Find out what Mumsnetters think about Gousto recipes boxes NOW CLOSED

[JustineBMumsnet]

This is the feedback thread for the 100 Mumsnetters who have been testing a Gousto recipe box, including recipes from their new range in partnership with Annabel Karmel.

Here’s what Timo Boldt, CEO and Founder of Gousto says: “For people who want to cook and enjoy good food together but don’t always have the time, ingredients or know-how to do it well, Gousto delivers simple ways to (re) discover the joys of cooking, so you can choose what you want, cook it with confidence and enjoy sharing it with others.

Taking the hassle out of planning, shopping and cooking, Gousto delivers up to 4 meals for the week with the ingredients and recipe ready to make, so there’s no more ‘what’s for dinner’ panic.

This month, we’ve launched a 3-month partnership with family cooking expert, Annabel Karmel to introduce 20 additional family-friendly recipes to our menu. Supporting busy families with tried-and-tested, nutritionally balanced meals, proven to suit fussy eaters, including Heavenly Hidden Veg Bolognese and Mouthwatering Veggie Mac & Cheese – the new recipes will allow you to enjoy cooking dishes which suit everyone around the dinner table.

Each recipe uses Gousto’s fresh, quality ingredients – including 100% British meat, sustainable fish and free-range eggs from trusted suppliers – allowing you to know what’s in every meal and feel confident you’re feeding your family well.”^

Testers, once you’ve tested the recipe box by cooking all recipes, please give your feedback by answering the below questions:
1. How easy did you find Gousto to use? How easy was selecting recipes and placing an order? How easy was it to follow the recipes and create the meals?
2. Thinking about the ingredients and recipes, how confident does Gousto make you feel that you're feeding your family well?
3. What did you think about the number of recipes you could choose from? What did you and your family think about the taste of the Gousto meals you tried?
4. What did you think about the option to order Annabel Karmel's recipes? Is this something you'd like to see continue in the future?
5. How did using Gousto differ to how you usually plan, shop for and cook your weekly meals?
6. Would you purchase Gousto meals again for your family?

All selected testers who give the required feedback will be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £300 voucher.

Thanks and good luck!

MNHQ

Standard Insight T&Cs apply

Oh, that's a nice spoon

Thank you so much for choosing us for this product test. The whole family came on board with it and cooked and commented as we went along. We had great fun during the week!

1. How easy did you find Gousto to use? How easy was selecting recipes and placing an order? How easy was it to follow the recipes and create the meals?

All very simple. We ordered quickly and the codes seemed to work without problem. I must admit that I didn’t look too closely at the recipe descriptions as I was opting for dishes which we eat on a regular basis; I thought that this would provide an interesting comparison to how we usually shop, cook and eat. I did think there was a lot of excessive faffing and adding in unnecessary sauces and condiments which the finished dishes could well have done without. Like many, I organised the chopping and veggie preparation in advance. I’m not convinced that all the timings are spot on.

1. Thinking about the ingredients and recipes, how confident does Gousto make you feel that you're feeding your family well?

Food was generally tasty and fresh with some unusual (in a good way) flavours. However, I was horrified at many of the calorie counts. I’m also convinced that adding further oil to mayonnaise is total unnecessary and there did seem to be an awful lot of drizzling and adding of salt. The fresh fish and chicken were very nice quality, as were the majority of vegetables. The tomatoes were some of the sweetest that we’ve tasted. Sadly, we had two grotty onions. Not a big problem for us but if I’d been a paying customer reliant on a complete recipe box, I would think differently. Similarly, the dry goods - garlic, spices etc were all packaged together in a big brown bag. Our star anise didn’t cope well with this, was pulverised and unusable.

1. What did you think about the number of recipes you could choose from? What did you and your family think about the taste of the Gousto meals you tried?

Plenty of choice for us. We opted for Cod & Chips - nice but I’m not convinced that the sugar snaps or mayonnaise needed the overcomplications.
Sea Bass Stew - lovely. I will make this again but would ditch the aioli.
AK Chicken Pesto Pasta - a bit bizarre. The addition of soy and balsamic really didn’t make it particularly family friendly.
Hoisin Chicken - great dish. I make a version of this regularly and this was equally well received.

1. What did you think about the option to order Annabel Karmel's recipes? Is this something you'd like to see continue in the future?

