Recipe Boxes — The Ultimate Rundown

Designed to take the stress (and often thought) out of cooking tasty meals, recipe boxes are a gamechanger for those of us too busy to browse through recipes but still keen to eat healthily and show off our culinary skills to anyone brave enough to let us cook for them. The market is flooded with companies delivering ingredients direct to your door so you to create meals that will not only wow your guests but fill you with nutrients and tantalise your tastebuds at the same time.

But with so many on offer, how do you know which is the right one for you? Belle About Town tested a whole host of boxes and judged them on cost, quality, and of course taste. Here’s how we got on…

Feastbox – Sold as Cultured Cooking Feastbox offers a choice of 12 traditional Asian and Middle Eastern dishes each week. If you’re veggie or have allergies the choices can be limiting, it took us three weeks of browsing the menus to find two dishes we wanted at the same time.

Recipes are relatively simple to follow and the meals themselves are tasty if not overwhelmingly so. Good for a change but you’re unlikely to want a weekly subscription.

Box Price: Price per dish varies from around £5-7 per person so for three meals for two people you’re looking at £30-40.

Get £20 off your first two recipe boxes & free delivery with offer code – WELCOME

Gousto – Possibly our favourite due to the variety of options available to suit all dies and tastes. Don’t be put off by the grinning pics of Joe Wicks every time you click through to a recipe, you get to ignore them soon enough.

You can choose from more than 40 recipes, with plenty of gluten-free, plant-based and vegetarian options, as well as tasty twists on traditional dishes, such as sausage stews, all sorts of pies, and hearty pasta dishes. The new Everyday Favourites range includes a fabulously rich tomato and courgette pasta bake and flavoursome sausage and mash recipe with delicious pork sausages. Each recipe card gives you a prep and cooking time, a calorie count, and a basic blurb advising who will enjoy it most. The good thing is you can pick whether you want two, three or four meals, and for two or four people, enabling you to tailor your order to forthcoming plans. Instructions are mega easy to follow and timings all fit perfectly so you’re not grappling with saucepans and trays in a struggle to bring it all together at the last minute.

Box Price: 3 meals for 2 people costs £29.99.

Gousto have kindly offered an exclusive discount code for Belle About Town readers: Simply add voucher ‘BELLE’ at checkout and get 60% off your first box and 30% off all other orders in your first month.

Hello Fresh – One of the most famous brands, Hello Fresh has brought
recipe box companies into the mainstream. With a choice of 20 recipes Hello Fresh offers one of the most visually appealing menus. Time has been taken on presenting the dishes and the imagery and descriptions will see you salivating as you choose your meals.

There’s a good range to suit varying diets, and all recipes come delivered in separate, labelled bags, so you don’t have to rummage through the box wondering which ingredient is which, and what goes where. Unfortunately on more than one occasion we were sent overripe ingredients meaning if they weren’t cooked that day they had gone off, and once even had a box of mouldy tomatoes! This may not pose a problem when it’s fruit and easily detected, but alarm bells rang as to whether poultry and meat was included in the same way – without checking expiry dates – and we decided it wasn’t a risk worth taking.

Box Price: 3 meals for 2 people is £35. Delivery is free.

Discount introductory offers can be found most weeks through a simple web search

Mindful Chef – Mindful Chef was launched to bring delicious, nutritious and healthy meals to the masses of Britain. Ingredients are sourced from small British farms – and all recipes are low carb and gluten-free. There’s a choice of 16 meals each week, although you’re hard pushed to find a veggie option that doesn’t form a base from coconut, kale or sweet potato. We initially chose two meals – a veggie cottage pie and a chargrilled jerk chicken. Unfortunately, when our box arrived there were just heaps of ingredients with no recipe card or instructions on what to cook with what, or how, or why. The ingredients got mixed up and customer service were unable to decipher our box contents descriptions for more than 24 hours, so we missed a window to cook our veggie option. The recipes were eventually emailed, and the jerk chicken was tangy, tasty and oh-so-moreish. We tried again for another delivery last week and are delighted to say all went smoothly this second time. The one-pot paprika chicken dish came weighed, measured, and with concise instructions. It took 45 minutes to cook and was honestly one of the most mouthwateringly enjoyable meals we’ve eaten all year. High praise indeed!

Box Price: Price per dish can be anything from £5.50-8.50 so 3 meals for 2 people costs anything up to £51. Delivery is free.

EatFirst – Not strictly a recipe box but still a great option for the health conscious and time poor. EatFirst delivers expertly prepared gourmet dishes cooked fresh every morning straight to your door, and each dish is ready for easy finishing at home or work in less than 4 minutes. All meats, fish, and produce are ethically sourced healthy ingredients produce clean, fresh meal. Ordering is available on-demand in Central London or within 24-hour nationwide.

There’s a range of cuisines available including vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free and each meal is hand finished into eco-friendly compostable packaging. Meals and sides can be ordered and quickly cooked in a microwave, but the instructions can be a little baffling and left us on one occasion with a melted sauce pot and soggy tofu. In general though the dishes were exceptionally tasty – restaurant standard – and the service so convenient we will be ordering again and again.

Box Price: You tend to order by meal rather than box (although a box of 5 meals for one person comes in at around £40). Individual meals are priced £5-8 and there’s the option of extras including sides and desserts.

Vegan Apron – Hot on the heels of Veganuary comes this new kid on the block, promising weekly deliveries of tempting and tasty vegan meals. Our box arrived and we were pleased to each meal packaged separately. It makes grabbing the right ingredients so much easier. Vegan sausage mac n cheese was first up, and while it looked dubious throughout the cooking process, the end product was full of flavour and generously portioned. Each item is individually weighed and packaged in recyclable bags. This is great, but can lead to confusion when an instruction on the recipe card says ‘follow packaging instructions’ and there are none! It was a guessing game as to how long to fry the sausages or boil the mac, but a hurdle easily overcome with a little tasting along the way. We were most baffled by the ‘heat the over to 200 degrees’ instruction when an oven is not used for making this dish. VA is a small operation and just starting out, but if they want to go up against the big guns there needs to be more attention to detail. Instructions are general and lack clarity, meaning timings are jumbled and ingredients missed. Other dishes we attempted were vegan haggis and an incredibly flavoursome and hearty Ribollita bean soup which was delicious.

Box Price: 3 meals for 2 people costs £41 (a ‘light bites box is £38) and you can but a vegan desserts and baking box for £31.
Delivery for each box is £4.50 per week. But spend over £60 each week and get free delivery.