I mentioned a few weeks ago that I’d signed up for a trial with Gousto, so I thought I’d spend today’s post letting you know what my experience has been like so far. Gousto is a service that provides “recipe boxes”. These are crates of specific fresh ingredients that come with a recipe card to show you how to make a meal from them. My whole family has been raving about Gousto throughout lockdown, so I finally caved and agreed to give it a try myself.
Apologies for the lack of photos – it turns out that I’m really bad at making food look appetising. However, I can show you what comes inside a typical box!
Value
I’m not going to make you read to the bottom of this post to find out the price, so let’s get it out of the way now. The cost of a box is a bit variable, as you can order 2-4 meals per week with serving sizes for 2 or 4 people. As there are only two of us and we work full time, we’ve been ordering two meals per week. On this basis, the cheapest a box seems to be is £24.99 including shipping. This works out as £6.25 per portion, which actually isn’t too bad given the amount of food you get.
The prices, of course, increase depending on how many meals / people you are ordering for. Some of the recipes are also a couple of pounds more expensive as they include pre-chopped or premium ingredients (such as steak). However, if you want to give it a try before you commit, feel free to use my member code. This gets you 60% off your first crate, and 30% off any further crates you order in your first month – KIM42464315
The Process
Gousto is easiest to use through its mobile phone app. The menu for the week is uploaded at midday on a Tuesday, and gives you 8 days to select your order. Gousto boasts a wide variety of recipes every week, though the popular ones do sometimes sell out. The app also gives you helpful information about allergies, calories, and general ingredients. It also lets you know if you need to add anything to the recipe. These are always common things – Gousto expects you to own standard ingredients like vegetable oil, salt, sugar and pepper, and certain utensils.
The app also tries to upsell you some addons for your meal, such as utensils and fancy deserts. I haven’t tried any of these as they all seem a bit overpriced, however I will just point out that in the store is a ring binder for your recipes that you can add to your first order free of charge. I’d certainly recommend getting this, as it’s a good way to keep everything together.
The last thing to do is select your delivery day. Boxes are delivered by courier on your day (including weekends) of choosing to ensure everything is fresh. For use, they seem to always arrive between 12-1 pm on the day. The app is really easy to manage all this, including giving you the ability to cancel your order or skip weeks. The only real little thing to note is that you need to remember to access the app and tell them what you want within the 8 day window, as Gousto will otherwise just send you a random recipe.
What’s in the box
The great thing about Gousto is the lack of waste. They send you exactly the right quantities of ingredients for your meals, so you don’t need to buy a lot of expensive spices to give them a try. The boxes are split into two sections, with the non-perishables in one side and the items that need to be kept chilled in the other. There are also a couple of numbered bags containing smaller items like herbs and spices, which are numbered to match the recipe cards that they apply to.
I should also note that Gousto are keen to do all that they can to help the environment. They claim that ordering from them helps reduce CO2 emissions in respect of your weekly shop. The crates are also totally recyclable. Even the ice packs are safe to defrost and use to water your plants. I personally found this to be a nice touch, especially when added to the fact that the ingredients prevent unnecessary food waste.
All of the ingredients are super fresh, but my sister tells me that you should try to eat any recipes including bread first. She gets four meals in her boxes, and has had occasions where the bread has gone stale before she could use it if left until the fourth day.
The only other item included in the crate are the recipe cards, which give a breakdown of the ingredients so you can make the recipe again in the future. The recipes we have tried have all been very easy to follow, and the only mistake we noticed was on one that told us to cut tomatoes into 6ths, when the photo clearly showed 8ths. Not a big problem, in the greater scheme of things. Your recipes are also automatically stored on the app, just in case anything happens to your recipe card.
Our Verdict
Nick and I aren’t greatly adventurous chefs. We have a cycle of about 8 or 9 recipes that we make regularly, and one of those is beans on toast. One of the thing we’ve enjoyed most about Gousto is that it’s given us the chance to try new things that we might not have otherwise risked. We’ve also really enjoyed the experience of making these dishes together in the kitchen, for some fun couples time.
In our first month, we’ve tried making the following dishes, which have balanced my preference for rice dishes with trying some new things:
- Chicken Katsu Curry
- Creamy Cajun Chicken & Pepper Linguine
- Chicken Shashlik Burritos with Mango Yoghurt
- Chicken Pad Thai with Rainbow Veg
- Spicy Chicken Karahi with Peshwari Rice
- Chicken Musakhan with Cucumber Salad
- Pulled Hoisin Chicken & Sesame Noodles
- Thai Green Vegetable Curry with Lime
While there are some of these recipes that we probably wouldn’t make ourselves again, we did enjoy every single one of them. Our favourite meals were the Katsu Curry, the Linguine, and the Karahi, but all of them were delicious and so easy to make.
It really depends on the recipes whether we’ll continue to get a crate every week, but we’ll probably keep on going as long as the choices look interesting. Our next crate is going to contain Sizzling Steak Thai Red Curry and Coronation Chicken Naanwich with Spiced Potatoes. I’m already really excited to give both of them a try.
So, yeah, my family weren’t wrong on this one. I’d really recommend giving Gousto a go if you’re a food lover. As I previously mentioned, feel free to use my code and get yourself a cheaper first box – KIM42464315. It’s safe just to get that one, as Gousto do let you cancel at any time!