SimplyCook is a meal kit service that offers letterbox-sized boxes of four meal kits. Each meal kit contains three flavour pots for each recipe. The recipes consist of additional ingredients that SimplyCook subscribers can easily purchase from their local supermarkets or from online supermarkets. 

When I was scrolling through my Instagram one day, I saw a sponsored post from SimplyCook that said I could try four of their meal kits for £3.00 (usually priced £9.99). I visited their website, registered and ordered the Beef Stroganoff, the Moghul Chicken Korma Curry, the Chicken Katsu Curry and the Wild Mushroom Penne as my first four meal kits. Subscribers can either choose to receive recipe kits weekly, every two weeks or every four weeks. I opted to receive their kits every four weeks due to rotating them with my HelloFresh boxes. Subscribers can also choose the number of people to make the meals for. Since I live alone, I chose the two-person option so that I can eat one portion of the meal on the day I make it and eat the leftovers the next day. 

The box conveniently fitted inside my letterbox, meaning I don’t have to be in to receive them (although I have been spending a lot of time indoors when I received my first box due to the COVID-19 lockdown). Not only did the box contain the meal kits, but it also contained recipe cards. Each recipe card had a tear-off shopping list for subscribers to take to the supermarket, but instead I looked at the list of ingredients and added them to my Farmdrop order one week and my Ocado order the next. The recipe cards also say how many calories each dish has so that I can add them to my MyFitnessPal plan. 

Here is what I thought of each meal I cooked from my first set of meal kits and how I made them: 

Beef Stroganoff 

The original recipe for this called for mashed potato to accompany the dish, but since I had to throw out my potatoes because they looked like they were past their best, I ate it with wholewheat fusilli pasta instead. I was either supposed to add the horseradish seasoning to the mashed potato or some extra sour cream, but because I had no potatoes and I added all the sour cream I had to the beef mixture, I added it to the beef mixture. The addition of the horseradish seasoning probably made the dish a bit spicier than I thought, but it wasn’t too spicy for me. Next time I make this or the Mushroom Stroganoff, I will endeavour to make mashed potato.

Rating: 4/5

Moghul Chicken Korma

Korma is one of my favourite curries because it is mild, but this is the mildest chicken korma curry I have tried because it wasn’t as spicy as other ones I had eaten. I used double cream in the recipe instead of single cream because Farmdrop had substituted the latter with the former. I also added pilau rice seasoning to the basmati rice to liven it up.

Rating: 3.5/5

Chicken Katsu Curry 

This took me longer to make than the time stated on the recipe card because I made the breaded chicken from scratch using this recipe for inspiration, although I only used plain flour, beaten egg and Panko breadcrumbs to coat the chicken breast with. Because I don’t like radishes, I coated some cucumber in the pickled salad mix with a little water. Due to the nature of the dish and the fact that I live alone, I cooked all of the curry sauce on the day I made my first serving, dissolved half the pickled salad mix in water, cooked one crumbed chicken breast and one portion of jasmine rice on the day of my first serving; and cooked the other crumbed chicken breast, dissolved the remaining pickled salad mix in water and cooked more rice the next day. On the next day, I reheated the rest of the curry sauce in a small saucepan on the hob and added a little more coconut milk to make it a bit thinner. The curry wasn’t as spicy as I thought it would be, although it had a gentle burn. 

Rating: 4/5

Wild Mushroom Penne

The taste of the wholewheat penne pasta probably overpowered the taste of the mushroom sauce despite adding some extra garlic and parsley, but the grated vegetarian Italian hard cheese gave it some more flavour. The leftovers smelt slightly of Marmite as I put them in the fridge and I thought the mushroom stock for this recipe and the beef stroganoff did smell like Marmite.

Rating: 3.5/5

Overall, I enjoyed the meals I made using my first set of recipe kits. They were all quite easy to make. One thing I would like to see is more detailed nutritional information besides the number of calories per dish so that people who are following weight loss plans can add the amount of each nutrient to MyFitnessPal for instance or convert them into Weight Watchers points. The meal kits I have chosen in my next box are those for Italian Beef Ragu, Spiced Butternut Squash Risotto, Swedish Meatballs and Shakshouka, so I look forward to making these.

SimplyCook website: https://www.simplycook.com/my-account

My other meal kit subscription reviews:

My First HelloFresh UK Box and Meals

My First and Only Mindful Chef Meal Box and Dishes

Back to HelloFresh (plus My Recipe Folder)