Over the years I’ve used a few meal kits but they weren’t quite the right fit for our family on an ongoing basis. Putting a new spin on the meal kit phenomenon, Grossr is the new chef in the kitchen and they’ve brought a fantastic option to the table.
Meal kits are hugely popular and come in a range of complexities and price ranges. The convenience of not needing to figure out what to have for dinner each and every day (cos we all know how mundane that gets!), being able to try out different meals and having all of the ingredients delivered to your door is obviously a big drawcard. But they’re not always that affordable and there are some features that make them a little frustrating.
Now there’s a new option.
By seamlessly connecting recipes to online or in-store supermarket shopping, Grossr provides the same meal kit experience but with regular supermarket prices and brilliant flexibility. You still get all the recipe inspiration and convenience, but it’s more attuned to your budget, preferences, and provisions.
How Grossr works
1. Subscribe to a meal plan for $4.50 per week (or $16 per month) and get new recipes each week (there’s a FREE trial too!)
2. Choose recipes from your chosen meal plan (like the Kidspot family-friendly plan!) and/or from the 150+ recipe library
3. Recipes instantly turn into smart ingredient lists
4. Customise your shop by removing ingredients you already have and add your other supermarket shopping
5. Shop: Easily auto-shop your shopping list through New World, with click and collect or delivery. Or, create a shopping list on your phone instead, for easy in-store shopping.
Fantastic flexibility
After trialling Grossr for a month with a family of five, we are converts! I subscribed to the Kidspot meal plan and each week we were sent a menu of five dinners, plus one baking or dessert dish.
With just a few clicks, I could customise the menu to suit our needs. With a busy family, we don’t always have everyone home for dinner every night. You can reduce the number of servings for any meal or remove/swap meals. With a library of free recipes, you can easily find some replacement dishes. For instance, as I’m not a fan of mushrooms, I swapped a mushroom burger dish for an amazing sticky Korean fried chicken burger recipe which has become a family favourite.
When you’ve chosen your recipes, your ingredient list is a click away. In the past, I would make a meal plan and then have to trawl through each recipe to get the ingredients. With Grossr that’s all taken care of.
What I love about the Kidspot Kitchen recipes on Grossr is that the ingredients include a lot of what we already have in the pantry or fridge. So, although the shopping list may originally look quite long, you can scroll through and tick off anything that you already have, thus reducing the actual shopping list quite considerably. With a home veggie patch, I can also remove some homegrown ingredients – less food waste and a real money saver!
Also, when I’m cooking meals I LOVE shortcuts! For instance, I won’t peel, slice/grate garlic (ain’t nobody got time for that!). Instead, I use premade crushed garlic. With Grossr, I can just substitute crushed garlic in my shopping list and save myself some time and effort.
Simplified shopping
The Grossr shopping list also allows you to add in your other supermarket needs (for breakfasts, snacks, lunches, cleaning, etc), giving you one list for your week’s supplies. I shop at a few different supermarkets and the Grossr list is simple to use at all of them. If I’m shopping in-store, I just take the list with me on my phone and tick off as I go. But I can also make things even easier by auto-shopping at my local New World. The shopping list easily transfers to the New World online shopping and then it’s just a matter of choosing click and collect or delivery – how cool is that?
New family favourites
Here’s a selection of some of the recipes that we tried from the Kidspot Kitchen meal plan.
Easy teriyaki beef and vegetable stir fry
When it comes to proteins, I shy away from beef because I stuff up the cooking of it every time. But when I saw this one come up in my meal plan I figured, let’s give it a go. So it turns out I CAN cook beef after all. This was tasty, quick and well received by the family.
Thai vegetable curry
Another thing I don’t usually cook is Thai food. I can’t seem to get the spice right, but this recipe was super easy. I don’t like eggplant so I swapped it for carrots that were already in the fridge. It’s got a great amount of veg in it so even the meat lovers weren’t disappointed.
Mini lamb burgers
We only had big burger buns so we adapted the recipe to make standard-size burgers. The teens got in on this one, mixing and shaping the patties. I liked that I could make my own choice of buns (sourdough all the way) and added some wedges for the hungry mob.
Pesto chicken pasta
We were down two diners for this evening’s meal, which was easy to accommodate in the recipe by reducing the number of servings and chicken needed. Unfortunately, my supermarket was all out of pine nuts and fresh basil so I grabbed a pre-made pesto sauce – I won’t tell if you don’t!
Sticky Korean fried chicken burgers with slaw
I’ve always wanted to try a Koren recipe and this one from the Grossr recipe library did not disappoint! It took me out of my comfort zone, using freshly grated ginger in abundance (yum!) and the sticky sauce was so good that we’ve already had it again. The amazing thing about this dish was that I had so many of the ingredients already in the pantry or fridge.
The verdict
Trying Grossr has been quite enlightening as to how easy (and affordable!) meal planning can be. The family have enjoyed discovering new recipes so we can move away from having the same old thing week in and week out. The customisation is a huge plus for me and I believe that Grossr is a meal kit that everyone who’s looking for affordability and flexibility should try. With a free trial you’ve got nothing to lose!
The reviewer was provided with a free trial of Grossr for the purposes of the review. All views are those of the reviewer.
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Written by Julie Scanlon
Julie is Editor for Kidspot NZ and our MVP. Her hobbies include laughing uncontrollably at her own jokes, annoying her family by asking questions about movie plots, and never taking anything too seriously. She speaks a little Spanish and a lot of Yorkshire.
Favourite motto to live by: “It ain’t nothing but a thing”
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