The concept
Foodybag offers to deliver the ingredients and recipes for five meals to your door every other Sunday evening, setting you up for the week ahead.
They email you the recipes a few days in advance, and let you know about any storecupboard items you’ll need to have in, like stock cubes or dried spices.
No stressing about what’s for dinner, no dashing to the shops – it’s all done for you.
The company
They only operate in London, and offer a similar service to Hello Fresh who I tried out back in February, but Foodybag currently aim themselves at families rather than couples and see themselves as a smaller set-up.
The food
When I unpacked my big brown bag of goodies, it all appeared to come from Sainsbury’s. A solid choice in my book – decent quality but also allows Foodybag to keep their costs lower than if they’d sourced it from independent retailers or Waitrose.
The only snag was that the sell-by dates were fast approaching. I stupidly didn’t check them close enough and we had to bin the minced lamb as it was five days out of date by the time we got to it. Not good.
The recipes
Well balanced for a meat-eating family – chicken, beef, fish, lamb and one vegetarian offering. I’d have only included one red meat recipe and substituted for another vegetarian meal.
A few of the recipes demanded a food processor – I only have a mini-chopper so this was a little frustrating.
The presentation is a bit shoddy. The website looks dated and doesn’t have enough information on. The recipes were not written that well with unappetising photography. It just all needs a bit of TLC to sharpen it up a bit.
How it turned out
Here are the four out of five meals I managed to make:
Spinach risotto with haddock: packed with flavour, the boys loved this and it was a fab one pot meal that’s easy to eat and a great way of getting fish into your kids’ diet. I blogged about this recipe last week so if you fancy making it check it out >>>
Aubergine rolls: Matthew is very suspicious of aubergines but LOVED this dish of rolled up thin slices of salted and fried aubergine with a smooth chickpea paste filling served up in a soft tortilla with salad. The boys didn’t feel the same way so I hastily whipped up some fishfingers to go in their salad wraps! There was quite a lot of preparation involved with this recipe for a weeknight meal.
Sesame chicken with coconut rice: This was delicious and the boys loved it – especially the rice. I had to bung a quorn fillet into the oven for Matthew, but other than that it was a genuinely good family meal that was super easy and quick to make. The stand out dish of the week by far.
Beef noodle stir fry: We love a stir fry in this house but the beef was a tad on the chewy side so got totally rejected by the boys – as did the slippery pak choi. They loved the noodles and cashew nuts though – a messy meal but not bad.
The cost
£55 for your first order, and £75 after that. If you cost up the ingredients that’s quite a big profit, so you really are paying a premium for the convenience. If you think about it, you’re still paying for your weekly shop of breakfast and lunch items, along with household stuff like washing powder and loo roll.
Our verdict
It’s a lot of money to spend on five family meals so I think this is strictly for people with more cash than time. Typically a working couple who are too tired and busy to meal plan their weeknight suppers.
I’m on a tight budget so would never be able to afford this, however saying that, I can see how it could be a nice treat if you’d just had a baby or come back from holiday. You could even gift it to someone.
The recipes were genuinely delicious and a bit different from what i’d cook normally. There was only one vegetarian recipe, so it would have been better to have had less meat for our particular family set up. Not all the recipes appealed to my kids, but it was refreshing getting them to try new things.
As with Hello Fresh I find the lack of input into my week’s meals disconcerting so couldn’t do it regularly, but I know plenty of people who would rather have it done for them.
Thanks to Foodybag who supplied us with the ingredients for five meals to try for the purpose of this review.
