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 – they 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, but 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 Wellington With Roasted Carrots And Mushroom Demi-Glace. 45-55 minutes, intermediate, 800 calories per serving.
This was an easy version of the classic Beef Wellington. In place of a Duxelles, we used sautéed slices of mushroom. The pile of mushrooms held the crust away from the meat, allowing it to crisp and brown instead of turning into dumpling. This was a very elegant way to serve steak, and laying the pastry across the beef instead of wrapping it helped ensure a crisp crust and no fuss. Oddly, the roast carrots were the more difficult piece of preparation to master, as I did “over-caramelize” ours a bit. The demi glace helped elevate the dish, achieving the desired elegance without having to prepare the full dressing and casing for the beef.
Mexicali Pork Tenderloin With Brussels Sprouts, Fuji Apple, Carrot, And Lime Salad. 35-45 minutes, easy, 480 calories per serving.
This most peculiar dish paired a spicy seasoned pork loin with a bizarre melange of fruits and roasted vegetables. We were a little surprised that the salad tasted really good! The combination of crisp apples, sweet blood oranges, and tart lime juice complemented the hearty and cruciferous veggie vibe. Pepitas added a little crunch and a classic Mexican element to the dish. The pork was great. This dish required a little effort, with everything being sliced, roasted, juiced, or zested. The salad portion of the meal felt like a vegan recipe, with its unusual but successful combination of produce.
Mozzarella-Stuffed Italian Turkey Meatballs With Zucchini Noodles And Marinara. 30-40 minutes, intermediate, 571 calories per serving.
This dish offered fresh Italian flavor with a decidedly light feel. The zucchini noodles remained firm enough to provide a noodly bite, and the ricotta upped the fat sufficiently to give the meatballs more richness than you would otherwise expect from turkey. The flavor of this dish was nice and bright, and it was fun to have a cheesy surprise inside each meatball! I was pleased at how well the turkey contained the cheese during cooking, and the dish was easy overall. The only issue I experienced was that the sauce thinned out quite a bit because the zucchini added lots of water to the dish.
This dish paired nicely with our Corte di Valle Chianti Classico from Vinebox.
Korean Pork Tacos With Sriracha-Mayo And Slaw. 35-45 minutes, easy, 959 calories per serving.
This was our favorite dish of the set, and it is one for which we would save the recipe to make again on our own. The pork crisped beautifully, and the sauce added a perfect balance of sweet and salt. The tortillas mad the dish easy to construct and serve, as did the pre-chopped slaw. Sriracha mayo was a simple condiment perfect for moistening the tortilla, binding the slaw, and complementing the pork. Very satisfying and balanced.
Pine Nut Puttanesca With Angel Hair Pasta, Fresh Tomato Sauce, And Garlic Bread. 20-30 minutes, easy, 726 calories per serving.
This is a wonderfully light alternative to your typical pasta dish (both portions are shown above). The briny and tangy olives and capers made a wonderful wall of flavor when combined with the toasted pine nuts and fresh oregano. This dish was extremely easy to make, and the sauce didn’t even require cooking! This dish needed immediate serving, because it relied on the residual heat of the pasta to sufficiently heat the sauce.
Artichoke and Mozzarella Mini-Quiches With blistered Tomato and Spinach Salad. 35-45 minutes, easy, 1088 calories per serving.
This was a wonderful way to prepare individual quiches. Very easy to make, with an egg and cream mixture being sandwiched between sprinkles of cheese atop a pastry sheet. This recipe was intended to make four quiches, but there was enough filling to make at least two more (I cooked it in a separate dish and saved for breakfast). The quiche cooked perfectly, and the pastry was both delicious and a very handy help in serving the dish. The simple salad added a nice bit of green and balanced the richness of the quiche very well.
This was a huge batch of meals for us – usually we stick to four or so dishes in a week. The vegetables held up very well, but with so many meals arriving at once, our meal planning for the week was dictated by which dishes needed to be made first rather than by whim. We enjoyed every meal in the set, with the Korean tacos being a stand out favorite.
Have you tried Home Chef? What did you think of your meals?
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