A taste of France, delivered to your mailbox.
This month’s culinary journey with eat2explore took us to France. Imagine the rich, comfort food found in a cozy Paris restaurant served up at your own dinner table. That’s the feeling we had after cooking our way through the France box.
eat2explore is a subscription box. Each month it arrives at your door featuring a different country. Every box contains recipes, spices and seasonings, information about the location, a special culinary tool (this month we received an herb stripper) and a country flag pin. You’ll use the enclosed shopping list to purchase the ingredients required to make the meals. Because the box already includes the spices and seasonings, most ingredients can be readily found at your neighborhood grocery store.
The France Box
The dishes this month included Boeuf Bourguignon, Poulet Roti and Salmon en papillote. My teenager daughter is currently fascinated by all things French (she’s used her spare time during the pandemic to take French language courses online) so she was particularly excited about this box.
Each recipe card offers a suggested age range for each step, marking them as appropriate for “youngest chefs,” “older chefs,” and “oldest chefs/adults.” There are always at least a few jobs for even the “youngest chefs” like peeling and mixing. My 13-year-old has been able to make most of the meals with limited assistance.
Each dish is a stand-alone meal. That means you’ll be able to make three dinners from your box. Our family of four has found the meals to be filling, we often have leftovers.
Here’s what we thought of this month’s food:
The Recipes
Boeuf Bourguignon with celery root mash
This was our first experience making this classic French dish. We’d imagined it to be harder to make than it actually was. Turns out you don’t need to be Julia Child. If you’ve ever made a beef stew, you can absolutely make Boeuf Bourguignon. It was actually pretty easy. Once we browned the meat, the stew simmered for about an hour. The hardest part was waiting to dig in. The whole house smelled amazing. In addition to the stew, we made celery root mash. We’d never made that before either. It was easy to make and tasted great alongside the stew. Although not required, you should also add a crusty French baguette to sop up all the stew-y goodness.
Poulet Roti with roasted vegetables
Next up was the Poulet Roti (roast chicken) with roasted vegetables. There was a lot of peeling and dicing involved, but this was otherwise easy dish to assemble. It took about 60 minutes to roast the chicken. While the chicken and veggies roasted, we prepared a chicken jus gravy. This was another cozy meal that the entire family ate up, even the roasted beets.
Salmon en Papillote with tarragon butter, roasted vegetables & baby kale salad
En Papillote is pronounced “on poppy-yote.” It’s the French method of cooking fish in parchment paper at low temperatures. The recipe involved a delicious tarragon butter. The butter is placed on the fish before it’s wrapped in parchment and it was so good. There’s something fun about opening up a packet of steaming food. It’s like getting a present for dinner. The accompanying side dishes were roasted sweet potatoes and a kale salad. My 8-year-old son took one look at dinner and asked for a bowl of cereal. That worked out fine for my daughter who gladly ate his salmon filet.
The seasoning mix packets this month had names like Braisin’, Zesty Provence, Oo-la-la Gravy, Epices Delicates and Tarra Herbie Mix. These seasonings made the meals! If you love these dishes and want to make them again, you can simply order the spices, seasonings or grains through eat2explore.
Each box also contains some fun facts about the country you’re exploring. Along with your subscription, you’ll receive access to additional online materials creating a more immersive experience. If we learned anything about France this month, it’s that the food is good.
How to Subscribe & Save
We’ve also visited South Korea and India with eat2explore.
If you’d like to try out eat2explore, KidTripster fans receive a 20% discount using the code KIDTRIP20.
Gluten-free and vegetarian boxes are available to those with food preferences or allergies.
Is a subscription kit right for your kids? We reviewed several of them to see what makes them unique.
The author received a complimentary kit for the purpose of this review. All opinions are her own.
