Those recipe/food delivery boxes....

[hairyxmasturkey]

For those of you who use gousto/hello fresh and have young kids... do you rate them? How do you make it work? Currently doing a weekly Ocado of about £100 per week for a family of 4, will I end up spending more or less?
Are there enough choices that the kids will eat?

Gousto are nearly £50 for 4 main MEALS for a family of 4 people - not for 4 days worth of food - just a main meal a day for 4 days! There is not enough veg in there for us - usually only 1 or 2 of the 5 a day. There is plenty of choice - about 40 recipes a week now I think?

we had a go, went phhhttttt you are having a laugh... and went back to supermarket.

We've tried gousto, hello fresh and simply cook (which is the spices not the other ingredients).
We decided against Gousto and Hello Fresh because they were too expensive for what you got and too much packaging. We only got a few of those, I think about half of them were things the DCs would eat.
Simply Cook we have persisted with for a bit longer because it has less packaging but there are so few recipes that are not too hot (we tended to have them between two of us on days when the DCs have had a hot lunch, but even we didn't want a blow-your-head-off curry every day).

I would say that you will end up spending more. Boxes with 4 meals for 4 people will be close to £50 so you will still need to use Ocado or someone for the rest of your meals.

As for what your kids will eat, have a look on both websites - their receipts are on there so you can have a look and see if there is enough stuff that your children will like.

I'm not sure understand what these boxes do. They send you ingredients and then you cook it? So what's the attraction, how is that different from a shopping delivery?

Thank you all for your responses so far, definitely something to thing about.

@MrsPelligrinoPetrichor the attraction for me is that I just don't have the headspace to decide what I'm going to cook each day let alone make sure I plan ahead and order the right stuff. I really struggle with this and I want my family to be eating healthy food. We also waste too much fresh food as I over order and then it goes bad in the fridge.

I use Hello Fresh and I really like it. I get 3 meals for 3 of us (but I have teens, if you had young children you’d probably only need the meal for 3 rather than 4 as portion sizes are generous). It costs me £41.

I like it because whilst I’m a competent cook I’m not an imaginative one, so HF has shaken up our meal routine. We’re eating things I would never normally cook.

Also you can skip weeks, so once I built up a collection of the recipes I just buy the ingredients myself and we can still have the meals.

So does it just send you random ingredients?

So does it just send you random ingredients

no, you pre-select the meals you want each week.

Don't worry @MrsPelligrinoPetrichor it's not Ready Steady Cook!

I love Gousto, but I only get it when DH is away for work for a week or more.

Stop using Ocado? You'll find other supermarkets are much cheaper, even with delivery. Or go to Lidl etc.

Maybe try a supermarket checker site to see what £££ difference a weekly shop would be from different places?

www.mysupermarket.co.uk/

Also, batch cooking sounds like your friend - portion up whole lasagnes, bolognese sauce, soup, stew, whatever and freeze them. Add pasta and bread as an easy meal. Add lots of veg to them and keep them low fat!

We’ve only had them when we have had free or half price boxes. They are pricey BUT they are good for getting out of a rut and for not needing to think about whatfood to cookwhen you get home from a long day of work. Some I think Gousto have 10 min meals which although actually take about 20 are pretty quick and easy to cook.
They were also pretty good at getting the kids to try new things and we’ve added some of the recipes to our family meal list. Was especially good when DD went veggie as we got a week of veggie ones and found a couple of things even the meat eating boys liked and will eat

If I had lots of money I would probably get them for mon-thur. (I’d also get a cleaner, gardener and laundry assistant!!)

I love my Gousto boxes.

There are only 3 of us but we order 4 meals a week for 4 people, and if there are any leftovers, which is rare, I have them for lunch next day.

You choose your meals for the following week, there are several categories (I love the 10 minute recipes), and it's made us try lots of new meal ideas I never would have thought of.

Yes it's more expensive than the supermarket. But our time is precious and it takes away the thinking about what to have for dinner, shopping for the stuff, it's just a case of mindlessly following a recipe card because even all the ingredients are precisely measured out for you.

They're having a push on reducing packaging and it's pretty much all recycle-able now.

We find we're throwing away so much less out of date food at the end of each week too.