The AK Chicken pesto pasta was the weakest of all the meals. I’d prefer to serve plain pesto and pasta with some tinned tuna and a leafy salad with some fresh tomatoes. Much nicer (and easier.) The AK tie-in is not a draw for me and although I chose one of her options as directed, given a totally free choice, I would have opted against.

1. How did using Gousto differ to how you usually plan, shop for and cook your weekly meals?

I felt as if I’ve had a shopping holiday! I usually cook most days and probably shop three times a week. I stocked up in advance on all other necessities (packed lunches etc) and had four days free of food shopping. After four evenings of slightly more complicated food than normal, I am yearning for something quite bland for tomorrow. Lovely though it has been, I don’t think I would want to do this regularly.

1. Would you purchase Gusto meals again for your family?

Possibly. But I really wouldn’t want to be tied into a subscription or be under pressure to order in a specific pattern. To work for me, it would need to be very flexible. I could see it working well on occasions where we have guests to stay and fancy something a little bit special without the panic of shopping etc. As PPs have said, I think that this would really come into its own when taking self-catering breaks. How lovely to arrive at your destination to find a box of all your essentials waiting for you!

Thank you again. I’ve certainly mentioned this to my friends and will be keen to see how Gousto develops in future.

I didn't get a spoon either. Thats just not fair!

Another bit of feedback, DH froze our Seabass as we weren’t going to get to eat them in time. Having now seen them, they are tiny portions unlike the other 3 meals. I wouldn’t order them again, we could eat 2 each of these!

I want a spoon.

I have spoon envy too!

1. How easy did you find Gousto to use? How easy was selecting recipes and placing an order? How easy was it to follow the recipes and create the meals?

Found it very easy to use. I texted DH (the house chef but a bit of an internet klutz) to get his votes on what to pick and even he managed to work out what choices to make without moaning. Glad that they make the options for the coming week clear and visible without trying to make you log in.

One area where we did slip up is that because we ordered in a hurry without looking at the calorie count we accidentally ended up with a big range, from 778 per serving down to 370. If you were counting calories then presumably you'd be careful to check, but if you weren't and were relying on this as the main meal for an adult or teen then a 370 calorie meal would leave you feeling a bit peckish. We rearranged our plans for the days to make the lower cal meals into light weekend lunches or to give the part-time vegetarian a separate veggie protein option and split the meat/fish 3 ways between the others. Not a problem necessarily, just something you need to watch out for when ordering/planning.

Recipes were easy, but there was a lot of chopping, reflecting the amount of veg they'd included - it's proper cooking unlike some of the pre-prepped quasi-ready-meal options you'd get in supermarkets. I'd say that unless you were a speedy and efficient chopper the preparation times given might be optimistic.

2. Thinking about the ingredients and recipes, how confident does Gousto make you feel that you're feeding your family well?

There's lots of veg in there, and they seem to be making a consistent effort to use wholemeal options so I'd be generally happy although there was a lot of soy sauce in the hoisin chicken, so I'd want to cut it down for younger children.

3. What did you think about the number of recipes you could choose from? What did you and your family think about the taste of the Gousto meals you tried?

Happy with the range. We're quite a fussy family but I found more recipes fitting the bill than I needed. Looking at next week's options, again we wouldn't have a problem finding another 4 meals.

All four meals were basically delicious and met with enthusiastic appreciation by our fussy family. We had the odd reservation about some things - the honey in the koftas made them a bit too sweet and DH complained that the result of the home made mushy peas wasn't really worth the effort of blitzing the sugar snap peas and washing the magimix.

4. What did you think about the option to order Annabel Karmel's recipes? Is this something you'd like to see continue in the future?

I used a lot of Annabel Karmel recipes when my DC were young, and still do use a few of them now they're teens so I was happy to see her name. As other people have mentioned she tends to be more devil-may-care about sugar/honey and salt than is ideal for very young children but that wasn't an issue for us. We tried her lamb koftas which were a huge hit with the entire family including the mostly vegetarian family member who was tempted into a lapse.

5. How did using Gousto differ to how you usually plan, shop for and cook your weekly meals?

I normally do an internet shop every five days or so containing a mix of ready meals and cook from scratch dishes, leaving space for the odd takeaway/spontaneous purchase from local shops/leftover surprise. This was more regimented, and the four meal option meant that we didn't have a lot of room to manouevre with use-by dates. I don't think we'd want to go for a 4x4 option every week, because one of us is often out and about in the evening and we'd need more space for flexibility.

