Gousto vs Hello Fresh

EDIT: Hello Fresh have changed the way they work since writing this review, but I haven't updated my review as this is a first impressions comparison. A review of their new system will be coming up soon, I shall link link from here once it's up.

In an attempt to start eating a bit more sensibly, and branch out a bit with our foods, we have signed up to a few companies who deliver all the ingredients needed for a number of meals for the week.

Gousto

The first we received is a box from Gousto, you pick 3 meals from a menu of 10 meals that change every week, you have until the Sunday the preceding week to make your choices then just sit back and wait for your delivery.

Our box arrived this afternoon, all the goods that needed to be kept in the fridge were in a nifty wool package with ice packs intended to keep the ingredients cool all day, fab if you aren't likely to be home during the day.

The exact ingredients for all three meals were in the box and labeled with the exception of normal table pepper, olive oil and granulated sugar. The meals we picked were Creamy Pancetta Linguine, Ras El Hanault Haloumi (v) and Milanese Saffron Risotto (v), each recipe has the weights for the ingredients, so once you've made it from the kit you can go out and buy the ingredients if you want to make it again, the first delivery also includes a handy little ring binder for keeping the recipes in.

We tried the Haloumi dish first, it's meant to take 45 minutes, and that was a fairly accurate at my speed. I was initially a but suspicious about the portions, it didn't look like a lot out on the side but made up it was a fantastic portion. The ingredients were a great quality and the final result tasted fabulous, had we not been so full we'd have cracked out the next dish from sheer excitement. This did have some slightly more unusual ingredients in though that I was initially quite dubious about being able to source, for instance Pomegranate Molasses which it turns out Sainsbury's has in it's speciality ingredients section for a mere £2 a bottle (this is used 1 tbsp at a time so will last forever!) however Dried Barberries are proving infinitely more annoying to get hold of in the shops, so I may have to grin and bear it and get these online or swap them out for something else.

Next we tried the Creamy Pancetta Linguine. This was super quick to cook, advising 15 minutes, and taking me closer to 20 with faffing time. It was made entirely with ingredients that are easy to source to, so it's one I've actually bough the ingredients for and cooked a couple of times at home since. (hack: some supermarkets see frozen herbs, all chopped up and ready to go, so this saved me plenty of time on subsequent cooks) It's a lovely wholesome meal and introduced me to creme freiche which I'm not sure I'd ever used in a recipe before!

The last recipe was Milanese Saffron Risotto which if I'm honest was a bit disappointing, but I expect this has more to do with other risotto dishes I have in my go to recipe pile than the actual recipe it's self. It was a great way of packing tonnes of veg into a meal at an advised 3 of your 5 a day per person, but the saffron didn't add a great deal to the recipe and is a very expensive yet unnecessary ingredient in my opinion. I did add a bit of white wine right at the end because I was a bit dubious about the flavour (and everything's better with wine right?) It was a nice meal, but not one I'd rush to cook again.

All in all there was a really nice selection of meals in the box, and it was a pretty good balance of slightly more different ingredients (I'm not including the creme freiche here, I'm sure the rest of the universe uses it all the time, it's a staple in my in-laws fridge...) whilst still having great reproduction chances. If you want to give Gousto a try yourself I have a referral code (don't say I don't ever give you anything!) Entering CLAIR30433 when you order to get £25 off your first box bringing it down to £10 for a 3 meal box. (For full disclosure, every time someone uses my code also it gives me a discount of £15 on a box, so if you sign up and then want to pass it on to friends, I'd definitely recommend giving them the code it will generate for you rather than mine!)

Hello Fresh

I had pretty high expectations after our experience with Gousto, but quite quickly hit a stumbling block. Now I admit that this is perhaps because I didn't look close enough when I was signing up, but it advertises the ability to 'meal swap' from the set meals and it wasn't initially that clear to me that this is an option only available on the 3 meal box, and having seen the options in the 5 meal box, and the available meal swaps I went straight for the 5 meal box. As a result I ended up with a 5 meal box that contained a fish dish that I then couldn't swap out. Having noticed my mistake I swapped to a 3 meal box and made a meal swap to take the fish dish out, I got the email through to say that was all sorted and fully expected a 3 meal box to turn up at the door, so was a bit surprised to find the 5 meal box with a fish dish arrive. The fish dish got passed on to my husbands parents as I really can't stand the smell of fish and the smell had quite swiftly permitted my entire fridge!

