For many years now I’ve been one of those people that really likes to cook my food from scratch. Over this time we’ve rarely eaten ready meals, and not too much freezer food either, so when Imogen came along, and now my bulk batch cooking in the freezer has run out there are often days in the week where I simply have no time or energy to spend on cooking. We’ve tried a couple of recipe boxes now, that aim to keep you cooking fresh but taking away the stress and have enjoyed them, so when Riverford got in touch offering to send us a box to review I was intrigued to try it out. A few years ago we actually had Riverford Veg Box deliveries for a while, but did find we didn’t always use everything and thus it wasn’t worth the outlay for us, despite us loving the quality and variety.
We received one of their 3 meal boxes for two people, and their is the option to tailor this to being vegetarian if you want. When the box arrived I was pleased to see that a lot of it still looked like their normal veg box – whole vegetables rather than pre-prepared some still with dirt on them. The down side to this though is that preparation will take slightly longer than some boxes where you get everything already cut or sliced.
There was a separate bag of chilled products that could easily be removed for keeping in the fridge and also a section in the box for the dry goods, labelled up for each recipe.
On the top of the box were the recipe cards and I was happy with the sound of all the recipes, all very much up our street with flavours and cuisines. I say recipe cards, unlike some recipe boxes, these were more like booklets with very comprehensive step by step guides and instructions, complete with nutritional and allergen information too so this is a big plus.
On the whole, the recipes were simple and easy to follow and the timings were pretty much spot on. We had two clear favourites out of the three recipes, both of which I would happily cook over and over again, these were the Chicken and Red Pepper Cacciatore and the Hot Thai Beef Salad. I’ve rarely used Kolrabhi before – never known what to do with it, and now I do so thats great too. These are a couple of our finished meals
We weren’t as keen on the Squash curry. I think thats more our tastes than any fault with the recipe though. Overall the Riverford box was a great success. I think it lies middles of the road in terms of convenience, as there is a bit more prep to be done in some areas, but I think the standard and outcome of the recipes is amongst the best we’ve found.
I was filming a Day in the Life Vlog on the day we ate the Hot Thai Beef Salad, so check that out below to have a look at some cooking action!
Disclosure; We trialled the Riverford Box free of charge, no other payment was recieved and all opinion are our own.
