Recipe boxes have seen a speedy rise in popularity with lockdown restricting our usual shopping habits – and boosting our experimentation around family meals. Inspiration about what to make for the family’s evening meal can be elusive even at the best of times. But with many of us preparing every meal at home over recent months, good ideas for the day’s fare may have seemed even harder to find.
It’s an ideas gap into which food delivery boxes have stepped. These services offer pre-proportioned ingredients and step-by-step instructions for the number of meals and number of diners you choose. They can tempt you to try new recipes, and get you out of a rut when it comes to what you dish up every day.
The downside? Convenience brings a per meal cost that can be high. However, now there’s a newcomer to meal delivery box services you might like to consider because it's very, very affordable. Supermarket Morrisons has joined the competition with a family recipe box that promises to feed a family of four for five evening meals – for just £30.
Scroll down to read more. Done? Check out our guide to the best food delivery boxes; it has all you need to know about services like those from Gousto, SimplyCook, and Mindful Chef.
The £30 price tag is including delivery, making the Five Meals to Feed a Family of Four box a budget-friendly addition to the selection of recipe boxes available – and, with a cost of just £1.50 per meal per head, represents a significant saving on its rivals.
The box is a bit different from its competitors' because you’ll get full retail-sized packs of the ingredients. The advantage is that you’ll have these left over at the end of the week to make more meals; on the other hand, you don’t get the ultimate shortcut of skipping the weighing of ingredients. We can live with that.
Each box contains step-by-step recipe cards with photographs to show you the finished dish and to illustrate each of the steps, and details of what you’ll need from your own cupboard to make the meal: for example, oil, salt and pepper, and an ovenproof dish.
And what will you be making with this box? The five meals are classic spaghetti bolognese, veggie pasta bake, rosti-topped cottage pie, sausage tray bake, and mixed bean with chilli wedges, so although there are vegetarian dishes, it’s suited to families who eat meat.
You’ll get 22 different products in the box and they represent a saving on normal in-store prices, Morrisons says.
Ready to try? If you put in an order by 3pm you can get your box the next day, but there’s also the option to nominate a delivery day if you don’t want it that quickly.
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