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Which are the best Christmas dinner chef kits - and are they worth the hassle?
You don’t want to cook from scratch and you don’t want to go to a fancy restaurant either, but there is a third way – the chef’s at-home Xmas food box. Harry Wallop dons his apron to see if this growing trend means you really do get the best of both worlds
Christmas can be stressful at the best of times, but the one thing that tips many people over the edge is having to cook the festive feast from scratch. If only you could get someone else to do all that parsnip peeling, sprout trimming, onion chopping, gravy straining and turkey stuffing, while being able to enjoy the finished meal in the comfort of your own home.
Well, in the last few years that has become an option thanks to the explosion of at-home meal boxes, which have become increasingly fancy. Many chefs and restaurants – in a bid to keep afloat during lockdowns – started selling dishes or meal kits that often needed little more than reheating and plating up.
This year, Tom Kerridge, the celebrity chef, is selling a £215 box, which feeds four people but only includes a beef Wellington with pigs in blanket and gravy, followed by a sticky toffee pudding, without any accompanying vegetables. Some on social media have grumbled about the lack of roast potatoes, considering the price tag.
But that is not the most expensive box on the market. Far from it. If money is no object, you can order four-course feasts from three-starred Michelin chefs; if you are on a budget you can choose something far more basic – but you will often have to do far more cooking. And some lack a certain festive sparkle.
So which are the best? I tried four different Christmas boxes to find out.
The Côte Turkey Christmas Feast
Price: £99.95 (£16.66 per person)
Serves: “up to six”
Cooking ease: 3 out of 5
Jingle Bell festiveness: 4 out of 5
Cote, the high street French restaurant chain, does not seem the obvious place to go for your festive feast. It specialises in steaks and French classics such as Salad Nicoise.
But this is a pretty traditional British Christmas dinner: turkey, with most of the trimmings, including red cabbage, pigs in blankets, a pork and sage stuffing and carrot and swede puree. Instead of roasties, you get delicious truffle gratin dauphinois potatoes. The portions are generous – especially the turkey itself. The packaging says the box feeds “up to six” but the turkey breast is 2.4kg, allowing 400g per person, a gargantuan amount.
There is a fair amount of cooking involved: you need to roll out stuffing balls, baste the turkey and (an option) create a bacon lattice. However, all the veg side dishes require no more than peeling off the cling film and placing in the oven. Do all the dishes work? No. The cranberry and thyme gravy was gloopy and oddly sour and the carrot and swede a touch anaemic.
There is no starter nor pudding – figgy or otherwise – but it is very good value, especially considering you end up with enough leftovers for turkey sarnies on Boxing Day.
Score: 3.5 out of 5
Christmas at Home by Simon Rogan
Price: £190 (£95 per person)
Serves: two (available for up to 12 people)
Cooking ease: 3 out of 5
Jingle Bell festiveness: 4 out of 5
Simon Rogan is almost single-handedly responsible for transforming Cumbria into the hottest culinary corner of Britain. Cumbria now has a total of 13 stars from the Michelin Guide, still considered the bible for fine dining. This means the county has a Michelin star for every 38,000 head of population, a density far exceeding Tokyo, a city with more stars than anywhere else in the world.
Rogan’s L’Enclumestarted all of this 20 years ago and his empire has steadily grown, with him expanding into home delivery during lockdown – initially just to his neighbourhood in the Lake District and now nationwide.
The price is eye-watering for a meal you have to cook and wash up yourself – though it has only increased by a tenner in the last three years. There are endless options to make this an even more premium meal. Fancy a ‘wine flight’ of accompanying wines? That will be £70 for three small 25cl bottles. A cheese selection with port is another £40.
However, for serious foodies who like to spend time at the stove without getting into a lather, this is very well designed and requires little skill – just a bit of patience and a steady hand. There’s a lot of delicate dotting of purees and placing of garnishes.
But however ludicrous the price, the quality is exceptional – you can tell a top-notch restaurant has prepared this. And you get a lot of food, including two separate starter courses: cauliflower velouté followed by potted Cornish mackerel. The main is poached stuffed turkey with confit chicken leg, pigs in blanket with a side dish of creamed fermented cabbage. Crucially, there is a full-on, rather spectacular figgy pudding followed by delicious mince pie chocolate truffles.
