With Grapefruit, Mango, And Fuji Apples.  The fruit is always magnificent.  Usually we get four pieces in the basket, typically comprising a couple apples, and some citrus and tropical fruit.  Amazingly, it is simultaneously firm and at the peak of ripeness — this is not like a store’s shopping service, where you’d get the pieces no one selects themselves.  I couldn’t pick out better pieces of fruit at the supermarket if I tried.

Home Chef August 2016 (4)

Seared Flat Iron Steak With Garlic-Chive Butter With Buttermilk Biscuits And Pecorino Zucchini. 30-40 minutes, easy, 809 calories per serving.

Home Chef August 2016 (3)

This dish is exceedingly simple, but really delicious.  The steak was tender and thin enough to cook properly without a lot of fuss.  The veggies were very flavorful, and I thought the tomatoes arrived in very nice condition (tomatoes are second only to cilantro in ice-pack induced mushiness).  The biscuits were a superb accompaniment — I loved that they cooked alongside the veggies and needed only water and cheese mixed in.

Home Chef August 2016 (5)

Chicken Adobo Tacos With Mexican Street Corn. 30-40 minutes, intermediate, 910 calories per serving.

Home Chef August 2016

These tacos were enjoyable, but we thought they were more Italian style than Mexican, due to the mildness of the spice and intensity of tomato flavor in the sauce.  The lime really accentuated the brightness of the tomato, too, further damping the influence of the spice.  Still, the combo was really good, particularly with the lime-pickled cabbage for texture.  The corn preparation was the real winner — the cheese paired deliciously as a topping, and the sour cream functioned as an innocuous binder.

Home Chef August 2016 (6)

Backyard Seafood Boil With Lobster, Shrimp, And Spicy Sausage. 35-45 minutes, easy, 854 calories per serving.


Home Chef August 2016 (2)

Pictured is the full, 2-person portion of this seafood feast.  Everything is added in turn to an Old Bay infused pot of water (only the sausage required a little preliminary browning).  The recipe set forth very effective timing for producing seafood cooked perfectly, neither slimy (undercooked), nor rubbery (overcooked).  The centerpiece was the plump lobster tail, but there was lots of good stuff — a dozen shrimp, corn on the cob, two giant, spicy sausages, and a heap of tender red potatoes.  The whole pile was finished with a sprinkle of parsley, a spritz of lemon, and a bowl of clarified butter.  This dish was a lot of food and worth the price!

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 and a fruit basket (which we have been very happy with whenever we’ve gotten it).

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
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The Reviews: See all our Home Chef Reviews.

Comments

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  • Catherine
    08.26.16

    Your biscuits look a lot better than mine did! Maybe because I just dumped all the water in at once? I have no patience for multiple times of mixing in one thing.

    I liked the taco dish, but my husband (Mr. Picky) took one bite and then put them in the fridge for me to eat for lunch.

    I didn’t get the seafood boil – I’d rather spend that money towards a sushi dinner.

    • Brandy
      08.27.16

      Tom probably did put the water in bit by bit. He also happily ate half the tacos in one go, but I allocated my leftovers to his lunch instead of mine. The seafood boil I picked up so he would have something delightful while I was out of town. You might notice we rarely have seafood – because I can’t stand it. It was my surprise treat for him. I know he enjoyed it way more than dragging the kids out to dinner somewhere – he never gets a chance to eat before they’re all done! He needed something to compensate for being at home for 3 straight days with the 3 kids! (He also got his Craft Beer Club, so I hope it was a good no-mommy week). We had a big box this week from Home Chef (aren’t reviewing it, we don’t write one weekly – especially with back to school week coming up). My favorite so far is the grilled montreal chicken breast with the honeyed sweet potatoes and we are having the tiki french toast again, which is amazing.

      Since this comment is so long I’m going to venture a guess that I’m pretty hungry right now!