Anyone for Seconds? DropChef long term Review

So, back at the end of August, I took a first good look at DropChef, a meal kit delivery service that I’d signed up for to spice up my weekly menu. First impressions were pretty good but of course, two weeks is not enough to form a proper opinion. So, naturally, I had to revisit that topic again a little later. Actually, it’s quite a bit later, thanks to my recent stint in hospital. But hey, at least that gives me a lot of material to write about. You know, silver linings and all that.

The good news first. DropChef has generally been able to keep the level of quality consistent throughout my subscription period. There have been no major blunders, double bookings or any other shenanigans of that sort. The packaging in particular stands out here. It is consistently rock solid, with the cooling pack and the isolation material generally doing an excellent job of keeping the more sensitive ingredients chilled. The quality of the ingredients is equally good, with no major issues with spoiled vegetables or similar surprises. As for the most important part of every DropChef delivery, the recipes, those have generally been pretty tasty, and often simple enough to prepare. Having said that, the promised 30 minutes of prep time still seem wildly optimistic to me. Granted, the fact that, until recently, I spent a good five to ten minutes getting good shots of the ingredients and the finished meal probably didn’t help matters, but even with that aside, some recipes take way longer than that. 

Which brings me to the things that could definitely be better. The recipe cards definitely take the lead here. I mentioned in my original review that the instructions, while generally simple enough, sometimes lack clarity, especially when it comes to cutting some of the more unwieldy vegetables out there, or indeed, the final preparation stages for some dishes. Prime case in point here would be the burritos I had just a week ago on Friday. Preparing the filling was straightforward, but I had never made burritos myself before and could have used a little pointer on how to properly fill and fold them. However, the recipe card glossed over that point. The last step literally just said “Fill the Burrito”. Well thanks a lot, guys.

Another big issue for me is the portioning of ingredients, which is kind of all over the place. Whilst things like meat, rice, potatoes, or pasta are usually properly portioned for me as a single person, vegetables are a whole different ballgame. Carrots are particularly bad in this regard, whilst for one of my more recent recipes, butternut squash macaroni & cheese, Dropchef simply sent out an entire squash. Thankfully, the recipe turned out to be delicious, so I got two more meals out of that one delivery using just that squash and what I had in my house, but there’ve also been situations where this wasn’t the case and vegetables had to be discarded, much to my disgust.

Recipes

Having said that, I’d consider that to be pretty minor issues in the grand scheme of things. Overall, DropChef is turning out to be a pretty handy service to have. The core of the service, the recipes, are interesting and varied, although I sometimes feel like the selection could be a bit more varied. Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the recipes I tried, shall we?

Pan-fried Hake with thyme-roasted potatoes and a tomato & kale sauce

The meal kit.

This was a pretty easy recipe to prepare. Apart from slicing up the potatoes for wedges and cutting the shallot, there wasn’t much to cut, and the wedges basically made themselves. Having said that, the sauce turned out to be a bit runny, and neither the hake nor the wedges turned out as well roasted as I would have liked. Still, it was a tasty recipe, especially the sauce.

The resulting meal.

Tofu Satay Donburi Bowl

The beginning. I didn't know what to expect.

The first line in my notes for this dish simply reads “Fifty Shades of Nope”, which basically sums up this recipe. Now, I’m not adverse to vegetarian, or even vegan meals, but this one was quite frankly an abomination. The issue with properly apportioning vegetables, which I’d mentioned above, really came out in this one. The carrot was simply massive, and there were far too many radishes included for a single person. On the other hand, condiments and spices were conspicuous in their absence, which is especially problematic since the recipe calls for the tofu to basically be marinaded in soy sauce, which was only included in miniscule amounts. Having said that. There’s probably not enough soy sauce in the entire civilised world to make tofu taste, well, basically like anything! So yeah, no thanks!

The end result. I wish I'd never found out...

Harissa Roast Chicken with Sweet Potatoes and Peppers

Why not try another angle for a change?

