Is Gousto worth the money? I recreated some of our favourite Gousto meals buying the ingredients ourselves. Was it cheaper or not?
Recently, my boyfriend and I messed up our Gousto order so had to skip a week. Normally, we’d head to ALDI and just buy ingredients for a bunch of cheap fail safe meals. But this time around, we decided to challenge ourselves to make our favourite Gousto meals by buying the ingredients ourselves.
Although I’m already convinced that Gousto is worth the price, I also thought it might be a good idea to put my ideas into practice. I wanted to see whether it is cheaper to buy the ingredients yourself.
We began by picking out a couple of our recent favourites and then choosing three more similar meals based on the ingredients used. We chose to try to re-create: 10-Min Prawn, Chorizo & Avocado Tacos, Amatriciana Spaghetti with Bacon, Chorizo & Lemon Linguine With Salad, Courgette & Goats’ Cheese Linguine, Creamy Sausage & Pea Farfalle (without peas as we don’t like peas). I will note that usually, we get four meals a week from Gousto. I chose to also get the ingredients for the chorizo and avocado tacos so that we could have them for lunch.
The Taste
In all honesty, although we could taste the difference between the meals being just that less tasty than Gousto, they were still blooming delicious. The prawn and chorizo tacos were very very tasty. I wouldn’t have been able to tell that they were not the ones created from Gousto (although this may be because we used the exact ingredients more or less). We both agreed that the courgette and goats’ cheese linguine was pretty much exactly the same. However, where things tasted a little different, it wasn’t in a bad way! It was usually just a small alternative – like the tomatoes in the amatriciana spaghetti in bacon. You could taste the difference, yes, but the flavour of the dish did not suffer at all.
The Process
Of course, we found it a bit more stressful doing it all ourselves. Luckily we had all our ingredient cards and had made each meal before. But planning ahead to save money and getting all the ingredients ourselves was tough. Maybe meal planning gets easier with practice! I did feel quite guilty about all the food and ingredients left over though. I’ve always mentioned how great Gousto are for the fact that there is no waste and they’re very sustainable. But when it comes to doing it yourself, that’s when you really notice the difference.
Again, this may be something that gets easier with practice. But I never quite realised how much really gets wasted when giving up Gousto for just one week.
Finally, without Gousto, it’s so easy to fall into the habit of making the same easy things over and over again. Luckily our freezer doesn’t work properly, so we can’t really rely on frozen meals. So I’m always glad that Gousto gives us the chance to try something new. I’ve often said that even if it was cheaper to buy the ingredients yourself, I believe paying a little more for Gousto is worth it for such a delicious and varied menu.
The Prices
We pay £34.99 for four Gousto ‘dinner’ meals a week. This includes all ingredients – measured out exactly – which arrive in super sustainable packaging.
For the five meals above, we spent between £50 and £60. But it’s important to take into account that this included an extra ‘lunchtime meal’. And we didn’t get around to eating one of the meals in the end. So you could argue that we paid, on average, £55 a week for four meals. This is £20 more than what Gousto charges. We also planned ahead with these meals and picked based on many of the ingredients being the same. So, for example, we’d only need to purchase one bag of pasta. We obviously bought the ingredients as was – aka an entire back of rocket salad as opposed to the right amount for each meal. Also, we skipped some of the smaller ingredients like the lime for the tacos. From past experience, we found them to be quite flavoursome as is.
We also purchased things like vegetable or chicken stock cubes which can be a little pricey but come with six or more in a pack. Plus most people may already have these stock cubes at home already as they’re kind of stock cupboard items. Finally, we substituted for some meals. Soft cheese was required for the creamy sausage and pea farfalle, whereas goats cheese was needed for the courgette and goats cheese linguine. We used goats cheese for both to save money. And we don’t like peas, so we didn’t use them at all, haha.
We could have picked less fancy meals to save money. But even when we chose based on similar ingredients and used substitutes where we could, it still cost between £20-£25 more. That could be between £60-£100 a month!
In Conclusion
Although it was a bit of a challenge to re-create our favourite Gousto meals ourselves, it was kind of fun in a way. It reminded me that we tend to fall back on one or two cheap and fail-safe meals for the days we don’t have Gousto and that we don’t necessarily have to do this. Gousto has made me much more confident with my cooking and I should extend that to other days too – when we can afford to. We’ll definitely be introducing the Creamy Sausage & Pea Farfalle and Courgette & Goats’ Cheese Linguine into our regular fail safe meals because they used minimum ingredients and were super easy to make.
We’ll definitely still be sticking to Gousto (although there was no doubt about that when taking this challenge!), but I feel even more secure that the price is worth it now. The proof is above! It’s definitely more expensive to re-create the meals yourself..unless, of course, you choose to stick to less varied meals. Cooking with Gousto is something we enjoy doing together however – we enjoy trying and cooking new things. It also makes the entire process easier – and better for the environment.
Finally, I’d like to add that I am not partnered with the brand in any way – I just like sharing things like this! That being said, if you’d like to try this fab recipe subscription box, you can get 60% off your first box and 30% off all boxes in your first month by using my affiliate/for friends code (or rather my boyfriend’s affiliate code, but we share an account obviously!): SHAUN36038679.
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