Blue Apron Subscription Box Review & Coupon – June 2016

Blue Apron is a subscription box for making great meals at home.  If you’re like me, you periodically find yourself in a serious cooking rut.  You make the same things every week, but the thought of researching a recipe and acquiring all of the ingredients is just too much work.  Blue Apron is the solution!  Each week, Blue Apron sends you a refrigerated box with all the fresh ingredients you need to make the included recipes.  You can select the 2-person plan–3 meals a week of 2 portions each–or the family plan–2 to 4 meals a week of 4 portions each.  The menus are set, but you can ask Blue Apron to avoid ingredients you don’t eat–shellfish and lamb, in my case.

We got the Family Plan for 2 meals.  I set the delivery date and it arrived right on time, securely packaged in a heavy-duty box.  All of the ingredients are wrapped in an adorable insulated blanket and cooled with ice packs.  Mine took a day to arrive and sat on my porch for 3 hours, and everything was perfectly cool inside.

The meat is at the bottom, surrounded by still-frozen gel ice packs.  I didn’t worry for one second about the temperature of the food.  It was cold to the touch when I pulled it out.  Most of the packing materials (and there are a lot) are recyclable or reusable.

The first recipe in our box was the Herb-Crusted Salmon.  I love salmon in any formulation, so I was looking forward to this recipe.  I decided to make it first because, as last time, my veggies were not in prime condition.  They were useable, but the zucchini and asparagus were starting to get soft on their ends and the parsley was a bit wilted.  If I waited, they were going to expire.  As you can see, everything was included, even a teeny cup of dijon mustard.

Blue Apron does a great job of sending you just the amount you need for the recipe, so you don’t waste anything; nor do you have to think about how much to add to the recipe.  Easy peasy.

Each recipe comes with these easy-to-follow instructions.  Even if you are new to knife skills, you will be able to do everything on this list.  This recipe did a good job of estimating the prep time.  Nothing complicated here–this recipe is very much something you could do from memory at a later time, which is a nice thing to put in your cooking arsenal.

This all came together pretty well.  Because my asparagus was not optimum (very end-of-season large and starting to go soft), I decided to chop it and add it to the freekeh (cracked wheat) side dish instead of roasting it with the salmon.  The panko crumbs were unexpectedly seasoned with something spicy, which I liked.  The salmon came out a lovely pink and tasty, if a bit mustardy from the dijon.  The freekeh side was pleasant enough, though not anything that wowed us.  My doesn’t-love-fish-husband thought it was good, so we considered it a successful cooking adventure.

Healthy and reasonably tasty, saving us from Friday night takeout.  There was plenty left over to have the next night.  On to the next recipe!

Our next recipe was Seared Chicken & Miso Udon Noodles.  It was pouring rain on Sunday night, and I could not have been happier about the prospect of a steaming bowl of noodley goodness.

Blue Apron partners with farmers who practice sustainable agriculture and treat their animals humanely.  The chicken cutlets in this recipe were antibiotic-free and vegetarian fed.  The recipe card had straightforward instructions that were easy to follow.

This recipe features “pea tips,” which I’d never heard of , but appear to be the . . .tips of a pea plant, complete with creepy vine tendrils.  I was a little skeeved by the vine-eyness of these things, so when I pulled them out and they were crunched and slimy, I wasn’t too upset to exclude them from the recipe.  (More on that later).  The slice of ginger was similarly too squishy for me to feel comfortable using.  So, this recipe was a little stripped-down but I made do with what I had at home, including some powdered ginger, which is a tolerable substitute in a pinch.

The other ingredients were in good shape.  This recipe came together very quickly, which was a relief on a busy Sunday night.

“What is this delicious sauce?” asked the 8 year old.  This meal was simple to put together and delicious, but because of the not-necessarily-on-hand ingredients like miso paste and soy glaze, I never would have made it on my own.  Having the ingredients sent to me made this meal possible, which is awesome.  There was tons of food, and the leftovers were terrific straight out of the fridge.

So, this is the second box in a row where I’ve had trouble with the produce being in not-terrific shape.  These boxes are too expensive to throw away ingredients because they’re suboptimal.  The meats and non-veggies are in great shape every week, so I know BA has the ability to figure this out.  Putting the delicate greens in a sturdier container would be a good start.  I have really enjoyed these meals, even with some hiccups, so I’ll be looking for improvement next month.  Overall, these boxes are really fun, and get us out of our boring dinner routine.  Honestly, you can forget how fun cooking can be.  Interesting ingredients, easy recipes, and delicious food.  We can’t wait to see what we get next time!

Visit Blue Apron to subscribe or find out more! Save $20 on your first order! Use this link – no coupon code required!