Blue Apron is a nationwide delivery service that ships you the recipes and all of the necessary ingredients for a meal. I have never been interested in this, personally, but lately I have seen some friends post beautiful food pics that they created via Blue Apron. Then, my father-in-law gave me a gift certificate to try them…so I did. Here’s the breakdown:
Price
2-person plan: $59.94 for three meals, shipped weekly. (I had a $30 gift certificate, so I only paid $29.94 for this box.)
Family plan: $69.92 for TWO meals, shipped weekly.
*You can view the meal plans for each week and even change it if you
do not approve. However, there is only one other option per week.
You also cannot have preferences, such as no lactose, or no meat.
For example, here are the two menu options for next week:
Option 1:
Option 2:
*You may also skip a week, or as many as you like, in case you do not
like the meal options for that week or you have no need for it that
week.
What’s in the box?
Once I opened the very heavy box, I then had to open an insulating bag. This kept everything cold, and seemed to work well. Inside this bag were individually-wrapped ingredients as well as three recipe cards.
*1st Problem: There were three paper bags, each one full of the “knick knacks” (smaller ingredients) for each recipe. I got two of these bags for the cod sandwich, and none for the spiced beef skewers. So, I am without the panko breadcrumbs, ras el hanout, raisins, and labneh cheese. I have no idea what ras el hanout even is, so I can’t make this recipe with what I have on hand either.
So, I email their customer service and they wrote back within a couple hours saying they cannot send me the missing ingredients. However, they will take off $20 on my next box order. (Not helpful since I won’t be ordering from them again.)
The First Meal
Since I had twice as many “knick knacks” as I needed for the cod sandwich and endive salad, and it sounded the most delicious, I went for this recipe first.
The recipe card had the ingredients on one side and the instructions on the other, all with plenty of pictures for visual guidance.
Here are all of the ingredients. Even the apple cider vinegar is measured and put into a bottle, ready to use. I was impressed with the packaging. Nothing was crushed or smooshed, and everything was very fresh. The only ingredients the recipe called for that were not provided were 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and salt and pepper.
The recipe card was easy to follow, the pictures helped ensure I did everything correctly. I had to chop a bulb of garlic, a shallot, endive, and capers. Other than that, I had to sear the cod and just mix ingredients together. So, the recipe was pretty simple.
The only complaint is I had to make garlic paste out of a whole bulb of garlic, which was a lot of work. (I would much prefer this to already be prepared.)
While the recipe card explains nothing about how to do this, or any other process, the Blue Apron website has a video on how to complete this task.
Each week, the site has videos and longer written explanations for how to complete that week’s recipes. Pretty cool!
Here’s one plate (there were two total) of the finished product:
The sandwich was delicious. The cod was perfectly flaky and the aioli was very flavorful, full of capers and shallots. The crunch of the baby kale was nice and the bread was perfectly soft.
The endive salad was inedible. Really. Both of us took one bite and threw out the rest. It was dressed with just vinegar, olive oil, some garlic paste and tons of shallot pieces. It was like eating raw onion…actually it was exactly that.
With all of the shallot in this meal, my breath was horrible all evening. Too much? Sorry, but it’s the truth. Was it worth it, though? No.
Overall
While I will not order from Blue Apron again, I believe it would be perfect for the person that hates figuring out what to cook and going to the grocery store. (I kind of love those things.)
The recipes are varied, so you would learn to cook a lot of unique dishes you may not have tried otherwise.
However, if you have many dietary restrictions, this would not be for you. I could not find anywhere to request just vegetarian dishes or gluten-free or lactose-free, etc.
I also think it is too expensive. If I paid full price, then each dish costs $10. If I paid this much, and still had to cook and clean, for that cod sandwich and endive salad, I would have been pretty mad.
If any of you have tried Blue Apron, let me know what you think in the comments.