Blue Apron Subscription Service – starting at $60 per week for 3 meals for two
We all know the saying “The quickest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”. This can also be a fairly speedy route to the female heart as well. Staying in and making your date dinner (or making it together) rates high on the romance scale. You get to show off your creativity and appreciation for nuance and details, even if it’s a simple dish. It’s no different from putting an outfit together. That’s what this series is all about. She or he will be left impressed, and you won’t need the skills of Wolfgang Puck.
So what is Blue Apron? It’s a subscription service that delivers three meals per week for anywhere from 2 to 6 people. These are not pre-made meals though. You get all the ingredients to make the meals, measured out exactly, in a refrigerated box. You do the prepping and cooking. A few other quick facts:
- Each meal is complete with 500-700 calories
- 35 minute average prep time (although I was clocking in closer to 45)
- Easy to follow recipe cards included
- Fresh ingredients
- Choice of omnivore or herbivore plans
- Flexible plans with no commitment, and you can opt out of any week
- Meals start at $9.99 per person per meal
Outside the box, inside the box. Food stays cool in transit + a few hours after.
We’re going to inject a bit of estrogen into the site for a moment. Time to talk food at the beauty parlor with a couple girlfriends. Quit cringing. So I was at the salon, getting my hair cut and colored with my friend Tara, when she asked me if I had heard of Blue Apron. Nope. She then explained the service and told me she could have three free meals sent to me if I wanted to try it out. Free food? Hook me up, girlfriend! (No, I can’t have Blue Apron send you free meals, but if you go check out their website, or like them on Facebook, Facebook will magically start feeding you offers for a few free meals in your news feed.)
Signing up was quick and easy, and within a week the first shipment from Blue Apron arrived at my front door.
The First Three Meals
Shrimp Summer Rolls – I love shrimp summer rolls. Filling in an oddly light way, cooling to my system (which is good for summer heat), and delicious. I don’t love making summer rolls though. Rice wrappers can be a bitch to work with, and if you don’t get your rolls rolled tight the filling tends to spill out after a couple bites. So I had that to contend with. But having all the ingredients pre-measured out made the process much more tolerable. Prep was fairly easy, which involved cooking rice noodles, pan cooking the shrimp, chopping up the roll filling, and then assembling (the hardest part). The entire process took me about 50 minutes, longer than I was hoping, but there was some delay in the assembly process just because I’m not good at it.
The one thing about this recipe that neither me or my husband liked was the peanut dipping sauce. It was way too heavy on the peanut butter, so it was really thick and the flavor was overpowering. Not to say it didn’t taste good, it just made too heavy a counterpart for the light summer rolls.
Lamb, Mint, & Pea Orecchiette – This recipe was the favorite for my husband, and I have no doubt he’ll make it again. It was simple and easy to prepare, but the inclusion of lamb made it a tad more complex in flavor. We tag teamed cooking this meal, and it took us about 35 minutes or so. Even if you were prepping it by yourself it would take 45 minutes max.
For me, it was missing something. The meal was very “meat and potatoes”, or in this case, meat and pasta. I like more vegetables incorporated in my dinners, but that’s just me and my dirty hippy ways. If you’re a lamb fan, you’d like this one.
Some of the Lamb, Mint, & Pea Orecchiette ingredients
Oven Baked Fried Chicken – This was my favorite. My mom used to coat pork chops in Shake N’ Bake (I can’t remember if I helped), and I loved that crunchy texture. The panko breading on the outside of this chicken was very similar. Also, incorporating garlic, lemon juice, and basil into the side veggies (corn & green beans) was incredibly delicious.
The itty bitty bottle of Tabasco that came with this meal was a bit laughable. It was enough to cover one and a half of the 6 pieces of chicken we baked up. Granted, we down a lot of hot sauce in our house, but that bottle might have been enough for one person that only likes a little heat. The bottle was novel though.
Was It Worth It?
There are some pro’s and con’s to this service. The food is good, and fairly fresh. A few of the herbs had seen better days by the time we used them, but herbs are hard to keep and store and we didn’t use them right away. The convenience of having just the right amount of food for the ingredients needed for each dish was really nice. There was barely any food waste. The full color recipe cards that accompany the meals are easy to follow, and great for learning cooking basics.
The meals are so simple though, they can lack a little dimension at times. But for the beginner, or a busy couple or family that just needs direction in healthy meal planning, this is a great service. $60 a week is pricey, but if you’re a couple that is used to dining out a lot, it’s very easy to blow $60 in one night on dinner and drinks. These meals average out to $20 per dinner, or $10 per person. And you can use the service as often or as little as you like.
Oven Baked Fried Chicken ingredients
Final Note: For it’s simplicity, I give the Blue Apron Subscription Service a thumbs up. It’s not worth the cost every week for my household, but 1 to 2 times a month is a welcome treat, and great exposure to new recipes and different ways of cooking.
