Get Cooking with Gousto

Get Cooking with Gousto

I’m sure by now just about everyone has seen Gousto being used by Youtubers and reviewed by bloggers. It’s a service that I’ve always been curious about, however I’ve never gotten around to taking a look at the prices. The opportunity to try and review the service came just at the right time, as we’re getting closer and closer to the wedding, our time for cooking (and creative cooking) is dwindling by the week and Gousto has bought some culinary flair back into our kitchen!

For those who aren’t aware Gousto is a service which delivers fresh food to your door, with perfectly measured amounts so you don’t even need to get your scales out, it includes everything you need from your meats to your spices – there’s a few kitchen basics such as oil, salt and pepper where you use from your own kitchen. It makes cooking really easy, and you get a delicious meal at the end. Everything arrives in a box securely insulated with ice on anything which needs to be kept chilled – this means it keeps it’s freshness for 24 hours, I chose for mine to be delivered to my office, but they deliver 7 days a week excluding bank holidays, and I knew we were unlikely to be around all day over the weekend to guarantee it’s safe arrival, and with unpredictable weather we had no where dry where it could be left in case we popped out so it arrived promptly around 9.30am on Monday morning to work. I didn’t however have to worry about squeezing it into my office fridge, everything arrived and was safely kept fresh in the box until I arrived home.

It’s customisable to how many recipes you want to receive at a time (2, 3 or 4) and you can customise the size of your meals to suit your family. I decided to trial a 3 meal box for 2, although you could upgrade to the 4 person box as a handy way to give you delicious leftover lunches for the week.

The menu changes weekly, although just because you’ve discovered a new favourite, that doesn’t mean it won’t be back ever again. The recipes change up as the the months change and produce becomes seasonal and they’re mixed up frequently to keep new and interesting ideas coming. What I really liked was that there was a star rating system on the website (all of which I saw were 4*+ so I knew everything was going to be delicious!), but it helped me make decisions over which recipes to try.

Each Recipe comes listed with a picture of what the finish result should look like, which ingredients are needed for which dish, with the reverse showing the instructions of how to prepare each ingredient, and how to cook it all. The box even comes with a rather lovely quality wooden cooking spoon with the logo carved into the handle which made a nice touch. I’m not sure whether this is a weekly addition (although if you did this weekly you’d soon end up with a hell of a lot of wooden spoons by the end of it), or whether it was an additional touch as a welcome gift. Either way it’s already been put to good use in our kitchen.

The recipes were incredibly easy to follow, and weren’t too complicated or long to follow, whilst you want delicious food when you arrive home from work, we also want it to not take an hour of prep and half an hour to cook – with this they’re pretty speedy and I’d say from first prep, to eating it was no more than 45 minutes. The way the recipes are organised is to do different preparations while different things are being fried/baked, which makes it very time economical to prepare. I chose a mixture of recipes that I thought would be a bit different to our norm (although it was very tempted to pick the creamy spaghetti, which is a food we make at home weekly), and chose a selection of different dishes from different regions (not just Italian food).

First up I cooked the American Pulled Chicken, with Creamed Corn and Sweet Potatoes – this was such a huge portion of food I had no room left for something sweet by the end. The chicken was juicy and tender, creamed corn was surprisingly nice (I wasn’t sure that I’d like it, as texture is a major player in whether I like foods or not!) and the pile of sweet potato fries made me super happy.

Last up was a Aubergine Parmigiana with Pesto Bruschetta. This was probably the most out of our comfort zone as a vegetarian dish, I could happily go veggie, if someone told me I couldn’t eat meat again I wouldn’t mind (other than chorizo withdrawal), but Ben does always have a query when it comes to a non meat dish. We both liked this and I think I would cook it again. I think there was a lot of sauce compared to Aubergine, but I would recook this again, maybe with a layer of courgette in the middle to break up the flavour of the aubergine and pack it out a little more. I don’t really like Pesto (It tastes like tea bags too me), but wanted to try a fresh home made version, and I think the fact it didn’t have pine nuts in it helped the flavour, with just Garlic, Olive Oil, Basil and some hard Italian cheese. This went down really well with us both.

