Recipe boxes just keep getting more and more popular. The more I try, the more I can see why. You all know that I pretty much live to cook at home. It’s my thing, I love it, I get antsy if I haven’t been in the kitchen all day. However, planning what to cook can be a ballache – especially if you’ve recently started getting a weekly shop delivered again because you’re too lazy to carry bags back from Lewes Road Sainsbury’s a couple times a week (glares at self). What recipe boxes can do for you is keep the joy in cooking, but take away the life admin bit that involves actually doing stuff outside of the kitchen to make dinner happen.

This week, we’re taking a closer look at Abel & Cole‘s Veggie Box. At £33 for 3 meals, it’s on pretty much exactly the same wave length as other boxes I’ve tried price-wise – but how do those meals stack up against competition?

These flatbreads with “smashed chickpeas” (houmous, we all know it’s houmous, but I’ll forgive the trendy slip) and a really fresh, crunchy, zingy salad was by far my favourite from the box. It was so quick to come together, and it felt like loads of fun to make my own flatbreads and houmous from scratch in almost no time at all. I loved this flatbread dough and method particularly, and will absolutely be making them again – those who are familiar with my diehard novelty seeking will know that my repeating a cooking experience is a pretty big deal.

The gnocchi bake with ewe’s cheese and butternut squash was deliciously warming, but a little heavy for me. I think it’s a personal taste thing, I cannot get on board with gnocchi – my Mum wolfed this down. Again, really simple to pull together.

Cashew and cauliflower biryani was the last dish I made from the box and it didn’t disappoint. Requiring a stock to be made using loads of spices that I wouldn’t normally have in reminded me of another of the benefits of boxes like this: small measurements of expensive ingredients. There’s no way I would have bought full tubes, packets and boxes of the ingredients required to make this for dinner, but with a recipe box I was able to enjoy it without having gone through that hassle. Wins. All. Round.

I think the thing I enjoyed most about this recipe box was that two of these meals were totally vegan, which I wasn’t expecting at all – a lot of recipe boxes rely on eggs and cheeses for flavour, texture or bulk but Abel & Cole make vegetables front and centre. Big, big thumbs up from me on that front.

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Abel & Cole very kindly sent me this box free of charge for review purposes. I was allowed to slag them off if I wanted to, I just didn’t need to.