After trying Hello Fresh and only being mildly impressed last year, I decided to give Home Chef a try. Everyone and their BFF on Youtube and Instagram are sponsored by Home Chef, so why not?! I am such a sucker for advertising. We’ve received a couple of boxes, so I thought I’d share my first impressions.

In your first box you get a little binder to keep your recipe cards in, which I thought was a nice touch. In our first box we had three meals: Steak Strip Provolone Pretzel Roll Sandwich, Crispy Onion Chicken, Pretzel Crusted Pork Chops with Mustard Potatoes and Peas.

I didn’t take great pictures of the meals, so sorry about that, but here are two from the first box, pork chops on the left and crispy onion chick on the right. I really liked both of these meals. I didn’t think to take a picture of the steak sandwich, but it was pretty good. My favorite meal from this box was the crispy onion chicken.

The pork chop meal was one of Home Chef’s Over Ready Meals, you just mix the stuff together and put it in the pan that comes in the box, and bake it. I love this for a night when I’m extra tired or busy.

Box number two! In this box we got Steak with Garlic Herb Butter, Marsala Mushroom Chicken Skillet, and Creamy Truffle Steak Penne with Cheese and Garlic Croutons.

Here are the goods. The spinach was in the box loose instead of in a recipe bag, so that was kind of weird. It got a little smashed so I ended up just leaving it out of the recipe it was meant for.

Marsala mushroom chicken on the left and herb butter steak on the right.

The creamy truffle steak penne is a Home Chef Express recipe, which means it can be finished in 10-15 minutes, so I took that as a challenge and timed myself making it.

At 7:22 I got out my supplies and then turned on the stove. Here we go.

First I patted the meat dry and seasoned it with salt and pepper. I cooked the steak most of the way, then added the seasoning and peas. Then I added the sauce ingredients, and while I let that heat up, I crushed the croutons in a very fancy way, with my phone, becasue it was handy. After everything was heated up I topped it with the truffle oil, red pepper flakes and croutons.

I was done at 7:42, so 20 minutes start to finish. Not bad. I probably could have made it in 15 minutes if I hadn’t paused occasionally to take a picture. This pasta dish was really good and I kind of hope I can choose this one again. If not, I guess I could just buy the ingredients, but that’s not as much fun. I couldn’t pick a favorite from this box, I liked them all too much.

Our third box had: Crispy Onion-Crusted Chicken Breast with Jalapeno Cornbread Cakes, Acapulco Steak Quesadillas, Apple Butter Pork Chop with White Cheddar Green Beans, and Strawberry Fields Smoothie.

Crispy onion chicken on the left, Acapulco steak quesadillas in the middle, and apple butter pork chop on the right. I haven’t made the smoothies yet, but the ingredients look good. We love crispy onion chicken, we are 100% sold on the crispy onion life, I was also really surprised how much I like the apple butter pork chop, and the quesadillas were really good too. This was a great box!

We aren’t getting a Home Chef box this week because we had a lot going on after work, so we were afraid we wouldn’t end up cooking all the food, but I am really looking forward to our November boxes.

I love that I get to pick the number of meals we get each week, the selection is really great, and I like the extras you can add like smoothies and snacks. One feature I haven’t used yet, but plan to in November is the customize feature. One of the dishes with scallops sounded good, but I don’t like scallops, so I switched it for chicken. We’ll see how that goes. Overall I have been really happy with Home Chef and I like it a lot more than I liked Hello Fresh.

Have you tried Home Chef? If so, what are your favorite recipes you’ve tried so far?

If not and you want to give Home Chef a try, you can use my referral link here: Home Chef.