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.
Breakfast Sausage And Cheddar Taquitos With Fresh Pico De Gallo And Scrambled Eggs. 30-40 minutes, easy, 715 calories per serving.
This dish was lots of fun, and the breakfast sausage worked really well with the Mexican flavor profile. The meal took a little time to prepare, only because of the chopping required for the pick and the pre-cooking of the sausage. Liquid eggs are used for the scramble, but they are surprisingly good both in taste and texture. The sausage is very nice quality – nothing like your typical frozen breakfast sausage. Pictured is the full, 2-serving recipe.
Cider Beurre Blanc Pork Tenderloin With Parmesan-Roasted Carrots And Brussels Sprouts. 35-45 minutes, easy, 586 calories per serving.
This dish was very tasty and filling. The carrots and Parmesan really balanced out the Brussels sprouts, making the vegetable medley complex and really flavorful. The pork cooked perfectly, with just a tinge of pink in the middle. I loved the simple butter sauce, as it really picked up the flavor of the thyme and went well with the vegetables, as well. This dish was very easy to make. It could have used a starch accompaniment, but the portion was large even without it (and its absence helped keep prep simple).
Sirloin Steak With Blue Cheese Compound Butter With Green Beans And Roasted Fingerling Potatoes. 40-50 minutes, easy, 613 calories per serving.
This classic, French-inspired steakhouse dish was very satisfying. The veggies were firm and fresh, and the potatoes, like all Home Chef potato preparations, were ridiculously good. Super simple to put together. The blue cheese compound butter was a bit of an extravagance, and I found the dish to be just fine with only a fraction of the provided portion (I’m thinking the remainder has buffalo wings written all over it).
Korean Pork Noodle Bowl With Green Beans, Green Onions, And Fresno Chile. 35-45 minutes, easy, 773 calories per serving.
This dish was the bomb – it was reminiscent of the crazy noodles Brandy used to order every time we got Thai from the tiny shop down the street. In place of basil, a healthy dose of cilantro adds the lovely pungency of fresh herbs, and the dish has ample spice, sweetness, crisp veg,and caramelized pork. Great noodles form the heart of the dish, and prep wasn’t very difficult at all. This dish is a winner!
Turkey And Butternut Squash Chili With Cheddar, Sour Cream, And Onions.
Home Chef’s chilies always catch me a little off guard, because they don’t use any fresh peppers (and yes, Texas, they skipped the beans). They rely on chili powder for flavor, and the result is a light and bright chili with a pleasant, mild heat. The sauce was milder and sweeter than I prefer, but still very good. Lots of toppings were provided, amping up the texture and flavor. The squash was a nice touch, adding tender bursts of creamy flavor, much like beans would in some chilies, but sweeter.
We are always happy with Home Chef. There are many, many meals from which to choose – over time we’ve found so many “favorites” that it’s hard to whittle our choices down to only a week’s worth of meals! There selections offer lots of classic steakhouse and homestyle dishes, and each week seems to offer a couple new innovations to try. We like being able to get a breakfast for a big weekend family breakfast, and their fruit is great, too. If you are thinking of trying out a meal kit subscription, Home Chef is a great place to start.
Have you tried Home Chef? What did you think of your meals?
Comments