Valentine’s meal kits to have delivered for date night – from Gousto to Cook

For the first time ever, Gousto has introduced lobster to its recipe boxes, in the form of the brand’s ‘you’re my lobster’ Valentine’s dinner. This New York-inspired meal includes lobster tails cooked in garlic and chilli butter served over linguine alfredo with garlic ciabatta and a green salad.

The meal is part of Gousto’s ‘Valentine’s Day in NYC’ range, which also includes a flat-iron steak with stuffed baked potato, a spicy smashed wagyu burger, cheesy pink heart pasta, and a pork meatball marinara sub.

Preparation

I received the recipe box with everything I needed to make the lobster meal, with the exception of salt, pepper and butter. Gousto meal kits provide the ingredients in exact amounts, so no food goes to waste.

I was both excited and intimidated by the prospect of cooking lobster for the first time. The main challenge was cutting the shellfish in half – my kitchen scissors were broken, so I had to use a kitchen knife. Once I managed this, however, the rest of the process was straightforward.

The kit comes complete with step-by-step instructions, which mostly involved chopping garlic, shallots and parsley; baking the lobster, cherry tomatoes and ciabatta in the oven; making a pasta sauce and, of course, boiling the pasta. Nothing too complicated.

When cooking a Gousto recipe, I find it best to read through the instructions first, so you have a general idea of what you’ll need to do throughout the whole process. I also prefer to get all the food prepped ahead of time. The instructions were mostly clear but, depending on how you usually cook, the order that they suggest you complete the steps in might not feel intuitive to you.

Gousto estimates that this recipe will take between 40 and 60 minutes, and the whole process did in fact take me an hour, which felt reasonable for a meal like this. By following the instructions, I was able to get all the food ready at around the same time, so nothing was cold by the time I served it.

Taste

Of course, everyone has different tastes when it comes to food but I enjoyed this meal a lot. The lobster was really tasty, if very messy to eat. The alfredo sauce was flavourful, though, as always, with these meal kits, I would personally double the amount of garlic.

The instructions recommend that you go easy on the chilli if you’re sensitive to spice, and I would agree with this. It can be tempting with these meal kits to do exactly as you’re told, but you don’t want to end up sweating through your romantic dinner because you can’t handle the heat.

Value for money

Lobster is famously expensive, so it’s likely no surprise that this Valentine’s meal is priced from around £20.78 per portion. In my opinion, this is fairly good value for money. However, it’s not possible to order a Gousto box with just one recipe, so what you’ll actually pay depends on what else you order.

A Gousto box for two people will cost you between £14 and £23.25 per portion using the discount code below. But this doesn’t include the surcharges that are added to certain meals, and this Valentine’s lobster meal carries a hefty £12.99 surcharge per person. That means that the cheapest you’ll be able to get a Gousto box for is £39.98 – this is including the Valentine’s lobster alfredo and one other meal of your choice.

Cook’s Valentine’s range includes everything from cheese fondant soufflés and roasted vegetable tarte tatins to beef wellington and more. You can buy items individually or as part of a meal deal such as the luxury Valentine’s dinner for two (£52.50, Cookfood.net). The ready meal brand’s dishes are available to buy at select stores or on the Cook website.

For this review, I tested Cook’s salmon wellington meal with creamed spinach and dauphinoise potatoes as the sides, as well as individual mango cheesecakes for dessert.

Preparation

As you would expect, this meal was a very simple to cook. I popped the wellington, creamed spinach and potatoes in the oven for the allotted time, then they were ready to go. By following the included instructions, all the food was ready at the same time. Meanwhile, the mango cheesecakes only needed defrosting.

Taste

I was excited to try these dishes, as it felt like the kind of Valentine’s meal I would choose to have at a restaurant. However, the wellington itself was slightly underwhelming, as parts of the salmon were quite dry. I regretted that I didn’t have a sauce to go with it. I only noticed afterwards that Cook recommends adding a crème fraiche dressing, which would have been perfect.

I enjoyed the sides more – the creamed spinach was very good, and even though it was my first time trying dauphinoise potatoes, I’m now a firm fan. The real star of the show, however, was the cheesecake – it had the perfect biscuit-to-cream ratio and the mango flavour was delicious.

Overall, I wouldn’t say this meal was restaurant-quality, but it was certainly better than your average ready meal – though it was also more expensive.

Value for money

The salmon wellington itself was priced at £20, with the creamed spinach and dauphinoise potatoes costing £3.75 and £4.50, respectively. The cheesecakes were £4.25 each, putting the whole meal at £36.75 for two people.

At £18.38 per head, this is definitely a pricier at-home meal. However, the portion sizes were quite large and salmon isn’t the cheapest of ingredients, so it helps to justify the cost for a special occasion – especially if you don’t want to cook a meal from scratch.