NEW: Get a British Airways First Class meal kit delivered to your door – we try it out

British Airways is jumping onto the premium meal kit trend and offering you the opportunity to order its First Class meals to assemble at home.

From today, you will be able to order your own BA First recipe box from Feast Box. Each meal kit consists of four courses for two and costs between £80 and £100.

Even better, every box comes with a unique voucher to save 10% off your next British Airways flight if you book before 21st May. A minimum spend of £200 is required.

You can order here.

Whilst this was not explained to us by BA, it appears that ordering signs you up to the Feast Box subscription meal service. You would need to cancel this to avoid receiving further, non BA, meal boxes automatically.

If you are in the first 500 people to order, you will also get a full size bottle of Hattingley Valley English sparkling wine thrown in for free. This is made exclusively for British Airways to serve in First. (EDIT 10pm: This limit now appears to have been reached, so if you order now you are unlikely to get the wine.)

What’s on the menu?

The meals have been developed by British Airways and DO&CO and you can choose between veggie, pescy or carnivorous options. Here is the sort of thing you can expect to receive:

Loch Fyne smoked salmon timbale with honey mustard dressing

Slow cooked British beef cheeks with Jalapeno potato gratin, tenderstem broccoli and chimichurri

Cheese selection of Caws Golden cenarth, Snowdonia Black Bomber Cheddar, Harrogate blue and Kidderton ash goats cheese with chutney

Dark chocolate & orange liqueur bread & butter pudding with vanilla sauce

The meal kits will be assembled in DO&CO’s massive new kitchens at Heathrow, which have presumably been fairly quiet for the past year. DO&CO will prepare the boxes freshly each day to order.

BA offered to send us a sample box. With Sinead at home with her new born baby, we thought she would appreciate a treat.

The sharp-eyed will notice that Sinead is using First Class BA crockery. This is NOT included with the meal kit, but was sent with our press sample to give the pictures a more First Class feel.

Over to Sinead:

Sinead’s taste test

With dinners in our house consisting of ready meals, takeaways and a lot of toast over the last few weeks, I was more than a little excited to sample a luxury four-course meal.

As the First Class meal box has been developed with Feast Box, BA has been able to benefit from Feast Box’s established processes, such as timely text updates about delivery and efficient packaging.

Inside the box felt much more familiar, with packaging and cartons very similar to those onboard a British Airways flight.

A menu card is provided that lists all ingredients provided in the box and is a guide to assembling the four courses. Unsurprisingly for a four course meal, there were a lot of ingredients. The box even goes as far as providing olive oil, and salt and pepper, meaning you could create this meal perfectly without a single thing in your cupboards.

I was impressed by the lengths that had been taken to make all packaging recyclable. The main box had an innovative design that meant it required no plastic tape. All cartons and interior packaging were made from recyclable card.

The menu

I opted for the vegetarian meal which was:

Wholegrain salad with asparagus, grilled aubergine and flamed peppers, hummus creme fraiche, followed by ….

Handmade angnolotti, morels, pan-fried asparagus, panna sauce, followed by ….

Golden cenarth, black bomber, harrogate blue, and kidderton ash cheeses, followed by ….

Dark chocolate and orange liqueur bread and butter pudding with vanilla sauce

Making a meal of it

Whilst the recipe wasn’t hugely technical, this is not one of the recipe boxes that simply require you to put everything in the oven for 30 minutes.

Although some elements like the dessert just required warming, there was quite a bit of preparation required, such as cooking the quinoa for the wholegrain salad, grilling aubergines, roasting peppers and so on.

The full cooking time required was stated as 55 minutes. This seemed about right, although we took considerably longer thanks to the demands of a new born baby interrupting our flow.

The recipe provided gave very clear instructions and includes details on presenting the dishes to the same standard as the First Class cabin. Everything was provided to recreate the First Class experience from mint leaf garnishes for the dessert to a mini bunch of grapes to have with the cheese.

Whilst the recipe was straightforward to follow, our one criticism would be that it was tricky to get the timing right. The guide suggests that you get both the starter and main ready then serve, but this would have resulted in some rather cold pasta. We decided against this and cooked the pasta after we ate the starter.

In conclusion

Timing challenges aside, it really was a delicious meal. The ingredients were excellent quality, and the recipe resulted in a very indulgent four-course experience.

As the boxes are prepared each day, the menu felt seasonally reflective and the vegetables were very fresh. I very much enjoyed all courses but the main was a bit of a showstopper – a rich creamy sauce over flavoursome filled pasta alongside asparagus and morels.

The Hattingley Valley English sparkling wine – included for free with the first 500 boxes ordered – was also lovely, and a particularly good companion to the salad starter.

At £80 to £100, the boxes is not cheap but the portions are very large (I’ll be eating leftover wholegrain salad for several lunches) and it really felt like the closest I’ve come to a luxury meal since restaurants closed.

You will also receive a voucher for 10% off your next British Airways flight if you book by 21st May. If you know you will use this, it makes the box even better value.

If you have a special occasion coming up whilst we are still in lockdown, it is well worth considering the BA First Class Feast Box as a way to celebrate in First Class style.

You can find out more on the Feast Box website here.

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