Last up was the Indonesian Chicken Rendang, I imagine I’m going to be eating a lot of this whilst away as it’s the main food over in Bali where we’re spending most of our time. The portion weighting of this was a little off for me, I’m not a huge rice lover – but the chicken and sauce portion didn’t feel quite enough to eat it as it should be. All together it was enough food, I just needed a little less rice, and a bit more chicken for my taste. But it was delicious, I will be cooking it again & enjoying it several times on honeymoon.

Overall I was really impressed with everything to do with Gousto, from how promptly you can get it to your door, to the way the food was packaged, all the way through to the recipe instructions and most importantly the final taste test. I liked that all of these recipes were simple, but tasty and didn’t require hours and hours of prep in the kitchen to create something tasty.

If you would like to sign up to Gousto you can use the code ‘Tornado’ code which will give you £20 off your first box! I totally recommend this if you’re low on time, creativity, or just want easy, delicious and healthy dishes delivered to your door.

Box was sent for free to try, however was under no obligation to review.

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14 Comments

  1. May 1, 2017 / 1:42 pm

    What a great idea! OMG I love eggplant parmigiana, but it is such a pain in the butt to make. The Indonesian food looks so good – I’ve never had it and wonder how similar it is to say Malaysian or Thai food.

    Love the pics!

    • I’ve never eaten Malaysian food, I’ll be having a baptism of fire with that when we go to Kuala Lumpur before Indonesia! I’d say its a little spicier than Thai, almost a cross between indian and Thai – more middle ground in taste!
      Thank you!

      • May 1, 2017 / 5:06 pm

        Oh you are so lucky! I have family from Malaysia and the food is amazing. I’ve not been to KL much, though. I’m sure you will have an awesome time!

        • Neither of us have ever been to Asia so we’re looking forward to it. I’m trying to revise the popular dishes I think will be safe as I’m such a picky eater haha!

          • May 1, 2017 / 6:33 pm

            Oh it’ll be so fun & exciting for you guys, then! A few years ago, I caught this UK docu on Malaysian food. It was hosted by a British Asian chef named Atul (?) who was a bit stilted but he went to a lot of places and checked out loads of stuff. There was def an ep on KL, though Penang’s ep was my fave as it’s Malaysia’s food capital!

            My personal faves are curry laksa, satay, Hainanese chicken rice (not at all spicy, super easy for a newcomer), mee goreng, bak kut teh, and char kuay teow (the only one I can actually make!). Honestly it’s all awesome, though. No bias haha! http://www.seriouseats.com/2011/08/25-malaysian-dishes-you-should-know-what-is-malaysian-cuisine-slideshow.html

          • May 1, 2017 / 6:35 pm

            Also, you guys will feel like giants there. It’ll be like the opposite of when I went to Copenhagen and everyone was a foot taller than I am.

  2. May 1, 2017 / 3:52 pm

    Your parmigiana looked so good! I was pretty happy with mine to be honest! I would buy these boxes again as it was just so easy!! xxx

    • I think you’re definitely paying for convenience as I thought considering that was 30 something pounds worth of food it was quite high, but I would be tempted to do it again to maybe get a bank of recipes that are quick and easy to come back to xx

  3. May 1, 2017 / 7:06 pm

    Ooh these all look lovely! I make the same meals most weeks as we are just so busy after work and know what works for us! I’d definitely be up for trying one of these boxes though, might spice up our evening meals a bit! xxx

  4. May 1, 2017 / 10:45 pm

    They have a lot of these services around here. Some are delivery and others are locations where you drop in on the way home and pick up the ingredients to cook yourself.
    I like the variety they offer with the different ethnic cuisine – a really easy way to try out different recipes / flavours. I love the look of that Aubergine Parmigiana with Pesto Bruschetta meal. I’m with you – if I had to give up meat, I would. And I did at one point for about 2 yrs but it’s so much effort!

    • I think if I was home cooking being meat free I would be fine, but when it comes to eating out the options are always the same and there’s little variety, plus half the veggie staple meals I don’t seem to like either! The parmigana was lovely, and I normally hate don’t like pesto but even that was nice homemade!

  5. May 3, 2017 / 7:21 am

    Unusual box review from you, Rachael 😄 I love food boxes. Beautiful photos.

  6. May 9, 2017 / 3:23 am

    Those recipes look amazing! I tried the box and I am definitely getting it again

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