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.
Pricing: 2-Person Plan – $59.94 for 3 recipes. Family Plan (serves 4) – $69.92 for 2 recipes, $139.84 for 4 recipes.
DEAL: Save $30 on your first order! Use this link – no coupon code required!
The meat is at the bottom, surrounded by still-frozen gel ice packs. The pork was double-bagged in an extra ziptop bag, so no concerns about leakage. The produce was all in good shape this month.
Our first meal was the Swedish Meatballs with Mushroom Gravy.
I was excited about a big steaming bowl of meat and potatoes on a freezing winter day.
As usual, all of the ingredients were included, even a wee pat of butter. 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. (Usually! See below).
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. The prep and cook times were understated for this recipe – this took me a solid 75 minutes to prepare.
Now included in the box is the meal’s nutrition facts. I think it’s nice to have a ballpark idea of how this meal fits into my daily nutrition. Thumbs up.
This meal was straightforward to make, even it wasn’t fast. The meatballs took rather longer to cook through than the recipe stated. It’s important to always check doneness with a meat thermometer, especially when you’re talking about pork.
This all came together nicely. The spice packet for seasoning the meatballs was tasty. I only used about half the included flour for the roux, which would have turned into paste had I used the whole thing. Blue Apron doesn’t usually make this kind of mistake, and if you’re a new cook, this might have ruined the whole meal. There were also only two potatoes for four servings, which I found a little stingy, especially since we had many extra meatballs. It was all tasty, though, and everyone liked it. The ligonberry jam was a nice touch.
Next up were the Mozzarella and Ricotta Focaccia Pizzas (a lot of words ending with a).
I adore focaccia, so I was excited to make this recipe.
The recipe card has straightforward instructions that were easy to follow. The prep was WAY understated on this one – lots of knife work and little steps that add time, like zesting the lemon to flavor the ricotta and smashing the garlic for paste instead of just mincing it. The making of jam, in particular, seemed extremely unnecessary. Fig jam made from dried figs is not any better than pre-prepared fig jam. Blue Apron didn’t send us ligonberries and sugar to make jam for the meatballs, after all.
This recipe also included the nutrition facts.
This was not the meal I was hoping it would be. The pizzas were mostly kale, flavored with cheese. The mozzarella was just an accent. There was plenty of ricotta to go around, but it glopped on unevenly and didn’t meld with the rest of the pizza. I probably should have put it back into the oven to warm through before serving. Roasted cauliflower is perfectly good, but an odd accompaniment for pizza It really felt more like an appetizer than an entree, which meant everyone was hungry two hours after eating this. Better luck next time, I suppose.
50/50 on this one. Still, it’s nice to not have to decide “what’s for dinner” all the time. Overall, Blue Apron has been enjoyable and gets 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!
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