Tis the season for festive get together’s with your favourite people! And I do love any opportunity to entertain guests in my home. From intimate dinners to big group knees-up, I just love having the chance to host.
As a Gousto Ambassador I was lucky enough to receive their super-special festive ‘Get Together’ food box. This box is much like their usual weekly recipe box, it’s filled with loads of fresh ingredients and accompanied with beautiful recipe cards to help you make the dishes.
What is the Gousto Christmas Box?
The Gousto festive Get Together box aims to take the hassle out of cooking when entertaining your friends and family this Christmas. All of the ingredients come in the box along with a recipe card for each dish. Furthermore inside this recipe booklet is a time-plan guide that helps you break down the food prep into two stages, taking some of the stress out of cooking.
The aim is to offer quality ingredients, seasonal recipes with unique twists and a fuss-free cooking experience.
It’s available only for this festive period so if you’re interested you need to get in there quick!
What is in the Gousto festive get together box?
The recipes for this festive get-together box are:
- Balsamic and Redcurrent Glazed Smoked Pork Loin
- Pork, Sage and Cranberry Sausage Rolls
- Brownie and Berry Possets with Honeycomb
- Scandi-style Potato and Dill Salad
- Chargrilled Herby Lemon Chicken Skewers
- Beetroot Hummus and Baby Vegetable Crudites
- Posh King Prawn co*cktail Cups
- Caramelised Mushroom and Cheddar Brioche Sliders
There were also a few extra treats in the box from the Gousto including a gingerbread mix from BKD, sea salt from Cornish Sea Salt, selection of tea from We Are Tea, and a jar of mustard from Tracklements.
Finally, there is a lovely thick booklet called ‘Your Get Together Guide’ which features all of the recipes you are going to cook, a suggested time-plan and order in which to prep the dishes, and there are a few bonus recipes in there as well. Plus, a little quiz at the back.
How did the Christmas party go?
I have to say, I really enjoyed cooking my Gousto Festive Get Together Box. Having the time plan, recipes and exact ingredients all to hand made the preparation process a breeze.
The night before my Get Together, I popped on a Christmas playlist on my Spotify, and set about pottering around the kitchen prepping the first stages of the recipes. This included cooking the pork loin, preparing and chilling the sausage roll, making the possets, starting on the potato salad and marinating the chicken.
For the most part it was pretty easy, my only challenge was rolling the sausage roll (you must keep your pastry chilled to the last minute, I was in a hot kitchen and it got sticky quickly) but that easily fixable.
I did find I was going back to the recipe book a lot to check what I was doing. I would recommend sitting down with a cuppa beforehand to read through all the recipes and get it clear in your mind what you are going to be doing.
I am confident cook, but as they were new recipes I found myself double-checking a lot. This meant my first stage of prep took nearer three hours, although I did stop for a dance break several times, who can resist a Christmas wiggle around the kitchen!
The time-plan section of the recipe booklet is fantastic. It’s clearly set out in a grid complete with accompanying images of the food. It clearly lays out what to do and when. I think this is invaluable resource.
The next day we awoke to a world of white… yep, it was snowing, big time! After several phone calls and constant weather checking, my guests had to cancel coming over. Obviously a little disappointing but more food for us! As I had already started prepping I decided to keep going. So with the snow floating down and creating a thick carpet of magical-ness in my garden, I chucked on the festive tunes again and carried on cooking my Gousto recipes.
For the second stage of cooking I made the hummus and crudités, finished the potato salad, decorate the possets, cooked the sausage rolls and chicken skewers, made up the king prawn cups and cooked the mushroom and cheese sliders.
I kind of lost track of time but I think it was around 2 hours for this final part of the food prep and cooking. The husband joined in too with the prep and it turned to be a rather lovely Sunday in the kitchen spending time together cooking.
We laid out all the food on the table and took a moment to marvel how pretty it all looked before tucking in.
Final thoughts on the festive food box?
Overall I was super-happy with the Gousto festive get together box. There was a good amount of food to feed up to 8 people. The ingredients looked fresh The box was nicely organised when it arrived. And the accompanying booklet was brilliant.
As with my previous Gousto recipe box, I really like how the recipe cards are laid out. They are so thoughtful. The large photograph of the dish on the front, the photographs of each ingredients and step in the method, the nutritional info, even the hole punched edges for you to keep together all your recipes in a folder. It’s incredibly useful.
Taste wise, I think my favourite recipe out of this box is probably the sausage rolls. I did also like the pork loin, and prawn co*cktail cups. The possets looked incredibly striking and a fab looking dessert for any table. Raj’s favourite was the mushroom and cheddar sliders, he’s been picking out those leftovers for the past few days! All of the recipes had a twist on something familiar and classic. It was quite a nice way to try something new and tasty.
I really did enjoy cooking my festive get-together box from Gousto. It’s a shame my guests were snowed in, but the experience was fun nevertheless. The food tasted delicious, it looks like great value for money, and I think you’d have a fun time with your friends and family with this food box.
Further information
The Gousto Get Together Box costs £74.99 and serves 8 people. There are 8 set recipes, 4 of which are vegetarian.
Order your Gousto Get Together box here.
SPECIAL OFFER! If you have yet to join Gousto as a customer, sign up here for your special discount to receive two Gousto boxes priced at just £14.99
Read my first Gousto recipe box review here.
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This post is in collaboration with Gousto. As always, words, thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you for supporting this blog.
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