Mindful Cooking Made Simple

June 19, 2016 By: Cliona 0 Comments

I have always had pride in the healthy, easy, and tasty food I cook on a day to day basis, however in an age of waste and processed food it can often be difficult to make sure we’re cooking to best food possible for ourselves, and keeping an eye on the environment whilst doing so.

That’s where companies such as Mindful Chef come in, showing us that a few simple changes can reduce our impact on the environment, and drastically simplify our time in the kitchen! Mindful Chef is a recipe box company, who create delicious, healthy meals and send you the ingredients you need to cook them.

The fantastic thing about this is that because you are being sent only the ingredients that you absolutely must have for the specific dish you’re creating, you have absolutely no waste at the end of it all! So, when Mindful Chef got in touch with me recently asking me to try out the service, I was delighted to do so. As far as I’m concerned, being able to try out some new and interesting recipes, reduce any negative impact I may be having on the world around me, and enjoy some delicious food, are all massive wins in my book!

Every week Mindful Chef give you an option of 8 recipes, one poultry, one pork, one red meat (lamb or beef), one fish, and four vegan recipes, and you can pick between two and five of them to try. The prices for these are:

– one person (£8 per portion)
– two person (£7 per portion)
– four person box (£6 per portion)

I was sent three recipes to try, including:

– Butterflied chargrilled jerk chicken with sweetcorn & buckwheat
– Pork chilli with paprika sweet potato wedges & avocado
– Fajita bowl with spicy quinoa, beans and sliced avocado

And when they arrived, the first thing I realised is that they take both parts of their name very seriously, both the ‘Mindful’ part as well as the ‘Chef’ part. The meals arrive in a chilled box, but instead of endless amounts of packaging they keep the package cool using sheep’s wool, and the ingredients are individually packaged in recycled paper bags. They also use ‘wonky veg’ which is great to see!

Throughout the week I made all three meals, and I was seriously impressed. Not only is the end product delicious, but the recipes themselves are incredibly easy to follow, and as expected there was no waste afterwards. My favourite of the three meals was definitely the butterflied chicken, but all three were delicious and so healthy.

Because you’re making the meals yourself, it’s also very very easy to adapt the recipes to whatever healthy eating plan you might be on. For example, for me I simply used Fry Light instead of oil, because all of the other ingredients were entirely syn free!

Having tried out this service, I can wholeheartedly recommend it, particularly if you’re trying to lead a healthy lifestyle. Since trying it out, I’ve spoken to a few friends about recipe box deliveries and the most common reaction I get is that they think it’s a wonderful idea but they’re concerned about the cost. I’ve given this some thought, and realised that whilst it may initially seem like an expensive option, when you consider the waste implications the cost are more than levelled out. Normally when I cook, I’m aware that I do waste food, whether it be the end of a slightly sad looking bag of herbs, or some potatoes which have sprouted a few too many extra bits, and the costs inevitably add up. With no waste, there’s no money going in the bin, and that can’t be a bad thing!