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Home Chef Subscription Box Review + Coupon – June 2016

Lindsey Morse
ByLindsey MorseJul 25, 2016 | 11 comments

HomeChef-June-2016-Box

Home Chef
4 overall rating
26 Ratings | 14 Reviews

Home Chef is a subscription meal delivery service that sends a weekly box of “perfectly portioned, premium ingredients, spices & sauces, and easy, step-by-step recipes.”

Boxes contain “fresh ingredients” and “chef-designed, restaurant-quality” recipes.

You can skip a week whenever you like.

HomeChef-June-2016-Inside

Check out all of our reviews of Meal Delivery Services to see every meal kit subscription box option!

My Subscription Addiction pays for this subscription. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes.)

HomeChef-June-2016-Open

The Subscription Box: Home Chef

The Cost: Meals start at $9.95 per serving, and delivery is free for orders over $40.

COUPON: Get $30 off your first box from Home Chef. No coupon required, just use this link.

The Products: Fresh ingredients and chef-designed recipes— everything you need to make restaurant-quality meals at home.

Ships to: 90% of the US. (You can check to see if Home Chef delivers to your zip code here.)

Check out all of our Home Chef reviews and find other meal boxes in the Meal Subscription Box Directory!

Keep Track of Your Subscriptions: Add this box to your subscription list or wishlist!

HomeChef-June-2016-Quiz

When you first sign up for Home Chef, you take a short quiz about your meal preferences and dietary restrictions.

Based on this quiz, the Home Chef algorithm selects meals for you each week. If you’d rather receive different meals, it’s easy to swap them.

I think the Home Chef website is very user-friendly, and I like how many meal options they offer. Most weeks, Home Chef offers 10 dinner options, a breakfast, a smoothie, and a fruit basket!

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When my box shipped, I received an email with tracking information.

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This month, my box contained a welcome booklet. I’m not sure why I received it in this box (I’ve been a subscriber for months now), but it provided some cooking tips and tricks.

HomeChef-June-2016-InsertInside

Unfortunately, there was an issue with one of my ingredients again this week. When I collected my box from the entryway of my condo building, I picked it up and noticed a small puddle underneath. The box itself was a little soggy, and when I unpacked it I discovered that one of my salmon filets hadn’t been properly sealed and had leaked into the box. The other items in the box were unharmed, but it wasn’t very nice having to clean fish juice off of everything. (Ick!)

I reached out to customer service about this problem, and they issued me a credit for both servings of the salmon dish. Home Chef customer service is excellent, and I’ve always been pleased with the way they’ve handled issues. That being said, it’s a little worrying that I’d had to reach out to them so frequently. This is the second box in a row that I’ve had an issue with. (My last box contained wilted herbs.)

Meal #1- Cedar Roasted Salmon with Root Vegetable Slaw

Calories: 600 per serving

Prep Time: 25-35 minutes

Difficulty: Intermediate

HomeChef-June-2016-SalmonCard

Since I was down a salmon filet, I decided to make this dish for lunch and just split the remaining piece of fish between two plates.

HomeChef-June-2016-SalmonPrep

I began by chopping an apple and a beet into matchsticks. I really enjoy chopping veggies (it’s one of those activities that borders on meditation for me), so I had a lot of fun doing the prep for this meal. I also minced a couple cloves of garlic and zested a lemon.

HomeChef-June-2016-SalmonSheets

To help infuse the flavor of cedar into the salmon, the recipe instructed for the fish to be wrapped in cedar sheets before being roasted in the oven. Since the cedar sheets are so thin, it’s important to soften them in water first so they don’t snap.

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They softened pretty quickly, and I wrapped my salmon filet and secured the sheet in place with butcher’s twine. I’ve never cooked salmon like this before, and I had a lot of fun wrapping the filet!

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I roasted the salmon at 450 degrees, and while I waited for it to cook I prepared the salad by tossing the apple and beet matchsticks with carrots, arugula, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, lemon zest, salt, and pepper.

When the salmon was ready, I unwrapped it from the cedar sheet, placed it on top of the salad, and sprinkled pistachios on top.

HomeChef-June-2016-SalmonPlated

This was a delicious salad! The salmon had a really nice cedar flavor, and the sweet and tangy slaw was perfect.

Meal #2- Pulled BBQ Chicken Sliders with Salt and Vinegar Chips and Cole Slaw

Calories: 982 per serving

Prep Time: 30-40 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

HomeChef-June-2016-SlidersCard

This dish was a special offering for the 4th of July!

HomeChef-June-2016-SlidersPrep

My wonderful husband (the resident grill master), wanted to try his hand at making this dish, and I was happy to oblige!

He began by slicing potatoes and baking them on a sheet tray. While the potatoes roasted, he rubbed chicken thighs with BBQ seasoning and cooked them in a pan over medium heat.

HomeChef-June-2016-SlidersRoast

When the potatoes were halfway done cooking, he removed them from the oven, flipped them over, and added the partly-cooked chicken to the tray. Everything then went back into the oven to finish cooking.

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While they baked, he made the coleslaw.

Then, when the chicken and potatoes were ready, he finished the potatoes with a drizzle of vinegar, pulled the chicken and mixed it with BBQ sauce, and then plated the sliders.

HomeChef-June-2016-SlidersPlated

These sliders were really tasty! I love pulled chicken, and Home Chef’s version was tender and flavorful. The potatoes were great (I love fries with vinegar!), and the coleslaw was good, too. This certainly wasn’t a low calorie dish (982 per serving is one of the highest per-serving calorie counts I’ve ever seen in a subscription meal box), but it was festive and fun.

