Review: Gousto Box

I like the idea of a recipe box. Coming home to find all your meals ready weighed and ready to cook, no need to go to the shops and no wandering round the kitchen wondering what you’re going to cook that evening. I have been so busy recently that my recent recipe box from Gouso couldn’t have come at a better time! I was sent a box containing ingredients to make three meals for two people: Macaroni Cheese, Asian Pork with Rice and Pak Choi and Sweet Tahini Chicken.

We tried the Macaroni Cheese first. It was made with Tallegio which made a nice change and there was added bacon for flavour and tomatoes for freshness. It was easy to make (you did need to make sure you had butter, milk and flour to make the sauce) and I really enjoyed it.

The Asian Pork came next and I think this was my favourite of the three recipes. You fry the pork first then finish it in the oven. While it’s resting, you cook the rice and pak choi and then thicken up a sauce made from soy, tamarind, garlic and sesame oil to pour over the dish at the end.

We tried the Sweet Tahini Chicken next and I liked that it used chicken thighs rather than chicken breast. There was a lovely spice mix sent through to coat the chicken and give it a lovely flavour. You had to grill the chicken for this which is never a welcome step in a recipe in our house as the smoke detector always goes off! The giant cous cous salad with this and the sweet tahini dressing were really nice together.

I liked:

• That the instructions came with dates that you needed to cook the meal by so you didn’t need to look at all the packs to work out what to cook first.
• The recipes; they were all delicious, the instructions were easy to follow and the timings were accurate.
• The portion sizes were good for me; generous without being overfilling.
• The packaging keeps it all nice and cool even if you don’t unpack it for hours after it was delivered.
• They seemed to make a conscious effort to make sure that each meal had plenty of fresh vegetables and/or herbs.
• Each recipe had the calorie content on it.

I didn’t like:

• For the purpose of this review I wasn’t able to pick the recipes that I tried (other than to specify no fish) so it was a bit meat heavy for me. I would not normally eat meat three times in a row.
• Although the dates were provided as to when to eat the meals by I thought this was a little restrictive as my box was delivered on a Friday and everything had to be eaten by the Tuesday.
• The amount of packaging that I threw away. I completely understand why there is so much packaging as everything is pre-weighed but because I normally have my veg box I hardly ever throw any packaging away because I don’t have any!

The Gousto box I tried costs £19.99 with the current £15 discount that you can apply.

To see how this recipe box compares to the others, take a look at my Recipe Box Comparison post here.

Thank you to Gousto for the box. All opinions and words expressed are my own.