In the old, old days, your local grocer might have sent a lad round on a bicycle with your weekly shop, but even he wouldn’t have written up the recipes for you and made sure you had everything you needed.
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Thankfully these days we have more food boxes and meal delivery services available than ever. We’re not talking takeaways here, this is a rundown of the best recipe kits – meals chosen by you and ingredients packaged up with cooking instructions for weekly delivery.
There are so many that the choice can be bewildering, especially as the companies tend to follow very similar models. So allow us to cut through the thicket of choices with a sturdy kitchen knife as we compare the various offerings.
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Hello Fresh scored highly with Digital Spy‘s testers for tastiness, variety and ease of cooking. Comments included, “It’s a good way of discovering new ingredients or recipes you might not have tried before”, “Very clear and easy recipe cards”, and “Never had a meal we didn’t like”.
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On the down side, they didn’t score highly for price – costs start at £3.15 per portion but a typical six-serving box (ie two people getting three meals per week) works out at £33.48, which is £5.58 per serving. If you’re after crafty deals though, they’re currently offering 60% off your first delivery and 20% off for the next seven deliveries.
Gousto and Hello Fresh were pretty much neck-and-neck among the Digital Spy testers for freshness and taste, but Gousto stumbled slightly as its recipe cards can make the ingredients a little hard to understand. Listing ingredients like “Chicken stock 11g (1), Chicken stock 22g (0)” in the same recipe is clearly a measure to save printing costs, but while you could argue it’s eco-efficient, it’s also confusing.
On the plus side, their app’s algorithm is pretty good at prioritising meals you’re likely to enjoy based on previous orders.
As far as cost goes, a two-person, three-meal box costs £35.99 per week, which works out at £4.99 per serving (plus a £3.99 delivery fee each week) though if you choose exclusively from the Save and Savour range, that goes down to £4.49. And there’s a range of prices depending on the number of people and meals you want per week – the cheapest option is four people eating four meals (£2.99 per serving), while the dearest is one person eating two meals at £9.50 per serving.
Like Hello Fresh, Gousto are offering 60% off the first box and 20% off the next seven.
Typical recipes include ‘Smoky lean beef mince enchiladas with tomato salsa’, ‘Malaysian-style coconut basa with rice’, and ‘Amalfi-style risotto with jumbo king prawns’. You can see .
Green Chef prides itself on its nutritional credentials. Each box is “Nutritionist approved”, and you can select between Keto, Lower carb, Flexitarian, Pescetarian, Vegan and Vegetarian.
They even offer five “low emission” recipes per week, which they claim have a carbon footprint half as big as their average recipe.
All that comes at a premium: three meals a week for two people comes out at £6.42 per serving. They’re currently offering 40% off the first two weeks and 25% off the next two after that.
Typical meals include ‘One-pot beef tinaktak-style stew’, ‘Chicken breast in peanut satay sauce’ and ‘Lentil and basa dal’.
Unlike many other services, with Simply Cook you get the flavours delivered but the fresh ingredients are up to you. So, for example, if you want to make ‘Cuban prawn pasta’, you’ll be sent ‘mojo seasoning’, garlic paste and a white wine reduction. For ‘Teriyaki salmon donburi’, you get rice stock, teriyaki sauce and yasai seasoning.
As the bulk of the meal is in your hands, portion sizes are entirely up to you, and if you fancy switching out (let’s say) salmon for sea bass, that’s totally your call, as flexibility is baked into the concept. Given that everyone’s preferences vary when it comes to quantity, this isn’t to be sneezed at.
It also works out inevitably cheaper, at £9.99 for four meals per week (less flexibility there, alas), which is £2.50 per serving – but remember you still have to buy the meal part of the meal yourself.
With their trial offer, your first delivery costs only £3 for four meals and £1 for delivery.
If ethical, healthy living is your priority, Mindful Chef might be your best choice. As a signatory to they seem committed to being a force for good.
But what do you get? Fresh, ethically sourced ingredients for healthy meals – or even frozen ready meals if you’re not in the mood to cook. They don’t go in for refined carbs, and sample recipes include ‘Black garlic steak, potato wedges and salsa verde’ and ‘Grilled salmon with Thai red veggies and coconut rice’.
The downside is that all that goodness doesn’t come cheap. The lowest meal price we could find came in at £6.50 per serving, and there were only 21 recipes to choose from.
Having said that, there’s currently 25% off your first four deliveries.
If you’re vegan, then Grubby was designed with you in mind. And like Mindful Chef, they’re signed up with B Corp so you can feel reassured that they’re not an unethical business. They offer 200+ recipes, from ‘Creamy porcini tortiglioni with courgette and crispy onions’ to ‘Tofu larb’.
You can order two-four meals a week for up to five people, and skip a week or cancel whenever you like.
On the downside, their website is a bit cluttered. Maybe that’s just us.
Four meals for two comes out at £46.00, or £5.75 per serving, but there’s 25% off your first order and for every meal you buy, a child living in poverty somewhere in the world gets a free meal via 1morechild.org.
Like Grubby, allplants is a vegan delivery service (and also signed up to B Corp’s ethical practices), but the difference is that all their meals are ready cooked and frozen.
On their 80-meal menu, prices range from £5.75 for ‘Pasta arrabiata in a rich tomato sauce’, to £7.50 for ‘Smoked aubergine and walnut ragu’, but you can presently get 25% off your first three orders.
You can choose a one-off delivery or subscribe in order to get free delivery on orders over £50.