6. Would you purchase Gousto meals again for your family?

Maybe.

It's obviously not a cheap option, especially for the two person boxes, and because we already have a really well stocked larder, we find that tiny pre-packaged 5ml sachets of sesame oil of ground cumin or whatever are annoying rather than helpful.

On the other hand, we sometimes struggle to get enough veg into our diet and we enjoy trying new recipes and it might be a good way of encouraging us to eat together as a family. As a pp said, it could be useful for a holiday cottage, where the pre-measured sachets would come into their own.

1. How easy did you find Gousto to use? How easy was selecting recipes and placing an order? How easy was it to follow the recipes and create the meals? The Gousto website was very easy to use and after choosing the meals I wanted I was quickly able to register and check out. The recipes were also very easy to follow as explained step by step what you needed to do. The fact that the ingredients were ready to use made the process even more straight forward.
2. Thinking about the ingredients and recipes, how confident does Gousto make you feel that you're feeding your family well?

The ingredients were very fresh and the meals were healthy and balanced. I felt very confident of feeding my family well.

1. What did you think about the number of recipes you could choose from? What did you and your family think about the taste of the Gousto meals you tried?

There is a good choice of meals and new ones come out regularly. The meals tasted good, my husband and I loved them, my fussy children didn't eat much though.

1. What did you think about the option to order Annabel Karmel's recipes? Is this something you'd like to see continue in the future?

When I made my order there was only Annabel Karmel's recipe, I would have liked to see more of them as I used Annabel Karmel's recipes when my children were little and found them very healthy.

1. How did using Gousto differ to how you usually plan, shop for and cook your weekly meals? I enjoyed my week without shopping!
2. Would you purchase Gousto meals again for your family?

Yes, I would definitely try it again, even though my children didn't eat much of the meals...they are fussy anyway...

@Loopyaboutmy2boys we received vietnamese basa fish and it was previously frozen. I'd just check that your sea bass hadn't already been frozen as obviously you don't want to eat fish that has been twice froze.

Just place marking. I seem a bit behind!

We had our first meal tonight - there was masses of veg!

1. How easy did you find Gousto to use? How easy was selecting recipes and placing an order? How easy was it to follow the recipes and create the meals?

I found the website very easy to navigate. It was a straight forward process to choose meals and place the order. The recipes were easy to follow.

1. Thinking about the ingredients and recipes, how confident does Gousto make you feel that you're feeding your family well?

The ingredients were fresh and good quality. A couple of the recipes had quite high calories but overall I felt I was feeding them well.

1. What did you think about the number of recipes you could choose from? What did you and your family think about the taste of the Gousto meals you tried?

I thought there was a good amount of choice. We tried lamb koftas, roast chicken, fish and chips and cowboy beans. My husband and I enjoyed them all. My children liked the chicken and the fish and chips best.

1. What did you think about the option to order Annabel Karmel's recipes? Is this something you'd like to see continue in the future?

I associate Annabel Karmel with very young children so wouldn't go out of my way to pick her recipes unless they were particularly appealing to me. The lamb koftas were very high calorie wise for a child friendly meal.

1. How did using Gousto differ to how you usually plan, shop for and cook your weekly meals?

I have got out of the habit of cooking from scratch and usually opt for quick convenient food and tend to order the same things each week. I enjoyed cooking from scratch and my children helped prepare and cook every meal which they loved.

1. Would you purchase Gousto meals again for your family?

I would order occasionally but think they are slightly too expensive to order on a weekly basis.

1. How easy did you find Gousto to use? How easy was selecting recipes and placing an order? How easy was it to follow the recipes and create the meals?

The website was very straight forward to use, unfortunately a lot of the recipes were sold out so our choices were limited, selecting the meals and placing the order was easy however, I did get charged for the meals!
The menu cards are very easy to follow but at times seemed to go backwards and forwards, some of the sauces I could already make but following the recipe seemed to make it feel more complex than it was.
The final results always looked very appealing.
*
2.* Thinking about the ingredients and recipes how confident does Gousto make you feel that you are feeding your family well?

