Home Chef January 2017 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 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 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 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. 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.

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.

Steak And Blue Cheese Salad With Honey-Caramelized Onions And Walnuts. 25-35 minutes, easy, 625 calories per serving.

We normally are a bit wary of salads, because the value can be lacking.  This one, however, was well worth getting (this loaded platter shows both servings). Each portion of salad provided an entire steak, plus tons of croutons, caramelized onions, blue cheese, tasted walnuts, and tomatoes.  The flavor was great, and we really loved the way the pile of sweet onions brought the entire salad together. As is usually the case with salads, there was a fair amount of prep required before assembling the final dish.

Note from Brandy: I’m not crazy about salads but I’m so glad I ordered this one! It was amazing!

Italian Sausage Ribollita With Cannellini Beans, Kale, And Garlic Bread. 30-40 minutes, intermediate, 872 calories per serving.

This dish combines hearty sausage, creamy beans, and vegetable-filled broth into a filling and flavorful dish. The veggies soaked up so much of the broth that the dish turned from a soup to a pile of stewed vegetables.  The flavor and texture was great, and the dish was easy to prepare, with the sausage finishing cooking atop the veggies like a one pot meal.

Pork Chop And Cranberry Mostarda With Roasted Sweet Potatoes And Brussels Sprouts. 25-35 minutes, easy, 623 calories per serving.

The mostarda, comprising caramelized onions, mustard, and cranberry, was a superb complement to the rich pork. The meat was firm but tender. The veggies didn’t roast quite as expected, drying out a bit while remaining very firm. The dish as a whole was easy to make, but it didn’t wow us – the relish-like mostarda, however, was definitely a treat.

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

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.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