Long gone are the days where the TV dinner was the alternative to the home-cooked evening meal and - can we just say - thank heavens for that. There’s never been a better time to not cook at home. Restaurants are booming, lunchtime options are all-encompassing, takeouts are orderable by App and delivered with lightning efficiency. As if that wasn’t enough, over the last few years we’ve also seen the rise of the rise of the recipe box, which comes to your door with ingredients sorted by recipe, weighed and divided and ready to go, leaving you only to throw it all together - usually in less than half an hour. Convenience is one thing, yes, but the other, often less talked about advantage of these schemes is the efficiency of it all. Not only are you minimizing food waste (and saving some cash in the process), you’re also not having to find the space to store all the leftovers from the packets of sometimes obscure ingredients that some of these more experimental recipes call for. If you’re flat-sharing (or let’s face it, just live in a kitchen of ‘London’ sized proportions) these things combined make for a pretty attractive proposition. If you haven’t given them a go yet, here’s our roundup of some the best in London right now.

Mindful Chef

Mindful Chef was set up - and is run - by friends in 2015 and as the name suggests it’s all about good, clean eating. There’s an impressive menu each week and prices start from £4.50 per meal. None of the Mindful Chef meals contain gluten and they’re also free from white rice, pasta and bread, so if you’re looking for a convenient recipe box without refined sugars or carbs, this could be just the ticket. They’re also one of the only recipe box companies who offer a plant-based menu as well.

DELIVERY DAYS: Mondays between 9am and 5pm (and, within the M25 you can select to receive you delivery on Sundays between 3pm and 8pm)

Enter WELCOME for 25% off your first delivery.

Hello Fresh

Hello Fresh frequently top the searches for recipe boxes, so chances are this isn’t the first time you’ve heard of them. They offer a classic, veggie and family recipe box, with prices per serving starting from £3.75 for a family meal, £4.42 for a veggie offering and £4.33 for the classic menu. Jamie Oliver’s thrown his culinary hat into the Hello Fresh ring too, so you can now opt in to make one of your weekly meals a pukka one.

DELIVERY DAYS: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday or Thursday

Gousto

There’s a great range of recipes to choose between at Gousto (with meat, fish and veggie options all well catered for). You can choose between 2-4 recipes per weekly box, for 2 or 4 people, and prices for this start at£5.25 per serving. Vegetables are organically wherever possible, and they’re on first-name terms with their other suppliers (their egg supplier is less than 2 miles from their warehouses).

DELIVERY DAYS: Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Saturday (between 8am and 7pm)

Abel & Cole

Abel & Cole are no strangers to the box scheme system - they have, after all been delivering high-quality, organic produce for years now. It’s not a surprise that their recipe boxes are chock full of these ingredients, so in addition to their organic veg, expect to find high welfare meat and sustainable fish. Samples from their menu include such tasty dishes as Herby Ricotta Pouffle, Wild Venison Biryani and Baked Squashetti with olives and rocket. There are four styles of box: Veggie, Simple, Foodie and Light and prices start from £33 a month, based on two people enjoying three dishes a week.

DELIVERY: dependent on postcode

Enter ‘BOXFREE’ to get your 4th box free

Riverford Organic Farmers

Like Abel & Cole, Riverford have successfully added recipe boxes to their impressive offerings of veg, fruit and meats - a lot of which is still produced on the same Devon farm where it all began over 25 years ago. The recipe box differs from some other models in that you can’t select individual recipes: the recipes which are selected for that week aren’t able to be substituted. Whilst this might sound like a downside (and it may well be), there’s very much the feeling that you can order on a one-off basis here, so if nothing takes your fancy, or if you’re off on holiday or know you’ve got a houseful, you can simply miss a week. Sample recipes include Balinese beetroot spinach and chickpea curry, Leek, ham hock and potato gratin and butternut squash fritters. From £24.95 a week (2 meals, serving 2).

DELIVERY: dependent on postcode

Marleyspoon

The three words ‘weeknight cooking simplified’ is music to our collective ears, and evidently to those at Marleyspoon as well, given that it’s their tagline. We don’t know about you, but left to our own devices, there’s little chance we’d be serving up Dukkah marinated lamb or Kadai paneer chapatti wraps. These recipe boxes are seeming like a better and better idea the more we look into them…

Prices start from £34.80 for three dishes, each serving two people and you can easily change frequencies, quantities to fit your schedule.

DELIVERY: Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday. Within London there are two time slots: between 8am and 10am or 6pm and 10pm

Natural Blender

Moving away from dinner in a box, we arrive at some more delectable delights. Natural Blender send you all the things you need to make some really fantastic smoothies (enough to make 10 per box) so there’s really no excuse not to whip up a nutritious breakfast or snack in a jiffy. These are £24.50 a box, and it’s easy to pause or cancel at any time.

DELIVERY: Saturdays

The Spicery

If you’re making food which requires spices, the success or failure of that dish is going to rest on the correct combination of those ingredients. The Spicery, therefore, is a great idea. They send pre-measured combinations of all the essential herbs and spices needed to make various curries and other world cuisines along with the recipe itself, and for £2.95 a go, this is a great way to introduce yourself to new blends of flavours without having to find an entire new shelf in the kitchen to house your newly bought spice collection. If you’re really keen you can get a subscription for a weekly spice blend for three months for £19.99. This one’s worth bookmarking for those hard-to-buy-for types…

DELIVERY: flexible

Everdine

If all this is still sounding too much, Everdine will deliver ready-made, frozen meals to your door, ready to pop in the microwave or oven. Although you might wonder what the difference is between this and something you might find in the supermarket, these offerings pride themselves on being health-conscious ‘eating clean made simple’. Even if you’re a cook-every-night-from-scratch type, there are of course times when you just need something easy and as prices start from £7.50 a portion and as the chefs involved trained in Michelin starred restaurants, you’re assured something far, far removed from a TV dinner.

DELIVERY: Saturday

Whilst we don’t deliver food to your door, we can help you to free up valuable space in your kitchen. Boxman - London’s self storage company with a difference - will deliver our super, sturdy, durable boxes to your door, leave you to pack them up and come back to collect them when you’re ready. You can keep track of what you’re keeping in which box with our online tool, so you’ll be able to see in an instant where you’ve packed your food processor or centrifugal juicer and if you need them back, they’ll be back at your door in a jiffy. All this leaves you more time for cooking - or eating. And that’s no bad thing, eh?

Featured Image via mindfulchef.com