You could go online and google 'healthy recipes for families' then order the ingredients online?

Tesco also do a 'healthy eating range' of recipes and tell you what you need to buy to make it. Much cheaper!

I still don't see the attraction of this ( I know I'm being thick) but if you have to chose the meals anyway why not Google? It seems such an expensive way to cook. I'm not sure it would work with a hungry teen in the house so I don't think I'm the target audience

I'll stop trying to understand it now

So it's like a deconstructed ready meal?

Wouldn't it be cheaper and the same mental effort to just have your own list of meals that you choose from for the week ahead when you do your shopping?

Unless I've misunderstood you still have to think about and choose which meals you want in advance with these, they don't do that for you. If you set your own list and recipe bookmarks up you only have to do that once and could then use them mindlessly thereafter too.

@user you pick from a menu like in a restaurant. They then send you all the ingredients, with zero food wastage. Zero planning required.

In the name of shameless attempts to get my next box, here's my referral link:

cook.gousto.co.uk/raf/?promo_code=ALLIS33205208&utm_source=weblink

I get £15 credit on my account and you get 60% off your first box and 30% off all other boxes in your first month.

I use them. I'm not a natural cook but can follow a recipe and try something new. It's also an exciting way for my son to try new things. He's 6. It is expensive and I tend to stop my subscription and they'll send you an incentive to restart. I had a baby before Christmas so the 10 minute meals have been great.

In terms of "why not just buy the ingredients from a shop" - the main difference is they send you preportioned amounts. So if I want to make a Thai dish, I don't have to buy a big bottle of whatever sauce that then lives in the cupboard for the next 5 years.

I use gousto, if you want a discount code pm me!

the main difference is they send you preportioned amounts. So if I want to make a Thai dish, I don't have to buy a big bottle of whatever sauce
so if you like a particular recipe, do you keep the recipe and then buy the big bottle so you can do it whenever you want/
The individual portions of eg. chilli sauce must work out massively expensive

You get a recipe card for each meal. The cost is the cost, whether it's good value is up to the individual. For me, it's good value.

I tried gousto last week cos I had 60% off. The food was OK, handy to have everything pre weighed etc but tbh loads of packaging and horrendously expensive to eat like that all the time.

I have another one on order for this week (again 60% off) but unless I got it for about £20 all the time I really wouldn't bother. I can cook and you can eat a gousto meal every week you would just need to see the website and order the ingredients.

We use Gousto and love it, as per PP it's easy - you just choose your meals for the week and everything is there, its not the same as looking at the recipes online and they ordering the ingredients as it is all pre weighed and you get what you need, with doing the online shop you will have waste, we have zero food waste, we all get the food we want to eat, DC and DH can cook as well as it is all easy to follow recipes and the choice is brilliant. Without any discount codes its 4 meals for 4 people £46. I don't have to go food shopping anymore I just but fruit from the market and cleaning stuff when required. Saves us a lot of time.
We all work full time long hours in our house, its only DS at school so it really does save us a lot of time in terms of cooking / prepping / ordering etc.

I loved Gousto. Ordered 4/5 boxes, then kept making the same recipes again (using ingredients I'd bought from the shop). I wouldn't order on an ongoing basis as it's a) poor value for money and b) still a faff to follow a new recipe rather than make something I've made before.

I get that it's not for everyone.

I accept that googling meals and shopping for ingredients would be cheaper. I've done that in the past. That's not for me.

For me it's all about time, and the value I put on my time.

I log into Gousto, spend 10-15 minutes choosing from the selection of meals, and a few days later a delivery arrives. It's easy. The recipe cards are simple. The ingredients are weighed out. There is no waste.

Boxed and preprepared will cost more than Ocado, definitely more than delivery from Tesco etc al.

If the planning is the issue then it might be worth looking at prep and plan sites first.

This one is veggie so may not work for you but it will give you an idea of what is out there:

ohmyveggies.com/category/meal-plans/

This one is omnivore focusing on meal prep but also has full four week plans if you subscribe (or I think you can buy a four week plan with shopping lists for about a tenner).

www.budgetbytes.com/category/extra-bytes/budget-friendly-meal-prep/

If you are worried about cost and not confident at planning then try buying a plan before you start buying all the individual meals maybe?