Home Chef Review & Coupon – March 2017

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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.

All of the provided ingredients for our six recipes this week. 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.

Turkey And Avocado Tostadas With Pickled Onions, Sour Cream, And Chayote. 45-55 minutes, easy, 867 calories per serving.

These were fabulous, with all the characteristics we love about Mexican food. Creamy, tart, flavorful, and zesty, this dish had a wonderful brightness and freshness of flavor that is hard to find outside of an actual tacqueria. I was pleased at the ease of preparation, too, as the key to dish was mainly the pairing of the right ingredients, not any laborious technique.

Mini-Quiches Lorraine With Apple And Arugula Sala. 30-40 minutes, easy, 1246 calories per serving.

These were super-easy to make and serve! The use of pastry dough as the bottom crust saved us from the usual messy pie pan problem, and they individual quiches popped right out.

A bright apple and arugula salad was a nice counterbalance to the rich quiche. These were really delicious and looked very elegant, with the pastry lending an artisan look to the dish. The recipe contained just the right amount for four perfectly full quiches.

Homestyle Chicken And Dumplings With Peas And Carrots. 40-50 minutes, intermediate, 748 calories per serving.

This easy version of chicken and dumplings uses the same flour mixture to both thicken the sauce and make the dumplings. It took quite a bit of time to cook, but it was essentially a one-pot meal (plus a mixing bowl). The gravy was thick and flavorful, and the dumplings were just perfect – though we only got seven tiny ones out of the mix instead of the expected 8-10 large ones. Still, this one’s one of our favorites.

Sirloin With Fig And Red Wine Reduction With Rosemary-Roasted Potatoes, Brussels Sprouts, And Goat Cheese. 35-45 minutes, easy, 652 calories per serving.

Everything in this dish was good, and it was very easy to make. The steak, potatoes, and roasted Brussels sprouts were nice, as expected.  The bit of goat cheese was a great touch for the roasted veggies, and it really paired well with the bitter of the sprouts. The star of the dish was the great sauce.  The fig and wine made a not overly-sweet, complex accompaniment that was a great complement to the umami of the other elements.

Bone-In Chimichurri Pork Chop With Roasted Chayote And Smoked Almonds. 30-40 minutes, easy, 450 calories per serving.

This dish was a surprise hit! I was highly skeptical of the chayote, as I haven’t really had it as a featured item, and I expected a cactus-like or tart flesh. Instead, it was bright and fresh, like a cross between cucumber and squash. The flavor was light, and the texture was delightful! Smoked almonds and sauteed shallots turned it into a lovely salad, worthy of being so heavily represented on the plate. The chop was superb – tender and juicy, and the chimi was just fabulous. This dish was unique, pairing some Mexican and South American favorites together in a new way. Easy to prepare and very tasty!

Black Bean Tortilla Soup With Avocado, Lime, And Homemade Tortilla Strips. 30-40 minutes, easy, 592 calories per serving.

This dish was really nice, and it satisfied my black bean cravings! Easy to make, this dish added freshly-fried tortilla strips to add a nice crunch and to thicken the soup. Avocado was added in at the end as an extra, but it wasn’t even really needed, as the soup was great already.

This Home Chef was one of our favorite sets so far. Two meals used chayote, a vegetable with which we were unfamiliar, buy that proved to be really delicious (I’m now going to look for it anytime I am ordering at an authentic Mexican or Central American eatery). We ended up with six meals this week, because too many of the choices looked good! 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?

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