Gousto sends recipe boxes since 2012, is situated in Shepherd’s Bush, London and is only available in the UK. 3 meals for 2 people currently cost £35. It is generally very similar to HelloFresh.

Choice

You can choose from 10 recipes every week and filter by “healthy”, “veggies”, “quick” and “top rated”. You can order either 2, 3 or 4 meals for 2 or 4 people.

Convenience

This is a subscription service but you can cancel any time via their website. The subscription can be changed to be weekly, fortnightly or monthly. You can choose the delivery day to be either Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Saturday (8am-7pm) and you can change your order until 3 days before it. As they’re using Yodel as a delivery service, the box will also be tracked.
After ordering your box there is an opportunity to order a few choice food items more (chocolate, wine, etc).

The box and its contents when it arrived

Eco-friendliness

The ingredients are partly organic. In my box it was about a third of the ingredients quantity-wise and about a half weight-wise, i.e. it’s usually most of the vegetables.
Unfortunately they won’t take the wool liners or ice packs back, but at least the vast majority of the packaging is recyclable. Their suggestions on how to re-use the wool liners don’t make much sense when you will potentially have 52 of those per year.
On the one hand they say they “strive to abolish waste” but on the other hand they sent spam with the box. My box included 4 different vouchers, samples and other bits of advertising for products from other companies. It’s just annoying and wasteful.
But then again they also included a Gousto tote bag. That is a nice touch, especially as tote bags are something of a symbol for eco-friendliness.

Transparency

They list some information about each recipe beforehand (ingredients, nutrients, times, etc) but they are somehow missing a vital description. You can try to imagine what kind of dish it is by reading the ingredients. But a minimal description would help much more with deciding which meal to choose. Not sure why they are the only service which doesn’t provide this. Maybe it has to do with bad design choices on their website which doesn’t leave any room for descriptions. It is good to know, though, that they have a description available on each recipe card later on.
They list exactly which ingredient is organic and which isn’t. But they don’t list any sub ingredients anywhere unfortunately. It is not clear where most of the single ingredients are coming from but they list “local farms in Lincolnshire” on their website for the general source.
It is nice that they provide a way to rate and review each recipe. Those ratings are then collated to a general rating which gets displayed on the recipes you can choose from each week. I wonder why no other service is doing that? Unfortunately you cannot read other people’s reviews but you can always refer back to your own.

Food

The recipes are explained in 8 steps and include photos, not just of all the steps (and the resulting dish) but also of the ingredients by themselves. That is not necessary but can be helpful with the lesser known ingredients. They are the only service which had the sense to punch holes into each recipe card for easier filing. Their recipe cards are generally better thought through than others.
The Cajun Chicken had great, complementary flavours (spices against the more mellow couscous with apricots and yoghurt). I thought it had too much chicken but other than that it was one of the best dishes. The Thai Pork Skewers were even better as it was the single best dish I ever cooked myself! It had very nice and surprising flavours with an amazing chutney. And the Shepherdess Pie was a good and easy alternative. Only the additional spring greens did not fit at all.

Before (top) and after (bottom) of the three dishes of this box: Cajun Chicken, Thai Pork Skewers and Shepherdess Pie (from left to right)

Taste

4.67/5
(Please note, this rating is obviously subjective and only based on 3 recipes.)

Verdict

Due to great taste, friendly delivery times and moderate eco-friendliness I can definitely recommend Gousto. It’s a pity they won’t re-use their packaging.

If you’d like to try them, you can use the voucher code ANIKA64415 to get £20 off your first box. (And I will get £15 towards a box as well.)

Articles in this series

• Trialling recipe boxes: Introduction
• Trialling recipe boxes: The Original Supper Box
• Trialling recipe boxes: Riverford
• Trialling recipe boxes: Marley Spoon
• Trialling recipe boxes: Gousto (this article)
• Trialling recipe boxes: HelloFresh
• Trialling recipe boxes: Abel & Cole
• Trialling recipe boxes: Mindful Chef
• Trialling recipe boxes: Conclusion