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 instructions delivered to your door. The basic concept is the same as other weekly meal delivery services, but it has its own unique features and recipes.
Home Chef has a huge selection of meal options to choose from each week, including some Asian, Indian, African, and South American inspired dishes among their more traditional American home-style and steakhouse fare, and the portions are the most generous among the meal kit subscriptions we review regularly!
In addition to the many great dinner options (available in 2, 4, 0r 6 servings), they also offer breakfast selections, smoothies, and a fruit basket (which we have been very happy with whenever we’ve gotten it).
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).
DEAL: Get $30 of free food when you sign up – just use this link to get the deal!
The food is packed in puffy, padded cooler pads, with each meal packed in a separate bag containing nearly everything needed to make a complete meal. The box is always packed with several ice packs. The meat is packed with ice packs in a giant bag to protect against leaks.
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. 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 – the even include liquid egg (instead of expecting you to have eggs on hand), and oil for shallow-frying when a recipe calls for more than a few tablespoons worth.
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. I love that they include a heads-up for when ingredients are divided and used in different parts of the dish.
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.
There’s a $20 off coupon included that you can use when you subscribe to Try The World.
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.
Adobo Chicken Enchiladas With Corn, Jalapeño Peppers, And Sour Cream. 45-55 minutes, intermediate, 891 calories per serving.
We really enjoyed these enchiladas! Pictured above is the entire recipe – it is a huge meal for two. In fact, I served this for my visiting parents, and we fed four adults from a single recipe! We didn’t gorge ourselves, but no one was left hungry. We’ve been slightly skeptical of Home Chef recipes involving chicken, as their chicken breast have an oddly springy texture that we’re not big fans of. It worked well as shredded chicken in this dish, though I could tell when shredding it that their breast still exhibit the unusual firmness. This dish was great, with a bit of spice, a really flavorful sauce, and great texture. The chicken needed to be cooked ahead of time, so the total prep time was long, but the actual process was very simple.
Italian Wedding Soup With Pork Meatballs with Parmesan Ciabatta. 25-35 minutes, easy, 577 calories per serving.
I was a bit apprehensive when I saw the menu card for this soup, as it looked like it was smothered with kale and likely wouldn’t live up to wedding soup expectations. I was pleasantly surprised, and we found this version to be very delicious. There was more green than I usually see in this dish, but the kale was tender and fit in very well with the flavor profile. This was due in large part to the incredible richness and flavor provided by the pork meatballs – I definitely prefer the pork to beef in this recipe. The liquid portion of the soup was thickened slightly with some cornstarch, giving it a nice mouth feel and silky texture. The ciabatta was a perfect accompaniment, great for sopping up the broth. This was an easy dish to put together, and being soup, it was easy to have everything ready at one time.
Blue Cheese And Green Onion-Crusted Steak With Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes And Brussels Sprouts. 30-40 minutes, easy, 665 calories per serving.
I enjoyed this twist on the classic meat, potato, veg trio. The steak was great, but It took about twice as long to cook as estimated in the instructions (after 12 minutes, I could still see raw steak around the circumference) – it took about twenty minutes to bake the Brussels sprouts and steak to my liking. It was well worth it, as the meat was exceedingly tender, and the blue cheese topping caramelized and developed a delicious crust. Even the potatoes were kicked up a bit with a couple of roasted cloves of garlic. Very simple to make and very enjoyable.
Have you tried Home Chef? What did you think of your meals?
Comments
We loved the steak! I chose it more for my husband since I’ve never been a big blue cheese fan… But I am now – in this dish at least!
I rarely order the chicken dinners – I can’t stand to touch raw chicken anyway and there is something about theirs that doesn’t impress me.., which is weird because their salmon, shrimp and steaks are always amazing!