SimplyCook

What's in the box: Four recipe kits, each with a trio of chef-developed flavour pots and a step-by-step recipe card listing the fresh ingredients to add.

SimplyCook works differently from most UK recipe boxes. Instead of shipping fresh meat and vegetables, it posts a slim, letterbox-sized box of flavour kits and recipe cards. Each kit holds a trio of small pots, such as a spice blend, a paste and a finishing seasoning. The card tells you which fresh ingredients to buy, usually four to six common items. Most recipes are designed to be ready in about 20 minutes. Nothing in the box is perishable, so you do not need to be home for delivery, and there is less packaging and less risk of wasted food than with a chilled meal kit. The trade-off is that you still have to plan and shop, so it saves less time than a full meal kit. The range leans on global cuisines such as curries, stir fries, Mexican and Middle Eastern dishes. That suits people who want to cook more adventurously without filling a cupboard with spices they rarely use. How many people a dish feeds depends on how much fresh food you add, so the kits can stretch to a small family. Nestlé has owned SimplyCook since 2021, and the founding team still runs it. You can change, pause or cancel a subscription online. It is a useful, low-commitment way to get out of a cooking rut, but it does not replace the weekly food shop.