This is one of the easiest recipes I’ve had so far with DropChef. It was literally just a question of preparing the vegetables throw them in a tray and then into the oven, and then putting the prepared chicken on top of it for the remaining twenty or so minutes in the oven. That timing turned out to be this recipe’s Achilles heel though, as the times set out in the recipe card were far too short for some of the vegetables to cook through. It was delicious though.

The end result tastes good from every angle!

Cherry Tomato Linguine with Cajun Grilled Chicken

Is anyone else seeing a trend emerging with all that chicken? Seriously though, this has been one of the highlights so far. Granted, the preparation took a bit more time than I would have liked, but once you were done with all the cutting, it was a pretty straightforward recipe, not to mention absolutely delicious. The only downside was that there was not enough parmesan included in the recipe for my liking but then again, there’s never enough parmesan for my taste.

Sorry for missing the "before" image, but I made that recipe on a pretty stressful day. The end result tasted as good as it looked!

Speaking of cheese…

Butternut Squash Mac & Cheese

Yep. That's a whole butternut squash.

And I always thought that vegetarian options were supposed to be healthier. Seriously though, this recipe takes the absolute cake with regards to excess vegetables. They nonchalantly dropped an entire butternut squash into the package for this recipe, as mentioned above. Despite this, and the lack of industrial grade cutting tools, I was able to cut this down to size, even though I ended up only using one quarter of the squash for the recipe. Still, preparation seemed endless, with the squash itself needing thirty minutes in the oven, followed by another twenty minutes for the completed mac & cheese. And then, there was the cheese sauce, which not only had one cheese as iots ingredient, but also managed to include what must have been the most mild-mannered cheddar in the British Isles! I ended up adding copious amounts of Parmigiano Reggiano from my personal reserves to give the sauce some taste. That being said, the final combination was absolutely divine and, faced with an overabundance of butternut squash, I’ve actually cooked this one a few times now.

The end result, fresh out of the oven!

And plated, ready to meet its demise!

Chicken Pad Thai

From this...

This has been one of my favourite dishes going all the way back to my VMware days. If any of my lunch break crew from back in the day read this, they’ll know what I mean straight away. So I was naturally looking forward to trying this out. My experiences were mixed. As is usual with stir-fries and similar dishes, there was a lot of cutting and prep work involved. And once again, certain vegetables were just far too much for a single serving, carrots once again being the main culprit. Having said that, the end result was really tasty. I wasn’t too much a fan of the lime at the end, the sour note didn’t quite work for me, but that could simply have been me overdosing on the lime juice.

...to this. It was really tasty, despite the lime juice.

Chicken Nasi Goreng

It may look innocent, but it packs a punch.

I’m sticking with the Pacific Ring of Fire for this last one. I hadn’t really tried Nasi Goreng before, so I was really curious about this one. The prep work was surprisingly limited, even the carrot wasn’t too oversized for a single serving. The only real issue was that the included egg had cracked despite its transport packaging, and despite the fact that there wasn’t much in the way of leakage, I used one from my fridge, since I always have some of those lying around, given my fondness for pasta carbonara.

And then, there was the spice paste included in the pack. I guess I should have copped on that this was going to be on the spicy side when I saw that it had been imported from Malaysia, but I added the whole package anyway. By the time I’d finished by lunch and smoke had stopped rising out of my ears, my sinuses had been so thoroughly cleared out that you could have set up an operating theatre in there! Even with that side dish of napalm though, it was absolutely delicious. An online acquaintance of mine referred to Nasi Goreng as his favourite comfort food and I can see where he’s coming from.

It was delicious anyway!

Conclusion

Which brings me to the end of this long-term review. In retrospect, signing up for this service turned out to be prophetic, given that even after my discharge from hospital, the recovery period consigned me to working from home for an extended period. Overall, the experiment that was DropChef in my household has turned out to be a resounding success. It has certainly achieved its goal of opening my mind to new and interesting recipes. The service does feel a bit rough around the edges in certain areas. Ingredients do end up being damaged in transit every now and then, and documentation could definitely be better. It remains to be seen how DropChef will develop in the future, especially now that Hello Fresh has entered the Irish market, but for the foreseeable future, I’ll definitely remain a customer!