Home Chef is a meal in a box subscription – every week, you 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).
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 set-up (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.
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 a giant bag to protect against leakage and to let you get the meat out without fishing around. They now stamp the inside of the box with inspection stamps, so we know that no fewer than two people have inspected our box before it ships!
DEAL: Get $30 of free food when you sign up – just use this link to get the deal!
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 such as cookware and salt and pepper.
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 prep is done is a sensible order, with long lead time items first. This helps everything finish cooking close to the same time. The recipe cards have pre-punched holes so you can store them in a recipe binder – we usually prefer to just wait till the recipe is offered again instead of attempting to gather the ingredients to recreate it ourselves.
Each recipe was packed separately, and neatly, in its own bag, except for a few larger items. Unless otherwise noted, each of the pictures of prepared food below shows one of two servings made by each recipe.
Three Cheese Brown Butter Mac With Parmesan-Roasted Zucchini And Roma Tomatoes. 40-50 minutes, easy, 979 calories per serving.
This dish was great for the whole family — the kids loved the creamy, mild flavor of the three cheeses. The crumb topping added a wonderful buttery crunch, and the veggie side was great for cutting the richness of the main dish. This was a very easy recipe for mac and cheese, too, as pasta water takes the place of a bechamel for thickening the sauce.
Chicken Quesadillas With Sour Cream And Pico De Gallo. 25-35 minutes, easy, 980 calories per serving.
Pressing the quesadillas between two baking sheets resulted in a crispy, almost pie crust like patina on the tortillas. The cheese melted out of the sides quite a bit, though, leaving the chicken filling a bit dry. Thankfully, there was plenty of yummy pico de gallo and sour cream! Very easy to cook, with a bit of chopping for the pico.
Chimichurri Steak With Roasted Potatoes And Tomatoes. 35-45 minutes, easy, 625 calories per serving.
Ultra-tender steak, served with an intense, garlicky parsley sauce. Simple, roasted steak fries and tomato were a fine complement. Easy to prepare, and one of the best preparations for steak.
Salisbury Steak With Whipped Potatoes, Asparagus, And Sherry-Mushroom Gravy. 45-55 minutes, intermediate, 902 calories per serving.
This classic dish is a favorite in our house. The steak was very tender, as there was no bready binder. The simple cream gravy was chock full of fried onions and mushrooms. The potatoes were great for sopping up all the great sauce. This meal took a little bit of time to put together, since the asparagus, steak, and the veggie-laden sauce all used the same pan in turn.
Honey Mustard-Roasted Pork Tenderloin With Rosemary-Roasted Green Beans And Red Onions. 35-45 minutes, easy, 496 calories per serving.
Nice, tender pork with a sweet and very umami, demi-style sauce. Lots of flavor and texture from the onions and green beans, but the dish did seem to be missing a hearty starch. It did make for a powerfully flavorful, but fairly light meal, given its composition. Simple to make and very tasty!
This was a solid week of meals — we went with 5 dinners this week, and we were happy with each. We picked several more traditional, home-cooking style meals this time around. 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 do a great job with these dishes, 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).
We also received a coupon code from Candy Club to get $20 off your first box.
Have you tried Home Chef? What did you think of your meals?
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