Meal boxes have been around a while, but recently they have become hits, and more and more of them are on the market.
I used to cook professionally, but since I have been living alone I fall into bad habits: breakfast for dinner four nights a week, sandwiches, mediocre take out.
I thought trying out a meal box might get me out of my rut. But which one?
I tried one of a bunch of them, and for each brand there were hits and misses within the repertoire. I learned something occasionally when I made a box, but most of them just made me roll my eyes: there were ingredients left out (to cut costs and increase profits), bad instructions (to keep the process under 30 minutes), and unnecessary chefy flourishes at the end, among other culinary “sins.”
So I came up with the idea for BoxHax. I make the dish as it is, then describe how to do that same dish better, then give some hacks to transform the dish out of the ordinary, if possible. Some of the dishes are already pretty good, but those are rare. Others allow for some pretty amazing transformations.
The meal boxes are like sharks, always moving forward, and rarely offering the same thing twice. So most of these entries are examples, although maybe you have had the experience of trying the same meal at some point. I like to think, though, that there are hacks here for the home cook that offer some insights.
Feedback welcome!