Again the ingredients arrived clearly labeled, with the ingredients for the fridge in a wool pack, but this one I did need to sign for, so if I'd been out I'm not sure it would have been left in my 'safe place' Due to having 5 meals to try rather than 3 I didn't cancel my subscription in time to prevent a second box coming (or end up logging in in time to swap out the fish dish on what was definitely now a 3 meal box, but again this is my fault, not Hello Fresh's) and did very nearly miss the second box due to an ill timed supermarket trip. Meal swaps have to be done by Wednesday night, so you have slightly less time to make the change than you have to make your meal choices with Gousto.

The non-fish dishes in my first box were Herbed Pork & Pesto Penne with Parmesan, Almond & lentil Curry with Homemade Coriander Roti, Duck a l'Orange with an Asian Twist and Pan-Fried Chicken, Sweet Potato Mash & Peppercorn sauce.

The Pasta dish was fairly easy to make and was the shortest cook time of the four at 25 minutes. It was very generous, and in fact fed us both plus Boo, who enthusiastically stole all of my pork once she'd finished her own, 'gifting' me her broccoli in return. It was a nice dish, and one I'd happily make again, though perhaps with some slightly more interesting sausages.

The Duck dish was a bit of a faff to make, and I have to admit that with some of the ingredients I gave up and grabbed my trusty frozen herbs and puree tubes to save time and effort. It was a really nice dish, but we did have two substantially different sized pieces of duck which thus had substantially different cooking times so that's something I'll keep an eye out for when buying the ingredients in future. We did discover though that Boo loves duck (it was the first time we'd ever given it to her) again this meal was very generous portionwise so we were able to easily feed Boo without sacrificing our own meals. It was despite my grumbling and the slight timing issue a really nice meal and one I'd happily cook again.

The Curry was a very involved recipe and turned out to be a bit disappointing, my husband hit the nail on the head when he said "It's a really nice Daahl, now where's the main dish?" we were definitely left 'wanting' by the time we'd finished it, and I think if I was to cook it in the future I'd probably need to destroy the whole vegetarian point of it and add in some seasoned meat... Again we were able to serve Boo a plate, though she swiftly turned her nose up at it.

The last meal was the chicken and I did make the mistake of leaving this one up to DH who is a pretty impatient cook, so what was served was definitely not the recipe on the card, a really pain as I'd been looking forward to it, but as I have the recipe card I can grab the ingredients and make it myself at a later date.

All in all the box was a bit of a mixed bag, and I wasn't quite as excited by it as I was with the Gousto box, especially as there was a wide selection of choices with Gousto so I was able to pick a few meals that looked great. The meals also took longer to cook, and generally much longer than advised and were much more involved, but that may have just been he luck of the draw. I found the more than generous portions to be useful when it came to feeding Boo but there would perhaps be a fair amount of waste for a normal 2 person family.

The second box again contained a fish dish, the remaining recipes we had therefore were Seared Black Pepper Steak with Chimichurri Dressing, Pan-Friend Chicken with Creamy Leek & Porcini Lentils and Crunchy Mexican Tilapia with Roasties and Roasted Tomatoes.

The Steak dish was fantastic, it was nice and straightforward to cook (especially when I cheated with the herbs and got out my trusty frozen tubs) and was a really flavoursome dish, my husband said "This is the meal that should have been in last weeks dish" and I agree, this meal actually blew me away with it's flavours and simplicity and would have left a much better first impression on me. I did notice the proportions were slightly less generous than the previous week, except for the spare half a bag of spinach we were left with which were eagerly snaffled by the menagerie!

The Chicken dish took a lot of prep, so it took me longer than advised to cook it, almost 40 minutes in total against the advised 25, but again, it was a really nice meal, I have to admit I cut my chicken up to a similar size as the veg in the veg mix and mixed the whole lot together as besides the salt and pepper it was seasoned with there wasn't a great deal to the chicken it's self, so I'd perhaps further season it in future, but I really enjoyed the dish. We ate quite late so weren't able to test this on Boo (but as I cleared my plate that is perhaps just as well!)

If you want to give Hello fresh a try I have a referral code for that too YYBJQH this gives you £20 off your first box, and gives me £20 off a box too.

Given the variety of choice I still feel that the Gousto box was the better of the two options, but having sourced the ingredients for the recipe's myself with both you're definitely paying a premium for the convenience, so it's great for an occasional boost to introduce something different to your normal fall back dishes but I'm not sure either are an option that I could afford to stick with long term. I do love that the ingredients all seemed to be British and where possible organic.

#Food #Review #Subscription