SimplyCook.com

I recently discovered a fantastic company called SimplyCook.com. They describe themselves as "a group of people dedicated to helping others cook great food easily at home" - and based on my experience - that's exactly what they are!


SimplyCook.com was set up by Oli Ashness. While living and working in London, he was determined to eat a high quality, healthy meal in the evenings, but he realised how time consuming and expensive it was to try new recipes and put good food on the table.

A few months later he started work on solving this problem. The result was the launch of SimplyCook.com.

Head chef Anisa sent me a Discovery Box - four individually packaged sets of spices, accompanied by their own recipe cards. The box fit through my letter box and the ingredients are non-perishable, which was great because I was out at work when it arrived. It was clear what I needed to buy to complete the recipe (very little in fact!), and the steps were simple and easy to follow.

The result? Delicious, inspirational dishes that I absolutely loved! We took a round the world trip on our dinner plates in just four meals, and the flavours were sensational.

If you'd like to try out these amazing recipe boxes, you can enjoy one box (of four delectable dishes) for just £3 by following this link and using the code: LIZZIE3

And below, an interview with Anisa herself!

L xx

What is your ethos, in three words?

Simple, Inspirational, Culinary discovery

What are the key benefits of your recipe boxes, over other brands?

Our produce slots in to people’s lives easily. You don’t need to change your shopping habits to start using SimplyCook. Our boxes fit through your letterbox, and they’re non-perishable, meaning you don’t have to be in to receive them and you can keep a couple of them stored in your cupboard so you have a choice of what you would like to cook, when you would like to cook it. It’s very flexible.

We cater for Gluten-free customers as well as those looking for lighter meals under 600 calories.

We’re also one of the cheapest recipe kit subscriptions on the market too.

What food trends do you love and hate?

We love trends that help us put simple twists with exciting results on dishes we already know and love, like the trend of cuisine “mash-ups”. For example one of our dishes is a Soy and Honey Salmon with Miso Glazed potatoes – our Japanese style salmon with new potatoes.

We don’t like trends that require lots of tricky preparation and which are all about fad-type concepts and not about producing dishes with exceptional flavour. Flavour is king!

What are your plans for the future?

We have so much planned for the future. Where to begin? A couple of things we’re working on is really understanding our customer better and finding out what they want to cook so we can build a range of dishes that they will absolutely love. Our app is almost ready, providing our customers with a virtual kitchen cupboard so they can see which dishes they already have at home so they can buy their ingredients on the move. This is the beginning of a plethora of things we can do to perfect our customer experience!

How do you make your spice pots/garnishes?

We come up with concepts for dishes and then design the flavour pots to help our customers achieve amazing results by transforming regular groceries into fantastic meals with the help of our ingredients.

We want to provide the utmost value so we always try to source the wonderful and authentic ingredients that customers might find difficult to source or tricky to prepare, like Tamarind pulp for example and prepare them in ways that are easy to use when preparing their dinners from scratch. We are essentially the sous-chef and our customers are the creative head chefs!

How do you source your ingredients?

Our base ingredients are sourced from all around the world and we put it all together here in the UK. We get desiccated coconut from the Philippines, Kaffir Lime Leaf from Thailand, Shichimi Togarashi from Japan and Caraway Seeds from Finland.

What is your favourite dish, and why?

My personal favourite SimplyCook dish is one of the simplest – the Balinese Chicken, nothing beats a big bowl of curry over steamed rice for me! Comfort food at its best.

What is important to you, food-wise?

The most important thing is that it’s tasty and enjoyable and that it’s shared with those who also love food! While health is important to me, I feel that everything can be enjoyed in moderation.

And finally, what is the one food you couldn’t live without?

Rice. And Hob nobs. This is a hard question!


Disclaimer: I was sent this product for free, for me to use and write a review based on my experience. I was not paid to write this review, and the words and opinions are entirely mine.