Our Tastesmiths review is based on real experience. We bought the kits ourselves because we genuinely look for great products to make brilliant meals at home for the family. No affiliate, no ads. Just genuine experience.
What is Tastesmiths?
Tastesmiths offer meal kits (largely curries). They’re not complete kits, insofar as you need to buy the fresh ingredients like meat, cream and tomatoes. But they contain the key “flavour” ingredients like freshly ground and mixed spices as well as things like fresh ginger, garlic and peppers.
They come in a handy sized pouch with a recipe card inside the packaging and that recipe card gives you a very easy to follow (yet still flexible) recipe.
It’s not just curries. They also do a chilli and also some marinade kits.
Tastesmiths Pricing
Meal kits are generally priced at £3.50 (some in the £2.75 to £3.00 range).
Marinades are around £3.
You can get a mixed bundle of 6 of your choice for £20, any 4 for £12 and other various mix and match options.
What did we buy?
We bought a mixture of 6 kits for £20 (which comes with free delivery) and we chose:
- Makhani
- Timitar Masala
- Rogan Josh
- Tikka
- Persian Khoresh
- Shish Kebab
Our Tastesmiths Review
Ok, so full disclosure here. We got off to a rocky start on our Tastesmiths journey. I initially ordered 6 kits back in February 2020 (long before lockdown) after seeing an ad on Instagram. But after 6 days with no dispatch confirmation I emailed them to find out the order hadn’t been processed yet as they’d had something of an unexpectedly high take up on their ad.
As I had bought them for a planned curry night, I cancelled the order.
But I really did like the look of them so made the call to order again.
Since the Covid-19 lockdown, Tastesmiths is very clear and transparent on its website about processing times.
From order to delivery was 5 days this time and while that’s slower than other food e-commerce led brands, it’s not too bad at all considering the increased demand since lockdown and the fact the kits are all hand prepared.
For me, the delivery is the only real weak link. But 5 days isn’t bad and just be aware of it before you buy (so you don’t go buying in chicken that goes off before your kits arrive).
But let’s talk about the whole package (as the food itself is much more important than the delivery, I think).
Here’s what I consider the good and could-be-better:
What We Like
- The food tastes amazing
- The recipes are clear and great
- Well packaged
- Decent value for money
- Recipes are flexible
- Quick Customer Service Response
Could Be Better
- Delivery and processing could be a tad quicker but it's a minor issue now that it is made clear on the website
We Love the Recipes
Half the battle when you’ve got 3 children, work full time and have literally no time, is actually coming up with new ideas for things to cook.
Tastesmiths helped us there massively. They devise the recipes and you just choose the ones you fancy. And the recipes are really easy to follow.
Tastesmiths and Slimming World/Weight Watchers
If you’re following Slimming World or Weight Watchers, then Tastesmiths probably works really well. The kits we got were either Weight Watches/Slimming World friendly to start or you could modify the recipe easily. The recipe cards give you the option of switching out cream for yoghurt. And sugar in recipes is generally always labelled optional (you could replace with sweetener too).
So these are actually great kits for those on slimming plans.
Meat/Veggie
All the recipes we tried could easily be adapted to be vegetarian. The recipe cards are clear that you can use any sort of meat or veg if you prefer.
We’ve cooked them with chicken and also veggie versions with sweet potato or mushroom.
All fab!
The Heat!
I love the fact that Tastesmiths includes this on the card:
So you can adapt things based on how spicy you fancy it!
Ingredients Were Good!
Garlic, chillis, ginger… all great and fresh when they arrived. The spice packs were freshly ground.
It was all good, no complaints at all.
Value for Money?
Ok, so of course if you did go out and buy the ingredients yourself and split them into the right portion sizes you could create a meal kit for less than £3.50.
But:
- You’d have to create several cos you can’t buy spices readily in such small quantities
- WHY WOULD YOU?!
The value add is in creating the spice packs, organising the spice packs, choosing and devising recipes and producing instructions for a remarkably adaptable and very tasty recipe.
Who’s got the time to do that for themselves? And even if you could achieve all that in one hour, is your time not worth more to you?
Tastesmiths are creating a business out of this and doing it very well.
Would we buy it again?
Yep, definitely.