I feel the recipes vary in how healthy they are, some had a lot of salt added, something I rarely do, it would be nice to see a bit more veg perhaps, also I'm not sure the honey was needed in the lamb koftas. Didn't feel 100% confident that I was feeding my family well but this is based on added sugar, salt and sauces. Some recipes seemed healthier than others.

3. What did you think about the number of recipes you could choose from? What did you and your family think about the taste of the Gousto meals you tried?

As above by the time I ordered a lot of recipes were sold out which affected our ability to fully choose the dishes we wanted so that was disappointing.
Regarding the taste we really enjoyed the cod, chips and lemon caper Mayo, the AK lamb koftas were too sweet but ok and AK chicken pesto pasta was nothing special although we all loved the giant pasta.

4. What did you think about the option to order AK recipes? Is this something you would like to see more of in the future?

I assumed the AK recipes would be healthy so was excited to see these however, the pesto pasta has 3g of salt in which I felt was too much. My children grew up with AK meals so my knowledge of her was cooking from scratch and did not really feel the recipes reflected this. I would not be too bothered about ordering AK recipes I would stick to the standard recipes offered by Gousto.

5. How did Gousto differ to how you usually plan, shop and cook your weekly meals?

I normally meal plan so had 4 less days to plan which was lovely, I still had to get shopping for everything else so not sure it made a huge difference, also use by dates were rather short which meant I had little flexibility in when I could use these meals, I ended up freezing some of the meat and throwing some fresh veg as the meals didn't fit in with work and DC.

6. Would you purchase Gousto meals again for your family?

I really hoped I could incorporate Gousto into my busy family life but I have a few concerns, customer service seems poor I contacted Gousto on 18/10 as had been charged for the meals, I finally got a reply on 23/10 confirming I had been charged and would get a refund in 2-5 days.

The meals had very short dates on so I needed to freeze parts of them so not making meal planning any easier.

I was a bit surprised by the amount of packaging and this does put me off, finally I was surprised by the amount of sugar and salt the meals contained.

On the plus side delivery was 09:30 so no need to wait until 19:00, receiving the box was exciting and Gousto have made me rethink my boring meals, lastly i was lucky enough to get a fab wooden spoon.

The short of it is I probably would not use Gousto again.

Not sure why some of my post is in bold sorry if it makes for difficult reading.

1. How easy did you find Gousto to use? How easy was selecting recipes and placing an order? How easy was it to follow the recipes and create the meals?

Website was clear and easy to navigate. Recipes were easy to follow but I think very over optimistic on timing. I cook a lot and am confident in the kitchen, and there were some recipes that just weren't possible in the timeframe (e.g. meatball bake). If you're going to have prepackaged items anyway, time would be saved if, for example, the cheese came pre-grated.

2. Thinking about the ingredients and recipes, how confident does Gousto make you feel that you're feeding your family well?

The dry ingredients seemed of good quality. Vegetables were in good condition.

However, wasn't very happy that the meat is only red tractor certified rather than free range or, ideally, organic. Red tractor is the lowest standard - basically meeting minimum legal requirements. Would strongly prefer for there to be the option to "upgrade" boxes for better quality meat.

My other issue was with the packaging. I understand that this is for convenience but I felt terrible about the amount of wastage with 6 different packets of 25g of cheese and other replicated packaging. It seems very non-ecologically friendly.

3. What did you think about the number of recipes you could choose from? What did you and your family think about the taste of the Gousto meals you tried?

The number of recipes was good, though with a slightly fussy 8 year old, I did struggle to identify options the whole family would eat. I ended up "adjusting" some of the recipes - i.e. we had the peri peri chicken but didn't marinade the pieces for the kids.

The recipes we tasted were good - we liked the cream sauce for the sea bass (will do that again) and the peri peri chicken.

4. What did you think about the option to order Annabel Karmel's recipes? Is this something you'd like to see continue in the future?

Not bothered by this and didn't think her recipes were all that great. We did the meatballs, but I thought it could have had a lot more vegetables in it given that it was a recipe for children.

5. How did using Gousto differ to how you usually plan, shop for and cook your weekly meals?

Made it a lot simpler but as I cook from scratch anyway, did feel a bit constraining given that the use by date on most of it meant had to cook on 4 consecutive days. Sometimes you need to skip a day or two.

We normally buy groceries through online shopping (Ocado) plus bi-weekly organic meat, fruit and veg box.

