I used to love Gousto boxes. During the first lockdown. I was missing eating out. What I really wanted was food that someone else had cooked but my husband wasn’t offering. So I ordered my first Gousto box. Okay, so I was still having to cook it, but someone else had assembled the ingredients and the dishes were a bit different from my normal fare.
We liked the recipes. A lot. Meat-free bulgogi, fish a la meuniere, sri lankan coconut dahl and chipotle mushroom burritos were just a few of our favourites. We quickly became Gousto fans.
But then one week our box didn’t arrive. Not great in the middle of a pandemic when we were shielding (I’m on chemo for an autoimmune condition) and couldn’t just go to the supermarket to buy food for the week. The next week, our box contained chicken that had gone off. The vegetables didn’t look particularly fresh either. In fairness to Gousto, they gave us a full refund but even so, we vowed never again.
Yet I miss those recipes. Each week, I still look at the app to see what I could order. This week, I really fancied thai aubergine curry, creamy chickpea curry with sweet potatoes and paneer mango salad. Beetroot hummus and roast veg Buddha bowl from the previous week sounded like a tempting lunch.
I found these Gousto recipes online. Each one needed quite a lot of ingredients. Would it be cheaper to just buy a Gousto box? Or to get the ingredients in my online shop from Sainsburys?
A Gousto box costs £34.99 for four meals for 2 people but we often purchase the £47.75 box for 4 people and have each meal 2 days running.
I already had many of the ingredients – tinned chickpeas, sweet potatoes and limes, for example, and some of the spices. 3 out of the 4 recipes used fresh coriander so it made sense to buy a big bag.
In all, I spent £20.28 on spinach, fresh ginger, coriander, fresh chillis, romano peppers, lemongrass, rocket, a mango, paneer cheese and tenderstem broccoli to make my four recipes.
To buy all the ingredients would cost another £21.16 – in total, more than buying a Gousto box for 4 people, but with food left over to use in other dishes. For example, I’ve ended up with a big jar of dry roasted peanuts as the thai aubergine curry used just 25g of the packet.
Last summer, I costed out another Gousto box: pulled ancho mushrooms with frijoles; chicken enchiladas suizas; chilaquiles with tomatillo salsa and baked sesame tofu with peanuts and kale. Once again, we had some ingredients in. The extras cost us £23.80 from Morrisons and again, we had leftovers.
I can’t praise the Gousto recipes highly enough. They’re easy to make and full of flavour. That Thai aubergine curry was the best Thai curry I’ve ever made. Thanks to Gousto, I’ve improved my cooking skills and tried foods I might not otherwise have tried. I’d happily pay for our weekly box if we hadn’t had problems with delivery or ingredients that weren’t fresh. But buying the ingredients from the supermarket definitely works out better value.
If despite that, you’d still like to buy a box, click here to get a discount. In the meantime, here’s the links to the recipes I’m making this week:
Thai aubergine curry with sticky rice
Creamy chickpea curry loaded sweet potato
