Anyone use recipe box companies?

[RadioactiveWear]

I am thinking of using a recipe box company for our family of 4 including teens. I work, and it is a massive chore to deal with cooking every night. I want to take the pressure off a few nights a week by having it all sorted.

We are not fussy eaters, but we like healthy, good food from all cultures. We also like a bit of vegetarian or vegan.

Can anyone give us feedback, good or bad, on using a service like this? Do you find it cost effective?

I use gusto and hello fresh and love them both. I find I prefer gusto and try to stick to the healthy meals. Some think they are expensive, but I think they are worth it for the convenience. I also love the way there is no food waste. I get the four person one for 4 nights a week. I couldn't be with out them.

I use simply cook
Hello fresh
About to try Gousto

Definitely take advantage of free trials so you can see for yourself

I like it for trying new stuff without having to buy numerous jars rhat just sit in the cupboard for evermore

Id anyone wants to try for
Free

www.simplycook.com/invite/0M82VT?via=app

With Hello Fresh, some are really easy to re-make yourself. Keep the recipe cards

We do HF and Gousto.

I use whoever offers me a discount at the time. It takes away a lot of head work with shooing and meal planning. It's a hit send here and I can't imagine not using them

I like lollipop and Riverford. Really nice food.

all the portion ones have sooooooo much waste packaging we only use them occasionally.

No, that can be cancelled and you can change and delay your delivery (mines every 4 week). If you cancel they will send you an offer for a "free box" at some point.

I like simply cook but cancel my subscription every so often so I can catch up with the boxes. You get the fresh ingredients as and when you want to cook it and the portions are always sensible eg. It uses a whole packet of something rather than needing to weigh it out and have left overs. I make the portion for 4 so i have some to freeze.

Spicery is like this but I found the recipes had more left over bits and took a bit longer to make.

Tried Hello Fresh and Gousto, Gousto is far better imo. We are a family of 6 and found most recipes for a family of 4 would cover the 6 of us.

We have Green Chef which I saw recommended on here. I really like it, the recipes are good and there is also a range of e.g. keto, and low carb recipes.

They do an offer where the first box (for 3 meals for 2) is free I have a code is anyone is interested, along with £10 off the next 3 boxes.

You can also refer people and it gives you £15 off your next order.

I didn't think we would continue with it but we liked it so much we have.

We just intended to have the free box.

I think they may be owned by Simply Cook as some of the ingredients have this written on them.

They do good portions and the fish and prawns are really good sizes and quality. (we don't eat chicken or red meat so can't comment there)

You can just state your food preference (for example we are pescetarian) and it will send you e.g. 3 meals every week.

Ours arrives on a Saturday morning which I find convenient and it is packaged well, not too much waste.

I like how the meals are numbered and places in brown paper bags, with the refrigerated stuff packed seperately in ice, ready to stick in the fridge.

I have learned new ways of cooking from it, and have kept some of the recipes to cook myself in future.

I do Gousto and have done for a while.

There's two of us but I get the 4 person ones so I only have to cook twice over 4 days

Yes it is expensive and you could do it far cheaper with your own recipes and meal planning. But I am not an imaginative cook, I find it a chore but I want to eat interesting/nice food so this works for me.

If I wasn't doing this we would be eating takeaway 4 nights a week which is even more pricey

My DH is the cook in the house but for various reasons he can't do as much these days and is restricted to a bit of weekend batch cooking.

Has anyone tried Mindful Chef? It seesm really expensive after the intial discounts, though the meals look good, and they say that they are somewhat lower in carbs or at least in refined carbs (not sure that actually matters that much if what I am needing to do is lower carbs generally, though, for pre-diabetes!)

Glad to hear that Green Chef got a good review here though, as that one has been advertised to me a lot on FB etc, but all the reviews I can find are very much marketing reviews disguised as real reviews - articles etc but not independent or unbiased, and they don't seem to be as well known so harder to get any real reviews. Anyone else used them?

Here are my codes for a free box if anyone wants to try Green Chef.

3H-428TU

FG- JHQ5P

RF-NZ4PA

My dd was given a mindful chef box by her employer at christmas, it was ok but when i looked online thought it was really expensive and not as much options as others.

Gousto is great and they're referall sceme is generous.

I have tried Hello Fresh, but its a nightmare to change a recipe after you have placed an order. Whereas with Gousto you have until a certain day and time to change the recipes.

Gousto also has a lot of recipes that change weekly.

I have used it mainly for fish and vegetarian recipes.

I'm thibking about restarting my subscription now that it's hard to find vegetables at the supermarket.

This is my code if you want 65% off your first box. I also get £20 off my next box if you sign up.

Gousto code

Agree they have their place especially with everything portion controlled and good to give confidence to people learning to cook but having tried both Gousto and Hello Fresh my grumbles after a few boxes were -

Obscene amount of single use plastic which you can't always recycle,

Main ingredient being subbed meaning a trip to the shops anyway

After a while little variety unless you are prepared to pay a supplement per person per meal, meaning even more ££

With HF way too much reliance on noodles and rice for carbs and with G, everything seemed to have soy in it

We've recently started to use Simply Cook which I much prefer as I'm a fairly confident cook. It means I can play about with different herbs, spices and aromatics without having lots of expensive bottles which end up being wasted. Easy to follow recipes with 5/6 stages tops. And you learn some good recipe hacks too. The L have long best before dates too and don't use heaps of expensive ingredients, and lots of suggestions for healthy non meat subs too.

Last night we made the pulled chicken burgers. The were amazing.

I also have a referral code if anyone is interested, your first box free and I get a free one too.

They do quite good offers don't they for people to try a box / have a discount. If you tried the different ones one after the other you could make quite a saving.

Has anyone tried the COOK ready meals frozen?

I've never tried Cook myself but I've a lovely aunt who we visit a few times a year and she always does something like a quiche or an en croute something or other for lunch and it's always bloody delicious followed by an amazing sticky toffee pudding. And they are all from Cook

Can someone please tell me how much it would be for say 5 meals a week for 4 people (prepares to be sick)

I will check for you on Green Chef for the full cost (not discounted)

£70

Sorry this is wrong, they just seem to go up to 4 meals a week.

It's now saying that would be £87- 4 meals for 4

I love Gousto, been doing it for years. It saves that awful midweek 'what the hell am I going to have for dinner' thing and there's no shopping.
Also, you get the ingredients in the right quantity so you're not buying a whole bottle of, say, Chinese Rice Wine that you might never use again.
The food is lovely and the portions are huge. I get three or four portions out of our meals for two and take them to work for lunches. Our freezer is full of them.
We almost never have ready meals now.
The recipe cards are also great, so if you want to recreate the meals yourself you can.

I just get the Green Chef meals for me and DH as DCs prefer more plain food such as pasta, chips, mash and sausage etc.

It's not too bad cooking both as recipes usually pretty simple

Thanks for the mention about Cook, might consider getting them for the days we are not getting the recipe box meals.

Recommend the quiches