6. Would you purchase Gousto meals again for your family?

Not until the food quality improves (or can select free range or organic option - would be happy to pay more). We believe strongly in eating meat that has been raised in a moral and as kind a way as possible - normally we get this from a weekly organic delivery box.

If the meat quality improved, would consider if, for example, going on a self-catering break. Otherwise, as a keen cook, I have most of the ingredients in the store cupboard anyway and the over use of packaging is an issue.

How easy did you find Gousto to use? How easy was selecting recipes and placing an order? How easy was it to follow the recipes and create the meals?
I found it straight forward and easy to use, menu cards were easy to use and one night as we had other plans my 14year old son was able to make the 2 portion meal by himself, and ate it all😁

Thinking about the ingredients and recipes how confident does Gousto make you feel that you are feeding your family well?

Ingredients were nice and fresh, would’ve been nice to see the option of organic or free range meat. Didn’t order the fish as it didn’t appeal to me with the variety of fish on offer
Thought it odd to add honey to lamb meatballs as well as balsamic and soy to pesto pasta
Also seemed high in salt

What did you think about the number of recipes you could choose from? What did you and your family think about the taste of the Gousto meals you tried?

Number of recipes limited, also took a while to work out re calorie count
The meals were tasty and easy and straight forward to prepare

What did you think about the option to order AK recipes? Is this something you would like to see more of
Don’t see the value of AK recipes

How did Gousto differ to how you usually plan, shop and cook your weekly meals?

I have a well stocked store cupboard and loosely meal plan however last week I felt made me a bit more organised but I still missed the being spontaneous about what I cooked. Shelf dates were a bit short so if plans changed it wasn’t ideal

Would you purchase Gousto meals again for your family?
Maybe but dates are short and there isn’t masses of recipes to choose from. Bit too much sugar and salt for me and also would like to see more high protein, lower carb options as well as more veg
Enjoyed the change and received a wooden spoon!!
The cats loved the box with the wool insulating stuff that I put in the bottom

1. How easy did you find Gousto to use? How easy was selecting recipes and placing an order? How easy was it to follow the recipes and create the meals?

I found the ordering pretty straightforward. The recipes were clear and easy to follow. They were quite simple and I liked having a recipe card for each meal.

1. Thinking about the ingredients and recipes, how confident does Gousto make you feel that you're feeding your family well?

I think the recipes I chose (I'm pescetarian) were quite similar to meals we already cook so used a range of ingredients we are quite likely to have. The meals we had seemed pretty balanced and healthy.

1. What did you think about the number of recipes you could choose from? What did you and your family think about the taste of the Gousto meals you tried?

As a non meat eater my choices are always more limited but it was easy to pick 4 meals I wanted to try. We liked all the meals (me, husband and two daughters aged 9 and 12). We had empty plates all round but eldest daughter said the Fish Stew was her least favorite as it had too much onion .

I thought the portions were generous.

1. What did you think about the option to order Annabel Karmel's recipes? Is this something you'd like to see continue in the future?

I didn't do this due to not eating meat.

1. How did using Gousto differ to how you usually plan, shop for and cook your weekly meals?

It was really nice to not be constantly wondering what to have for dinner. We live 2 minutes from a Tesco so tend to shop most days. This gave us a real break from that. It was lucky the dates for some of the meals were quite long though as there are some evening when we can't all sit down to eat together.

1. Would you purchase Gousto meals again for your family?

I don't think we would sign up to subscription but as an occasional treat I would. I enjoyed having a box turn up with everything I needed for that week. Nice to try something different. My children enjoyed the novelty of it.

Thank you very much

1. How easy did you find Gousto to use? How easy was selecting recipes and placing an order? How easy was it to follow the recipes and create the meals?
Very easy and straightforward. I thought the website was clear and instructions were simple and easy to follow. A few of the meals I wanted to order were sold out which was a little disappointing, but we managed to find meals that we all agreed on. The meals were easy to create, but took a lot longer than the instruction cards indicated. There was a lot of chopping and prep work.

2. Thinking about the ingredients and recipes, how confident does Gousto make you feel that you're feeding your family well?
I thought the ingredients were fresh and good quality. I also felt that the salt content was a little high with the pulled chicken and noodle dish.

3. What did you think about the number of recipes you could choose from? What did you and your family think about the taste of the Gousto meals you tried?
We did think the choice was a bit limited. I thought there would be a larger variety of dishes to choose from. However we were pleasantly surprised with the meals we tried. They were delicious and something we would have never have made before.

