Our latest Home Chef was super yummy! 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!
We also received a coupon code from Candy Club to get $20 off your first box.
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 bold-facing 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.
Pigs In A Blanket With Red Bell Pepper, Spinach, And Egg Scramble. 25-35 minutes, intermediate, 631 calories per serving.
This easy breakfast was a lot of fun! The scramble had a good balance of eggs and veggies, it didn’t get runny from the spinach and still felt like an egg dish. The pancakes were very fluffy – so much so that they split a bit when folded around the sausage. The sausage was very good, and it tasted like real breakfast sausage, not like frozen pre-cooked. Though there were a few elements to the dish, the prep remained easy and relatively fast.
Baked Italian Sausage Farfalle With Parmesan Garlic Bread. 30-40 minutes, easy, 918 calories per serving.
This big dish really satisfied! Both portions are shown in the pic, but it was still a ton of food for two! I used a bit of harissa-infused olive oil on the garlic bread, so ours had a bit of spice and more of an orange hue than you would ordinarily expect, but it crisped perfectly in the oven. The casserole was delicious, with big slabs of Italian sausage and tender chunks of zucchini. This dish was a little more work than you’d like in a casserole, as the sausage, pasta, and zucchini each required separate pre-cooking before assembly.
Spicy Caramel Tofu With Snow Peas And Jasmine Rice. 30-40 minutes, easy, 511 calories per serving.
I was a little hesitant upon seeing the name of the dish, as caramel denotes a candied sweetness beyond that you might want for tofu. I was pleasantly surprised, as the dish retained a nice umami character, too, and it was really good (and really spicy)! The tofu was a bit soft, even after pressing, so it crumbled a bit – the crumbles fried into crispy masses in the pan and ended up being the tastiest part of the dish! The roast snap peas and plain rice were well-needed, given the heat of the dish. The dish was easy to make, though the tofu was delicate and required a gentle hand.
Pan-Seared Steak And Potatoes With Horseradish-Parsley Mayo, Yum Yum Sauce, And Curry Ketchup. 35-45 minutes, easy, 970 calories per serving.
This simple dish was probably our favorite of the bunch. The bulk of the dish was a pan-fried steak and roasted potato coins. Three homemade sauces added a ton of flavor and some dipping fun! Our only complaint was that we didn’t use enough of the curry ketchup or horseradish mayo because the yummy sauce was just too good! I liked the way they balance the complexity of making three sauces with a very easy to prepare protein and starch.
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).
Have you tried Home Chef? What did you think of your meals?
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