I’ve been remiss at reviewing any of my Simply Cook ‘meal kit’ spice boxes, but then I also got so many freebie boxes for referrals that I’m still fighting them for cupboard space 😉 And I can but do better starting now.

So… unlike other meal kits (say, Hello Fresh or Gousto) with this one you have to buy your own ingredients other than the sauce/flavouring. That’s a pro or con depending on individual: for me it’s great, as I’m such a picky eater. So with this one I didn’t have to be all ‘urgh, chicken thigh – too fatty!’, or dump a bag of icky mushrooms. I did need to provide the chicken (breast), crème fraiche, honey, onion, cornflour, and whatever veg I wanted to go with it.

Cooking was simple enough: dice and fry the chicken, then the onion, adding the provided pots of white wine reduction and stock (with added water). As I keep finding with these, there is just far too much sauce – the photo above is half the kit make, it was swimming! And I did lower the quantity of water added, but obviously not by enough.

Taste-wise, this was nice enough, perhaps a little strong on the mustard and ‘umami-ness’ of it all. But, very edible. I think it would have been better splitting the sauce between three, as it did feel a bit much by the midway point of eating.

I didn’t end up using the third pot provided in the kit, as it was a herb blend to put through mashed potatoes. I think that might have gone well, balancing the richness of the mustard sauce a little, perhaps? I’ll keep the pot to one side and try it at some point in the future.

I popped the second half in the fridge and reheated it the next day, which worked okay. I served it with rice, which I think worked better in terms of mopping up the sauce (maybe the mashed potato would have worked, of course).

Would I get it again? Nah, probably wouldn’t bother. So I’ll rate it as 6/10 – not bad, not great.

Now just to figure out what to do with most of a tub of crème fraiche…!

You can see the full ingredients, etc for this recipe on the Simply Cook website.