4. What did you think about the option to order Annabel Karmel's recipes? Is this something you'd like to see continue in the future?
This is not something we would consider. I associate AK with toddler and baby meals so it's not something that appeals to us.

5. How did using Gousto differ to how you usually plan, shop for and cook your weekly meals?
It made life so much easier with everything measured and ready to go. I always find I've run out of an ingredient, so this was so nice to have everything on hand. The shelf lives of the ingredients were pretty short.

6. Would you purchase Gousto meals again for your family?
Yes - although pricey it is nice to do this occasionally, but not as a regular purchase. I do shop a few times a week so always picking things up regularly. As others have mentioned, it is perfect for a self-catering holiday when all ingredients are not to hand. We were really impressed with the taste of the dishes. The portions were very generous - we had four meals out of two dishes!

On another note - I also got charged on my credit card and got refunded two days later.

I got a spoon!

1. How easy did you find Gousto to use? How easy was selecting recipes and placing an order? How easy was it to follow the recipes and create the meals?
Very easy to navigate the website and choose recipes to try. The box's arrival coincided with half term so the children (10 and 13) cooked two of the meals themselves. Having the ingredients measured out and to hand made the process very easy for them. The pictures on the recipe cards also helped them.

2. Thinking about the ingredients and recipes, how confident does Gousto make you feel that you're feeding your family well?
The meals I chose felt very wholesome and the portion sizes were more than adequate - the freezer is now stocked with leftovers!

3. What did you think about the number of recipes you could choose from? What did you and your family think about the taste of the Gousto meals you tried?
We all enjoyed the lamb byriani and the enchiladas. Our least favourite meals were the 2 Annabel Karmel options although the non fish eater enjoyed the fish dish whilst the rest of us were not keen.

4. What did you think about the option to order Annabel Karmel's recipes? Is this something you'd like to see continue in the future?
see 3. These recipes were the least successful from our order, I wouldn't look specifically for AK recipes again.

5. How did using Gousto differ to how you usually plan, shop for and cook your weekly meals?
Normally I visit the supermarket for my food, it was nice to experience home delivery. Gousto encouraged me to try new meals without the fear of having to source new ingredients only for them to languish in the cupboard never to be used again.
6. Would you purchase Gousto meals again for your family?
Possibly - but not on a regular basis. The children definitely enjoyed the experience - they said they felt like TV chefs having the ingredients all prepped (I did that bit) and measured.

1. How easy did you find Gousto to use? How easy was selecting recipes and placing an order? How easy was it to follow the recipes and create the meals?

All very easy, the website is very intuitive and easy to use. The recipes were easy enough, although I wonder if the 'meanwhile' instruction should be split into another box and placed next to the other, to show concurrent tasks, as I wasn't totally sure whether it really meant meanwhile.

1. Thinking about the ingredients and recipes, how confident does Gousto make you feel that you're feeding your family well?

I thought the salt and sugar levels were extremely high in some recipes. The cottage pie had 4g of salt per person, the lamb meatballs had 30g of sugar! These are worse than a bought ready meal. I did think the quality of the fresh ingredients was good though. For an every day meal we would probably have more than one vegetable too.

1. What did you think about the number of recipes you could choose from? What did you and your family think about the taste of the Gousto meals you tried?

The number was fine, although the number meals my slightly fussy children would eat was pretty small. We really like the AK lamb kebabs - although they were a bit sweet even though I only added 1/4 of the 50g of honey we were meant to use! By the third meal my daughter commented that they all tasted a bit the same, partly because of what I'd chosen, but I did also agree with her. We did enjoy all of the meals though. The crouton topping to the cottage pie was a lovely and different touch.

1. What did you think about the option to order Annabel Karmel's recipes? Is this something you'd like to see continue in the future?

I would expect the AK options to be low in salt and sugar, and the one we tried really wasn't. If they were, then I would. I'd also expect them to be a bit more young child friendly, like no chili, so I would look and these first if they were nutritionally appropriate.

1. How did using Gousto differ to how you usually plan, shop for and cook your weekly meals?

It meant that we had more interesting meals, but the basic idea of meal planning was the same.