Score: 5 out of 5 (as long as someone else is paying)
Gousto Crispy Chicken & Cranberry Bao Buns With Sprout Slaw
Price: £6.50 per person (based on ordering a box with two separate meals x2)
Serves: two
Cooking ease: 2 out of 5
Jingle Bell festiveness: 2 out of 5
Gousto is one of the longest-established and biggest meal kit services in the UK. Set up in 2012 and backed by Joe Wicks, the fitness influencer, it had a turnover of £306m last year, though it has been recently hit by consumers cutting back.
The prices work out cheaper if you order a large number of meals in each box. If you ordered four meals, instead of two, these bao buns, for instance, fall from £6.50 per person to £4.50.
Are bao buns very Christmassy? Not really. But the slaw made from Brussels sprouts and cranberries is a nod towards yuletide fare and many of the supermarkets are selling bao buns as part of their Christmas party food ranges. Nearer Christmas, Gousto is offering one-hour Christmas dinner with all the trimmings, which works out at £6.74 per serving (based on a 4 recipe box for 4 people), plus delivery.
Gousto made its name thanks to its idiot-proof step-by-step cooking instructions, with pictures to help you along the way. But the crispy chicken requires you to have a certain amount of skill and confidence – bashing out the fillets with a rolling pin, and then dredging them in the classic milk, flour and breadcrumb mix before shallow frying them.
The result, however, is delicious, especially the zingy sprout and cranberry slaw that transforms something fairly basic into an upmarket Christmas sarnie. My kids were impressed.
Score: 4 out of 5
Dishpatch – luxurious lobster thermidor by Rick Stein
dishpatch.co.uk/feasts/luxurious-lobster-thermidor
Price: £136 plus £5 delivery (£70.50 per person)
Serves: two
Cooking ease: 4 out of 5
Jingle Bell festiveness: 2 out of 5
Dishpatch was one of the many restaurant delivery boxes started in lockdown, but it has continued to flourish thanks not just to its clever name, but also the large selection of upmarket restaurants and chefs it has recruited to its platform such as Michel Roux Jr, El Pastor, José Pizarro and Andi Oliver as well as the fact that most of the meals require very little preparation, just a bit of herb chopping and meat grilling. They deliver on Friday and Saturdays, though over the festive period the dates are Friday, December 22 and Saturday, December 30. The prices aren’t cheap, but the quality tends to be high.
This Rick Stein lobster thermidor meal is maybe more suited to New Year’s Eve than Christmas lunch or for pescetarians, but it certainly looks a premium spread – and so it should be at £70 a head.
You get three courses: scallops with hazelnut butter served in their shells, which were stunning; lobster thermidor with baby gem salad and new potatoes; and a rich chocolate pave with clotted cream.
The Stein team really has done all the work for you, the lobster is cooked, cleaned and sliced in half. All you do is season, plonk under a grill and spoon over some sauce and sprinkle some pre-grated parmesan. Even the new potatoes arrive cooked.
The end result? For a decadent festive, celebratory meal this ticks all the boxes, even if it is not particularly Christmassy. The portions are generous too – you get an entire decent-sized lobster each.
Score: 4 out of 5
Other Christmas meal boxes worth checking out
Abel & Cole Turkey Christmas recipe box, £205 (serves 6-8)
Includes an organic Kelly bronze turkey, stuffing, Yorkshire puds, all the veg plus a magnum of prosecco. You need to do all the cooking.
Made in Oldstead Christmas Day duck menu, £300 (serves 4)
Includes starters, chocolate puddings, duck crown all the trimmings, plus accompanying wines – pulled together by Tommy Banks, the award-winning chef
Cook! Christmas lunch, £119.35 (serves 8)
Includes a stuffed turkey crown, separate stuffing, pigs in blankets, gravy, roast potatoes, all the veg – from the frozen food specialist. Just defrost and bung in the oven.
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