As amusing as my friends and family find it, I was once Worcestershire’s Young Chef Of The Year. Sadly, five years of beans on toast at University, followed by the discovery of London’s incredible restaurant scene, put an end to my culinary days. Keen to spend more time at home and less money on Nando’s, I’ve started to get back into cooking again. Living above an M&S, however, has seen me splurging close to £20 a night on dinner for two (!) and then having excess ingredients that end up in the bin after three days of sitting in my fridge (sorry, planet). In a bid to be much more cost-efficient, healthy and sustainable, I decided to put a healthy recipe box delivery service, Mindful Chef, to the test. Here’s how I got on…
What is Mindful Chef?
Mindful Chef is a health-focused recipe box subscription service that just so happens to be the UK’s favourite healthy recipe box service, according to Trustpilot.
“With 68 delicious recipes on the menu, Mindful Chef’s recipe boxes provide customers with the tools to cook delicious, nutritionally-balanced meals that help customers feel healthier and happier,” say founders, Myles Hopper and Giles Humphries.
Mindful Chef, which is loved by Victoria Pendleton CBE, Sir Andy Murray, Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill and Tom Daley, aims to encourage people to lead a healthier life by reducing the amount of processed food consumed and cutting out refined carbohydrates. Perfect for busy people (everyone), the ingredients are cleverly pre-portioned and each recipe takes a maximum of 30 minutes to make.
You can buy one-person, two-person and family meals, and there’s gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan, flexitarian, vegetarian and pescatarian diets available. They really have thought of everyone.
If that wasn’t enough, for every fresh or frozen meal sold, Mindful Chef donates one school meal to a child living in poverty through the One Feeds Two charity. The brand has already reached a milestone of 1.8 million donated meals, which is pretty mega for a brand that was the brainchild of two fellas from Devon.
How it works
Customers choose from up to 16 well-balanced plant-based, meat or fish recipes, that change weekly. All the recipes are gluten-free, dairy-free and contain no refined carbs.
You literally log onto the website and peruse pictures of the mouth-watering recipes on offer and add them to your cart. The boxes start from £5 per portion (mine cost and are delivered 7-days a week free of charge to homes and offices across the UK. I opted for two recipes as I only really cook on Monday and Tuesday: the Chargrilled Jerk Chicken with Salsa and Sweetcorn, and the more sophisticated Nori-Wrapped Salmon, Ginger and Spring Onion Rice.
I received my box via DPS (who even sent me a picture of it waiting outside my front door!) containing a colourful and informative recipe booklet, pre-portioned ingredients and fresh meat, fish and produce sourced from small award-winning British farms (they tell you where it’s come from, which is a nice touch).
I found the whole cooking experience super therapeutic and whilst the seeds and herbs are pre-portioned, you still feel like a ‘cook’ with fresh vegetables and meat to dice up. Recipes that previously seemed intimidating (hello, nori rolls) were so easy to emulate and the jerk chicken was fantastic quality and so flavoursome.
My boyfriend and I usually indulge on really big portions thanks to recipe guesswork but Mindful Chef taught us that less really is more. I couldn’t even finish my portion and I am a self-proclaimed pig.
Knowing I have the box waiting for me on a Sunday night alleviates the stress of early-week food shopping and even just two Mindful Chef meals a week made me feel that bit ‘healthier’. Plus, I wasn’t left with the bloat I’d usually experience after a home-cooked meal (most probably complemented by half a loaf of garlic bread).
Mindful Chef also offer a range of chef-prepared frozen ready meals, as well as smoothies, which my family assure me are fantastic so I’m excited to give these a try.
So, how much does Mindful Chef cost?
Mindful Chef offer 1-person, 2-person and family boxes. The boxes start from £5 per portion and are delivered 7-days a week free of charge to homes and offices across the UK.
1 person box – from £8 per portion
2 person box – from £5.50 per portion
Family box (2 adults, plus 2 to 3 children) – from £5 per portion
- Beef & mustard burger with balsamic onions & carrot fries
- Red Thai chicken curry with courgetti & cashew nuts
- Pan-fried plaice with asparagus, dill, quinoa & crispy capers
- Vietnamese pho with courgetti noodles, tofu & cashews (v)
- Mexican veggie chilli with sweet potato nachos & guacamole (v)
- Roasted cauliflower & chickpea tikka masala with black rice (v)
Family recipes:
- Beef bolognese with brown rice penne
- Cashew chicken korma & black rice
- Pesto crumb salmon with vine tomatoes
- Mexican bean chilli, guacamole & sweet potato fries (v)
- Aubergine quinoa stuffed rolls (v)
- Veggie & cannellini bean lasagne (v)
The verdict
As someone who is so time-poor but is desperate to eat healthily, Mindful Chef is a total game-changer. I will absolutely be ordering two recipes every week going forward and I genuinely feel excited about food again. These are the best recipes I’ve ever come across (sorry, Jamie Oliver).
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