Meal #3- Italian Sausage & Peppers Rigatoni

Calories: 939 per serving

Prep Time: 30-40 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

HomeChef-June-2016-RigatoniCard

The last meal I selected for this box was Italian Sausage & Peppers Rigatoni.

HomeChef-June-2016-RigatoniPrep

I began by cleaning my veggies and slicing peppers and onion.

Next, I cooked the Italian sausages in a hot pan.

HomeChef-June-2016-RigatoniBread

It may seem a little silly, but one of the main reasons I selected this dish is because of the garlic bread! Home Chef has an unusual garlic bread recipe (I had it once or twice before in previous boxes), and I really like it! Their topping recipe is a combination of olive oil, garlic, and parmesan, and I love how it makes the bread rich and cheesy.

HomeChef-June-2016-RigatoniPeppers

After the sausages were done, I boiled the pasta and began cooking the onions and peppers with garlic and red pepper flakes.

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I sliced the sausage and tossed it into the pan.

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Next, I added marinara sauce and a little water, brought everything to a boil, and added the cooked rigatoni. I divided the pasta between two plates, topped each serving with parmesan cheese and added some garlic bread on the side.

HomeChef-June-2016-RigatoniPlated

This dish was tasty and incredibly indulgent. There was a LOT of sausage in this dish (too much for me, personally), and I thought the portion was huge. I had plenty of leftovers, which is probably a good thing since this dish was another calorie bomb. At 939 per serving, I was glad that I didn’t want to eat it all in one sitting!

Verdict: Home Chef offers over 10 meal options every week, and I absolutely love their large selection. I had no problem choosing three meals that sounded great this week, and, overall, I’m happy with the meals I received. Since Home Chef offers so many different meals each week, I don’t want to generalize too much about their offerings; however, I will say that I’ve come to expect comfort food from Home Chef. Looking at the meals I received this week, two of the dishes were a little calorific for my liking, but they were certainly tasty! (And I can’t really complain about high calorie dishes when I’m the one that picked them. There were other, lower calorie options available.) It’s disappointing that my box arrived damaged (again), but I’m pleased with the way customer service handled the problem. Hopefully, I won’t have further problems with wilted or leaky ingredients in the next box! In terms of value, Home Chef is very competitively priced in the meal box subscription market. Their meals start at $9.95 per serving, which is cheaper than Plated ($12 per serving) and on par with Blue Apron ($9.99 per serving) and Hello Fresh ($9.90 per serving).

Do you subscribe to Home Chef? Which dishes did you pick last week?

Starting at $43.96
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Home Chef is a meal kit subscription service that allows customers to pick out specific meals each week that best fit their tastes and schedules. Whether you’re cooking for yourself and your spouse or having a full house of kids, Home Chef offers recipes that everyone can enjoy. Each Home Chef bo... read more.

Lindsey Morse
Lindsey Morse

Lindsey is a professional baker, cold brew coffee addict, and rosé aficionado who loves writing about food and wine. When she’s not sharing her love of subscription boxes with the world, you’ll find her in the podcasting studio, perfecting her cake decorating techniques, or cursing her way through the New York Times daily crossword puzzle. 


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11 comments

nursermk

Another wonderfully descriptive and well illustrated review Lindsey, thanks! I worry about a subscription service which spends so much time with wasted ingredients and issuing credit for incorrect or insolvent shipments–which speaks to poor business practices, inventory depletion and negative profit margins. Looking at the various services for my spry 89 year old Pops, this is probably the closest to his eating style with lots of basic dishes ( your description of comfort food is a good one) and a varied, well priced menu, but dang if I am going to spend money for a weekly screw up. I will watch the next couple of reviews so maybe they can get their act together and I’ll be more comfortable about trusting them? They certainly can’t afford to keep wasting money with mess-ups. We’ll see!?

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Lindsey

I’ve tried Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, and now Home Chef. Home Chef is, by far, my favorite amongst the three, and I haven’t had any issues with them thus far. Home Chef for the win!

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Sarah

I have gotten moldy bread in two boxes this month! And my meat came unpackaged and there was blood all over my food it was not pleasant, plus my stuff has been coming ready to use that day and won’t last the five days like they say it will. Thinking of trying blue apron or something else. They are very nice in giving you credit for your meals but it’s not something I want to have to do weekly

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Sara

I’ve only received four boxes so far, but I haven’t had any problems with moldy food, wilted produce or unpackaged meats. I haven’t had to contact their customer service though either. I wonder if it depends on how soon you can get the box in out of the “elements” (heat, rain, etc)? I work from home so I can get my box in when it arrives most of the time.

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Adele

Wow, that’s bad! I think Hello Fresh has the best packaging and I never had a problem with the quality of their food or Plated’s. I want to try Blue Apron too, but don’t like that they limit the meal selection.

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Amber

I hate when recipes call for cooking chicken and vegetables on the same pan. I would expect this company to take food safety seriously.

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Heather

There is nothing wrong with cooking chicken and vegetables together if you cook the chicken to an internal temperature of 165 degrees fahrenheit. I’ve taken several food safety certification classes and have cooked in a few professional kitchens.

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Adele

They shipped me the wrong meals this week and they were very apologetic and said since they couldn’t replace them, I would receive a full credit. Luckily the meals they sent were good. It’s always nice to deal with a company that has good customer service.

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Emily

We are going to try this box next week for some variety. Know how hard it is to stop delivery if we don’t like it?

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Sara

You can skip weeks, its very easy. I set mine to skip until the August 10th meal week lol. I’ve had 4 boxes and LOVED them!!! They’re so easy to cook, cleanup is a breeze, and the meals are delicious!

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Liz Cadman

You know you are a subscription box addict when you get excited spotting salad servers from a POPSUGAR box from two years ago! 🙂

As always, your meals look SO good!!

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