What does Gousto mean?

It’s not everyday that the Felix Food crew gets to review something that was featured and acclaimed on BBC’s Dragons’ Den. Back in August I was trawling through FEAST at Batter- sea Park with the just-as-much-of-a- foodie (if not more) boyfriend (in fact Battersea was his idea, I was busy revising for resits and UROP-ing at the time to think of Food-related press.) Prior to that we’d heard of Gousto being mentioned on the interwebs a few times, and decided to drop by the stall to leave our contact details. They soon got in touch, and we agreed to a review box - not long after, we were watching Duncan Bannatyne display his cooking prowess with one of the recipes we’d picked. Talk about striking gold, we say!

Food delivery boxes - be they snacks a’la Graze or fresh fruit/veg/meat boxes by the Riverford crew - seem to be gaining quite a bit of traction with us Brits. Now I really should use “us” loosely, not being actual Brit myself; but I digress - when you’ve lost count of the number of friends using such services (a former Food editor being a Riverford customer, and a bajil- lion mates including your housemate being massive Graze fans), it’s hard to not pay attention to this concept mushrooming about.

Gousto (pronounced goo-stow) is one such company, but instead of just giving you a ton of purely fresh pro- duce like Riverford, they’ve gone the extra mile of portioning it up with other ingredients/seasonings - and giving you recipes to cook it with. The best part? Little to no food waste, so good for those of you who are clueless on portion sizes and need a bit of hand holding (new fresher cooks, I’m looking at you.) You don’t need to provide much apart from salt, oil, pepper and maybe a bit of milk/butter depending on the recipe, but they’ll tell you if you need to have anything extra (and it won’t be a huge ingredient.) It’s quite simple - you go on their website, order your box by picking your 3 recipes for the week (they list ingredients so if you don’t eat meat/fish you can avoid those) and Bob’s your uncle - just wait for your box. Like Graze, you can pause deliveries if you’re away, or stop altogether whenever you feel like it.

It seemed after that Dragon’s Den episode the excitement over our box’s arrival was infectious - when we collected our box from the Felix office, it was already open...a certain Union staff member had been too eager to see what was inside that she got our ed-in-chief to open it and let her have a peek. Nevertheless the packaging was impeccable - produce and ingre- dients arrived pretty much intact, all the fresh stuff stayed nicely chilled until I managed to fridge it up, and we all agreed it looked fantastic. It was only after bringing the box home that I’d noticed one of the Dijon mustard mini-containers had somehow come apart and left some mustard inside one of the ingredient bags (boo!), but it wasn’t the end of the world. Everything came nicely labelled (with the odd bit of wit, not unlike Innocent juices), so there was no reason to goof up with the wrong ingredient - or wrong portion sizes for recipe, as two of our recipes shared a few ingredients like potatoes.

We had a 2-person box and picked three recipes: Bavarian Fleischpflanzerl (fancy way of saying meatballs) with sauteed rosemary potatoes, rump steak with roasted potato wedges and Italian gremolata, and that famous honey mustard glazed trout fillet with summer salad, a’la Duncan Bannatyne/BBC. All the portioned-up grub came with their corresponding recipes in the form of lovely cards, which can be kept and re-used should you like the recipes enough.

On day 1 I was alone, so I made the trout salad in one go and decided to test how well it kept the next day. Sure enough Duncan and the fellow Dragons weren’t amiss when they lapped up the salad, and I discovered with this recipe that I actually like beetroot (having never tried it before, how odd!) That and Dijon mustard - the recipe broke whatever misconceptions I had about crappy yellow mustard, as I didn’t like it much when younger. It should also be said that the salad tasted just as great (if not better) the next day, as the flavours had more time to mingle - I had fridged it and brought it with me to get through my UROP lunch hour. The salad itself was fresh, zingy and appetising, full of yummy stuff to hit your 5-a-day without making you feel like a wannabe WAG pushing a lone leaf about on a plate. It’s actually a salad for salad- haters.