1. Would you purchase Gousto meals again for your family?

Probably not. I really liked the idea of more interesting food, but found multiple sachets of very basic ingredients like soy sauce, a bit irritating. I also thought it would be an easy option, and the food would be a bit more prepared, as in chopped up. I think it works best for people who don't want to research recipes, which I actually don't mind. The delivery was no great benefit as I can order items on an online supermarket shop. I was hoping for less prep time rather than less shopping time. I was put off a couple of options which my children may have preferred as I thought they were less good value for money (ie vegetarian). So, I'd probably order again if there was a 'simple family' set of menus which ideally would be a bit cheaper, very child friendly and very quick to cook.

1. How easy did you find Gousto to use? How easy was selecting recipes and placing an order? How easy was it to follow the recipes and create the meals?

>>>>> I found the website easy. No issues there. I found the recipes ok. Easy enough to follow. Bit inconsistent (sometimes it gives you the measurement in red for the double up, sometimes it doesn't) I got irritated by the fact that I was expected to have two wide heavy based large frying pans mid-cook. This wasn't mentioned at the beginning of the recipe in the 'equipment needed' section. I only have one large wide pan! >>>>>

1. Thinking about the ingredients and recipes, how confident does Gousto make you feel that you're feeding your family well?

>>>>> I thought that in general, there was too much fat and too much salt. Maybe that was just the ones I chose. I liked the idea that I was giving them something a bit different for the most part, and they are generous with portions, but feeding them 'well' I'm not so sure. >>>>>

1. What did you think about the number of recipes you could choose from? What did you and your family think about the taste of the Gousto meals you tried?

>>>>> I thought there was a good selection. I enjoyed the meals. My kids were so so. The fat content in the meat was sky high. I never buy full fat meat so I found it pretty disgusting. An option for lower fat content meats would be good. >>>>>

1. What did you think about the option to order Annabel Karmel's recipes? Is this something you'd like to see continue in the future?

>>>>> Don't really care about Annabel Karmel. I only saw two meal options from her and one was pasta. I can do pasta without her help. So no. I did order the lamb kofta recipe. The kids wouldn't eat the lamb (because of the onion) or the yoghurt sauce, so it works out pretty expensive for a pitta and some cucumber and tomatoes. >>>>>

1. How did using Gousto differ to how you usually plan, shop for and cook your weekly meals?

>>>>> I don't plan. This is why its useful - for those that hate cooking and planning. >>>>>

1. Would you purchase Gousto meals again for your family?

>>>>> Probably not. I can see the benefit actually, if you are financially able, but the kids didn't really enjoy any of the meals. There's so much packaging waste i.e. individual sachets of soy, mayo, etc. and some of it (lettuce, spring onions) went bad before the cutoff date. I found it so very fatty as well. I gave it a good shot - I hate cooking with a passion and it did make it easier having everything on hand. >>>>>

Anyone else been sent another box? I've just got home to find another box, delivered yesterday, so meat all gone off yuk!

1. How easy did you find Gousto to use? How easy was selecting recipes and placing an order? How easy was it to follow the recipes and create the meals?
The actual website seemed easy enough to use. Although after I had selected my meals and gone through the ordering process I found more menus so I am not sure why I wasn't seeing them before I made my order.

2. Thinking about the ingredients and recipes, how confident does Gousto make you feel that you're feeding your family well?
When the ingredients arrived I was very impressed with the quality of everything, and the way it had all been packaged separately. Everything seemed very fresh. Although the fusilli was ENORMOUS - I didn't think DS2 would be able to eat it. (He did, and both boys enjoyed the pasta, but I would think that size wouldn't be suitable for younger kids.)

3. What did you think about the number of recipes you could choose from? What did you and your family think about the taste of the Gousto meals you tried?
I was a bit disappointed in the range of meals, there weren't many to choose from. And it was a real struggle to find things that I thought my kids would eat as all the meals seemed more adult-orientated.
As to the taste - opinion is divided. For example with the burgers I tried to follow the instructions quite closely, but thought the recipe called for a lot of salt and pepper. DS2 (5) loved the chips but said the burger tasted 'fizzy' and wouldn't eat it and even I thought the burger tasted too strongly of salt and pepper. DS1 (11), however, loved them and asked for seconds of the burger (but didn't like the chips). They point blank refused the goats cheese and I ended up having to take it to work for lunch (I thought it was lovely but the kids did not agree).

