Riverford Organic recipe box

In our abode, I’m Head Chef. The unwritten ‘deal’ between my husband and I, is that I do all the cooking midweek. I’m not the best cook, but I do enjoy cooking and feel a sense of satisfaction when I can put a tasty dinner on the table, not literally of course. When I do my food shopping I try and plan out several meals and buy food based on this. Generally this works but sometimes, especially towards the end of the month I suddenly get very bored of all the organising and cooking and go on strike. I cease, I stop cooking and decide that I don’t want to do it anymore, which usually means that if my husband doesn’t want to cook, we end up being bad and getting takeaways. Instead of this, sometimes you just need a little bit of inspiration and help when it comes to meal times, and that’s were something brilliant like a Riverford box comes in.

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So what or who is Riverford exactly? The Riverford box scheme founder Guy Watson, was born and raised on the family farm at Riverford, in South Devon. Guy’s father took the tenancy of Riverford in the 1950s and in the 1980s, Guy decided to convert to farming organically. He started out delivering by wheelbarrow to 30 friends locally, now 28 years later, Riverford delivers around 47,000 boxes every week to homes around the UK with veg grown at four regional farms, supplemented by a number of independent organic farmers and growers. I was lucky enough to be able to choose a Riverford Recipe box a few weeks back to try out. There are four different options to select from, either vegetarian or meat based and you can either have two or three meal boxes. There are different recipes posted each week so you can choose from either the current week, or two weeks ahead. I chose a box with three meat based meals, a Venison Shepherds pie, a Chicken and Minestrone soup and a Butternut squash and Coconut Madras.

The box was delivered by a very cheerful driver who told me about the contents and gave me a brief talk through the booklets that came with it, very helpful I thought. The box itself was a bit like getting a big present, as it was divided in to sections with all the relevant ingredients measured out for you into little pots. All the vegetables were a bit dirty (a good sign I like to think) and my box was so fresh it even came with it’s own caterpillar! There were three recipe cards complete with ingredients and instructions. I cooked the meals throughout the course of a week, so a Tuesday, Wednesday and then Saturday night.

I cooked the Venison cottage pie first, having never tried Venison before I was looking forward to trying this. All the ingredients like the meat for example, were great quality, as you would expect with organic food. The recipe card was really simple to follow and all the relevant ingredients, including a little bottle with some red wine in it, made following the instructions very easy and straightforward. I’m a bit of a faffer when it comes to following recipes and I tend to spend ages measuring things out or rooting around in cupboards for things, so it was nice to just have everything there, ready for me to use. Once cooked, the pie was really tasty, especially with a glass of red. The side was cooked cabbage which was nice but I felt it needed something else, maybe some lardons but still, no complaints. The dish was lovely and there was plenty for two, including a big left over portion which I froze for another day.

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Next came the Chicken Minestrone soup. I cooked this on a miserable, wet day for lunch and had it with some crusty bread and oh, it was so satisfying and tasty. Again, the recipe card was really easy to follow and there was plenty for two people with a decent amount left over. I’ve never made Minestrone soup before so it was nice to try a new recipe, it’s one I’ll make again.

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Finally, it was the Squash and Coconut Madras. The recipe just called for butternut squash, chickpeas, cauliflower and cabbage as the main ingredients but I mixed this up a bit. One cabbage was to be used in all three recipes, but by the time I cooked this one, I was a bit ‘cabbaged’ out, so decided not to use it (I used most of it in the soup anyway) I also decided to add in some chicken that I needed to cook, and served it with white rice (it’s the devils work I know, but it was needed!) These little tweaks aside, it was such a tasty curry dish, I loved the addition of desiccant coconut which was for the cabbage but I sprinkled over the whole dish. I will definitely make this again, it would be a really good curry to make with left over Christmas Turkey. The recipe card wasn’t as easy to follow as the other two, I think an instruction had been missed out or something was in the wrong order, it didn’t quite make sense but regardless it was still manageable.

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So what did I think of the Riverford recipe box? I thought it was brilliant. Now I’m a mum whose day is full of soft play and trying to stop my kid from eating crayons, it was nice to know that for three nights out of my week I didn’t have to think about what to cook for dinner. Everything was lovely and fresh and the chicken and venison were really good quality, you could just tell. I loved that all the ingredients were pre-measured, again something I didn’t need to think about and I found all the recipe cards easy to follow, bar the last one but it was still comprehendible. All the meals were really tasty and there was always enough left over for the next day. Will I be signing up or using Riverford again? I think I will.

 

Thank you to Riverford who sent me a box for the purpose of this review. All words and opinions are my own.

4 thoughts on “Riverford Organic recipe box

  1. Do they deliver to Dubai lol! Seriously though theae recipe ideas are fab and like you I plan my weeks recipes which can get a bit boring after a while!

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