A few days after we test-drove the Bavarian Fleischpflanzerl, with my housemate Phil as a willing guinea pig. Now Phil eats a bit more than I do (and I can eat quite a bit), but we’re happy to report that the portion sizes were just nice. I do wonder how they’d cater for customers who are bottomless pits of huge appetites, but I suppose these customers have their ways! We’re not too sure what we could’ve done about the meatballs falling apart a bit, but they were still yummy - and the recipe did get you making them from scratch, which is a nice thera- peutic plus.

Not too long after we had the final meal of the pack - rump steak with gremolata. Phil likes his cooked a bit more towards medium/medium well, but I like mine medium rare or rare; the instructions only covered cooking till medium rare. Luckily this wasn’t quite my first steak, and I do cook quite a bit of it with my boyfriend (well he cooks it more), but it would’ve been nice to see a bit more detail on getting different levels of steak done- ness. Can’t however fault this being a great recipe to introduce steak virgins to cooking and prepping it.

All in all we did come away with a good impression of Gousto, and we think it’s a great product - but it might not be for everyone in our readership due to cost (students, I’m looking at you.) Some of us would also like to see some one-person boxes happen in the future, though personally as a “cook ahead and eat leftovers for lunch” person (and because cooking for one produces just as much mess) I’m not sure how feasible that might be. Below we’ve made a bit of a pros and cons list/recap, but it’s up to you. We’d love to see where the Gousto boys - Timo and James - take this concept to...g’luck, chaps!

What we loved

• Little to no food waste. It’s probably the key selling point here.
• Quality produce and ingredients. They just speak for themselves - I’m not a food snob, I’d happily eat not- quite-organic/free-range produce (I know my budget, but I buy as local and as not-chemically-laced as I can); but this is a major plus.
• Great balanced recipes that change with the season - extremely well- written, concise, but doesn’t skimp on detail like prep/cooking time + back- ground info to help you plan ahead.
• Nothing crazily fussy, so they’re not forcing you to use insane cheffy techniques or spend hours in the kitchen (30-40 mins most from start to fin- ish, then however long you take to eat). Just the kind of food that’s simple enough to get you cooking regularly, yet great tasting to keep you from a rut.
• Good way to try something new, be it an ingredient or recipe or technique. There’s always something new to learn!

What we didn’t dig

• You only get 3 meals for 2 people (6 portions) per week (there’s a 4-person option though) - though if you’re willing to fork out a bit more, you can privately arrange for a 5-meal box
• It’s 42 quid a week for the above box (vegetarian boxes cost 3 quid less), which comes up to 7 quid a meal - quite a hefty tag, though the premium is because all the ingredients are organic/free-range and you’re also paying for someone to do the legwork of portioning/thinking what to cook for you.
• It’s not as spontaneous (Kelly Hoppen, you read my mind) - you have to decide by Wednesday night what you want for the next Tuesday, which doesn’t help if you then change your mind - but it’s only because they need time to source and prepare ingredients. Understandable, but if there were some way to reduce how far ahead people need to decide (even if it was a few days less), it would be even better. You can’t have it all though, which is fair.
• Not every recipe is next-day-friendly, but they’re operating on the impression that you’re cooking for two and eating it all there and then! However if you’re buying the box just for yourself, that’s the only thing you can do atm. They’re hoping to offer single-person boxes though, so watch this space...

General verdict Would heartily recommend, but not for everyone. Perhaps ideal for busy Imperial staff who don’t like thinking about food shopping or portioning things up, but still want to cook. For students, maybe a once-in-a-blue- moon thing only because of budgetary reasons (it’s cheaper to do your own food shop and put a bit more forethought/learning) - Carol will how- ever certainly be on the lookout to see if something unique comes up on the weekly recipe rotation...

Dislaimer: Gousto sent us a complimentary box back in Sept for review and consideration - special thanks to Aidan Willcocks at Gousto for arranging this for us! All opinions however are our own - our duty is to you, the reader. Learn more: www.gousto.co.uk