4. What did you think about the option to order Annabel Karmel's recipes? Is this something you'd like to see continue in the future?
I am not a massive AK fan, her idea of what kids will eat differs greatly to what my actual kids will eat! I would like to have seen more child-friendly meals overall though, but the AK ones were the kinds of things my kids would eat, certainly not without leaving some stuff out/changing the recipe a bit.

5. How did using Gousto differ to how you usually plan, shop for and cook your weekly meals?
In some ways it was great, I loved that everything was delivered and came ready to go without me having to shop for individual things, check we hadn't run out of this or that, check we definitely had individual ingredients like the seeds or the breadcrumbs and spices. But on the other hand it actually made things trickier - the meals didn't have very long shelf lives and prior to the box arriving I had planned what we would have each night, but when I saw the use-by dates I had to change my plans which made things more difficult (it was planned around the kids' activities and how much time I had each night etc). The box arrived on a Sunday afternoon and of the four meals one had to be used by Tuesday and two more by Wednesday. In the end I had to stick the last meal in the freezer as we didn't get round to it because everyday life got in the way and the lamb was going out of date.

6. Would you purchase Gousto meals again for your family?
I am not sure. I had to do a lot of 'adapting' the meals to what my children would and wouldn't eat - for example, there was no way either DS would eat the AK pasta with the onions and tomatoes visible in it so I had to blend them down. Seemed a bit pointless and obviously changed the end taste and texture. And had we got round to the lamb kebabs I doubt they would have had the yoghurt, and wouldn't have had the cucumber/tomatoes (DS1 might have had the cucumbers). It might be something I would consider if I had visitors coming or if we were going away to a cottage with friends or something, save having to take every little thing with us. But it's pricey for my kids to only eat about 50% of it.

I would have also liked to see nutritional breakdowns for each ingredient rather than the whole meal.

What I really liked about the boxes was that it got DS2 excited about food and cooking, and both boys tried some things that were a bit different to what they normally eat, which I was really pleased about - they are normally quite rigid. I let DS2 cook the dinners with me which we had never done before and now DS2 is asking when he can help me again. So it's given more confidence that I can cook slightly more adventurous things and get the boys involved.

Thank you for choosing me to trial the box.

Oh, and I was also really pleased with the spoon and I got charged for another box but was refunded within a couple of days.

1. How easy did you find Gousto to use? How easy was selecting recipes and placing an order? How easy was it to follow the recipes and create the meals?

I found it really easy to use the site - both searching and following the order. The recipes were very easy to follow although I did get a bit flustered sometimes with the "meanwhile" as I was not prepared. By the 3rd meal I made sure I read the recipe properly before I started.

1. Thinking about the ingredients and recipes, how confident does Gousto make you feel that you're feeding your family well?

We don't usually use vegetable oil or salt and used this as directed in our first meal, but the next 3 I adjusted the amount of oil and salt to just a small amount. I thought there was a good range of food and certainly plenty to go round (with seconds or enough for lunch the next day on all).

1. What did you think about the number of recipes you could choose from? What did you and your family think about the taste of the Gousto meals you tried?

I did not feel there were that many to choose from, as it happened we were able to easily choose 4 we liked but I did think there would be more. We all really enjoyed the meals, each was different and none of us could come up with a favourite as we enjoyed them all.

1. What did you think about the option to order Annabel Karmel's recipes? Is this something you'd like to see continue in the future?

I honestly do not remember which ones were Annabel Karmel's - I ordered 2 of hers and 2 regular meals. I wouldn't go out of my way to search for her recipes but it did just happen that 2 of her recipes contained the type of foods we like.

1. How did using Gousto differ to how you usually plan, shop for and cook your weekly meals?

I loved it - I usually have at least 1 if not more missing ingredients that I am either searching the supermarket for or using an alternative and then it never quite tastes right. I loved not having to worry about dinner for 4 nights, that it was all just at home waiting for us and fresh. Cooking was completely different, DH and I made the first 2 and then my children got involved in the last 2. I normally cook on my own so I really enjoyed that my family wanted to get involved too.

1. Would you purchase Gousto meals again for your family?

Definitely - I wouldn't want it every week (well I probably would be we can't afford to) but I think now and then as a treat or when holidaying in the UK would be ideal.

Thank you very much Mumsnet for choosing us to be part of this trial. We have really enjoyed it!