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 really like Simply Cook (haven't tried any of the others) and I was prepared to be underwhelmed. Actually all of the meals we've made so far have been amazing, although I did deliberately go through and only order recipes which had been rated quite highly. It's a nice feature though as it makes you a bit more confident you're going to make a meal that will actually be nice. I like being able to buy my own fresh ingredients to add in. The Vietnamese Pork and rice dish is soooo good. I'm making it tonight.
OP you can change the frequency of Simply Cook to monthly, it doesn't have to be weekly. I already have a little bit of a box backlog,
Link if anyone wants to try and free box (I get a free box too): smply.in/VH1D2Q

I tried both of the main companies. I found them similar, so similar that I can't accurately remember which was better. I think Hello Fresh as we reordered with them multiple times. Though I found some of the recipes time consuming and I used a lot of pans (lazy?) but I don't enjoy cooking.

Is there anything else out there to try?

I didn't like the quality of meat in Hello Fresh. I did like Mindful Chef - good quality & decent portions. I have stopped using them as they are for organized people!

I had Mindful Chef throughout lockdown.Found the recipes to be a bit fiddly,sometimes a lot of preparation involved.The quality of the food was outstanding.A bit pricey but worth it when it was difficult to shop.

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

Wow, £90 for 4 meals is crazy much..!

You can definitely do much better by getting an online supermarket delivery!

I tried hello fresh for a few weeks just for a change - I've spent 30 years cooking tea and I'm bored! Wanted a bit of inspiration.

Everything is portioned out and the recipe cards are easy to follow.

There is a pretty good range of recipes but as time went on, the basis of a lot of them are very similar - there's a lot of chicken stock and rice.

It is brilliant for getting a reluctant cook to contribute, having everything ready to go helps a lot.

I found the ingredients to be good quality. Not always with much of a date life so had to check which to make first, or stick meat products in the freezer.

What I really like is that the recipes are accessible even if you're not a member. I've used several recipes since without using the subscription, my family likewise.

I've had Mindful Chef ads come up for me now that I asked about them, so I've now checked out the prices, and it's even more extortionate than I remember from when I looked it up before.

For a single person, it's £12-15 per meal!! (After the initial trial discount). No chance I can afford that. I could get a very decent quality deliveroo or ready meal for that (not junk food ones but good ones). It's a bit cheaper obviously if you buy for 2 or 4 people at a time, but not much.

So sadly that one is off the list.

I'm definitely not a cook. Don't use a recipe box but I do use Simply cook and have found a couple of things I really like from there..

Rip off merchants, dont use them. Family of 4 , hardly large just do a as simple menu, pizza one night, chips and a something another in the oven, just make it simple. It's a pain cooking for a family,. Get your
Husband to do half the nights At the weekends we let the kids sort themselves out. We had 5 , know the feeling.

We’re also a family of four. We've had Gousto for several months. I am an ok cook, DP is too, but neither of us love cooking and planning what to cook and thinking about cooking and grrrrrr. It was making me quite depressed at one point. I think I had a thread about it on here.

Gousto has taken all the hard work out of it for us. We all enjoy choosing the recipes and it’s made me not mind cooking tea any more and even dare I say it ENJOY cooking stuff. We still shop for our everyday basics like milk and bread and fruit etc but it’s so nice skipping past most of the aisles because our tea for the week is sorted. We always have enough for leftovers too, so the 4 meals we order work out well.

I suppose if you've got the money and no time (due to earning the money) they could be a good idea.

It just strikes me as another bit of 'life outsourcing' that you have to pay for because you're too busy earning the money to pay more to others to do the stuff that most would do if they weren't too busy earning the money to pay them.

Welcome to the Rat Race as it used to be called. We wanted equality and only got that on the shit stuff, but at least we've got 'careers' and 'job titles' to keep us happy and an ever-decreasing supply of men willing to share the other shit-stuff too.

If food boxes work for you, then carry on, after all many rely on food banks and food parcels; so you're doing pretty good if you do 'boxes'.

I tried Gousto but there was the most ridiculous amount of plastic. The recipes were nice, though. How about Simply Cook? You do buy the ingredients but the recipe and spices are included.
I've compiled a folder now of family recipes, both meat and vegetarian, and make sure I always have all the extra ingredients for all of them, so just buy the fresh bits when I meal plan.

I don't enjoy cooking but I do enjoy eating nice food. I'm also busy (not because of working), because I have things on in the evening.

It takes all the thinking out of it and in less than an hour I've made 2 days worth of nice dinners. Or dinner and lunch the next day. Once a month I update the meals on the app and skip a box if we're away.

It's cheaper and better for us than takeaway - which is the realistic comparison for us, not food shopping, meal planning, recipe hunting which all seem like chores to me. I would rather hoover.

Don't bother. Avoid a mountain of packaging. Check out 'Cook' and buy some bags of microwavable Veg. Job done.

I've used both Hello Fresh and Gousto- preferred Gousto.

The meals aren't particularly cheap, but for me it was worth it as I did find it taught me new cooking skills. I only joined because it was during lockdown and I couldn't get takeaways or eat out as at the time they were all closed. But the Gousto meals came with a recipe binder and cards and we do still make the meals. It was definitely worth it just to learn how to make egg fried rice! Which is waaay easier than I imagined it to be...

I do Mindful Chef, as a single person. The meals for 2 are about £16 or so last me 2 nights, so about £8 a meal. It is expensive, but it's good quality food. I get 2 meals, so that's 4 nights of the week covered.

I've been telling myself I'll just do it for the winter, then in summer I'll shop for myself and recreate the recipes for half the price. I do love getting the box on the Friday though and knowing I don't have to get any shopping in for a few days. It's really expanded my cooking skills as well, I've been getting it for about 4 months, I've learned to cook a lot of recipes and vegetables I'd never tried.

I asked the person who cleans for me what she thought of these boxes, I knew she used them. She said she preferred gusto to hello fresh (didn't says why)

I said I was in a bit of a rut with food and thinking about trying a couple to get some ideas. She kindly lent me her two books of gusto recipes. I've tried one so far (daughter, who i live with) is a great cook, so we have all the spices to hand.

Daughter bought me those things we don't usually have in (I'm disabled, so find shopping too difficult) and so far, so good.

Oh, for god’s sake. There’s always one sanctimonious prig.

Gousto is great! I went off it when pregnant (some weird aversion to the whole brand?!!) but we loved it before. It’s nice to have a variety of meals with minimal thought required. You can pick how healthy you want to be.

Hi @RadioactiveWear thanks for posting! I can see you've had plenty of replies already but just wanted to pop in a link to our page ranking the best recipe boxes in case it's of any use to you or anyone else looking for recommendations! Hope it's helpful, please feel free to let us know if you've any feedback