(Most of the packaging (if not all, depending on where you live) is recyclable. That was a concern of mine. The only pain is emptying the gel packs that come frozen, they can be messy. But you can always re-freeze and reuse them, or donate them to a charitable meal service that can use them.)
Sarah is a self proclaimed foodie and regular contributor to theprettyguineapig.com. She doesn’t wear an apron in the kitchen, blue or otherwise, and therefor regularly mutters obscenities under her breath when splatters stain her clothes. For more MIFYD posts, click here.
This looks like it could be promising.
I’ve done this a few times, mostly good meals although I got a few duds. If you look around the web you can find a discounted first box for $39.99 instead of $59.99
Has anyone tried plated? How does it compare?
I looked a little bit, but does anyone see the nutritional information for the recipes somewhere? I’m always skeptical of things like this as they usually seem to have mysteriously high levels of sodium.
I like this idea a lot, but I’d like it better if you could sort of tweak the type of meals you get according to how well you know your way around a kitchen. I’d be pretty disappointed at paying the delivery price for something I might make regularly already
In other words I guess as a guy who enjoys cooking I’d want to be able to use a service like this as a way to have new recipes presented to me ready to sample
This is my problem with it as an experienced home and restaurant cook. If you know what you’re doing it’s basically an expensive grocery delivery service. But it’s great if you’re timid in the kitchen and want to try more recipes.
The way this works is they send you all the ingredients and you cook it yourself. It’s not “premade” anything so no high amounts of sodium. They do often tell you to season with salt + pepper so it has as much as you want
I have the same issue- I hate mushrooms but they don’t let you exclude any ingredients from recipes. Obviously I can get the ingredients and choose not to cook with mushrooms, but if the recipe is steak with mushroom sauce it doesn’t really make much sense to get it
Perhaps I’m overly skeptical but I’m still not sure I buy it…
Not sure why I feel the need to defend them so much, but when you normally cook do you use tons of salt? If not then why would you use tons of salt with their recipes? All they provide is the ingredients and a recipe, you cook it entirely on your own and can decide what you want to use or not
It always seems to me that so many things marketed as “fresh” and natural, etc. as long as it is packaged contains all sorts of crap (perhaps salt, or other things) to act as flavor enhancers and preservatives. If it really just is a bag of raw veggies that’s one thing, but they don’t seem to give that information too easily on the site.
They actually are just small plastic resealable bags of veggies. I’ve found the quality to be fantastic, although they go bad pretty quickly so you have to cook the meal within a week or so
I’ve been doing Blue Apron for the past 6 months, it has totally been worth it. Your review is spot on. My girlfriend and I had zero cooking skills before starting, and now we cook 3-5 times a week with ease. If anyone wants an invite for a free week, please send me a reply. I usually get them pretty frequently.
I’d definitely love to try out a free week! Seems like this could be pretty great for my girlfriend and me, as well.
I’ll send you one! What’s your email address? Or is there a way to direct message on here?
Can’t find any way to DM… Eh. Email is michael.klepacki@outlook.com. Thanks Jon!
I’d love that invite, if possible. rlh04d@gmail.com
I really like the idea of these … my wife and I both work long hours and in the past it’s always kept us from being very good about dinner. We’re both starting new jobs in a new city and this seems like it might be a good way to get back into cooking regularly.
I’m just trying to decide between BlueApron and Plated now. I like that Plated gives you the option between (it looks like) seven meals a week. BlueApron is more of just going with their set menu, right?
I’m trying it next week. The code getplated4x gives a free month’s membership and 4 free plates (less s&h, at $20 for me), so I’m going to test it out. 15fromplated gives $15 off (although I don’t think you can use them together).
I like that they have a seven item menu that you can pick and choose from. Blueapron is cheaper, though.
It really is just a bag of raw veggies. The only non raw ingredients they send you are things like a tiny pad of butter or a miniature bottle of tobasco. It’s just a grocery and recipe delivery service.
You can specify preferences(no seafood, for example). But they basically just send you three meals that match your preferences every week. I haven’t had anything bad yet.
I’ve done BA for two weeks and like it. The portions seemed small at first (I think that says more about my wife and me than it does about BA) but I liked five of the six meals a lot – enough to keep the recipes to make on my own later on. The biggest benefit is that since I know what we’re eating for three dinners, that’s three nightsI won’t be tempted to say, “honey let’s just go out.” I also love that the ingredients are whole foods in the truest sense – no seasoning packets, no unmarked envelopes or pouches.
I’m currently trying to decide if Blue Apron is right for my SO and I so a free trial run would be amazing! Please send a code to jeffro10529@hotmail.con if you have any left. I appreciate it brother!
Just sent it now. Hope you enjoy it!
Just sent you an invite. Hope you guys enjoy it!
I’m trying out Plated for this reason. They have seven recipes a week and you can pick and choose from them.
My wife’s a picky eater, so I don’t think BlueApron would work for us. This way, I can just give her a menu to pick from … if there’s two to three meals she’s willing to eat, we can grab a delivery for that week, otherwise skip it.
Got it, thank you!