Home Chef Review & Coupon – February 2018

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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. Their meal options include many great Asian, Indian, African, and South American inspired dishes, along with more traditional American home-style and steakhouse fare.

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. Meals for your box are suggested based on your preferences, but you can change the selections any time. The portions are large, 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 option a week that’s a premium meal and costs a little more, though).

DEAL: Get $30 of free food when you sign up – just use this link to get the deal!

Our box also included a promo for Winc wine club.

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 kitchens 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 prep is done is a sensible order – items with long lead times are started first. 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.

The ingredients are separated by meal into individual bags, all packed into a big, padded box with several ice packs. The bags used to bundle the food are, of course, recyclable, but they also have a handy resealable zip closure. They stand up in the fridge, keeping everything together, and the clear side and labeling make it easy to identify which meal is which.

We decided to get a fruit basket along with our three meals. Our basket included two red d’Anjou pears, two Fuji apples, and and a navel orange. The quality of the fruit is always really great. It is firm, but ripe enough to eat right away. These pieces weren’t as cosmetically perfect as some we’ve received, but the flavor and texture of the fruit is superb!

Chicken Fajita Stuffed Peppers With Pico De Gallo And Sour Cream, 30-40 mins, Intermediate, 541 Calories per serving

This spin on the classic chicken fajita is healthy and delicious — it ditches the tortilla for a flavorful poblano. The peppers are stuffed with so much goodness and, when topped with sour cream, it becomes a perfect meal to devour. This dish really packed in the flavor, and it was kept relatively light by skipping the carbs and using just seasoned meat and cheese as the filling. This is an easy dish to make, it looks really impressive (this is one I may have to recreate for Cinco de Mayo), and it’s healthier than either a classic fajita or a fried chili relleño.

Steak Pad Thai With Peanuts & Cilantro, 25-35 mins, Easy, 645 Calories per serving

This distinctively Thai meal is composed of rice noodles and sirloin steak swirled in a sauce of spicy sambal oelek and earthy oyster sauce. It has just the right amount of heat, while the addition of peanuts, cilantro, and green onions brings a traditional flair to the dish. I’ve seen many variations on Pad Thai sauce, and I really like the use of sambal oelek here. It adds a bit of brininess and brings lots of heat, so it stands in well as a sub for fish sauce and Thai chilis, plus it makes the prep much simpler and avoids the handling of hot peppers.

Mesquite Filet Mignon With Cheddar Mashed Potatoes, 35-45 minutes, Easy, 672 Calories per serving

Nothing is more delightful than to have full meal that provides protein, carbs, and other essential vitamins. This filet mignon was wonderfully tender, and it goes perfectly with the cheddar mashed potatoes and healthy green beans. But the star, of course, is the smoky and salty mesquite seasoning  that makes the steaks worth the wait. The cream sauce is a quick finishing touch that pushes the dish over the top.

We got three easy to prepare and delicious meals this week. I loved the flavor profiles in our selections — tons of wild flavor in each dish. As always, they’ve managed to match great flavors with good sized portions – Home Chef is typically the heartiest of the meal kit subscriptions we regularly review, both in portion size and composition. With easy preparation and approachable flavors, it is a great subscription for fans of home style meals.

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

Visit Home Chef to subscribe or find out more!

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