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.
The box is generally divided by meal, which reduces time needed to sort the ingredients. Nice! This month, Blue Apron announced its new cookbook.
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 meat was not double-bagged this month, but the seals were fine, so no leakage issues. Some of the produce was iffy this month–a spoiled potato, bagged chives with a ripe smell, and wilty lettuce. If I were paying for this box, I’d contact Blue Apron for a replacement; as I’m reviewing it, I simply replaced the potato, did without the chives, and ate the lettuce. It’s been a few months since I’ve had issues with the produce in my box, but it’s still disappointing.
Our first meal was the Seared Steaks and Garlic Butter with Oven Fries, otherwise known as Steak Frites, the meal my husband ate five nights in a row in Paris. We planned to have these on Sunday, but finding the spoiled potato at cook time foiled us and we had to make this on a weeknight. Not exactly Meatless Monday around here this week.
As usual, all of the ingredients were included. A simple recipe this time, nothing complicated about the ingredients. This is the first time I’ve gotten steak from Blue Apron, and I was pleased with the quality.
The meals come with nutrition info and ingredients. Know what you’re eating!
All of the directions are straightforward. This prep was easy and fast, perfect for a weeknight after basketball practice. And, yes, that’s a Blue Apron wine subscription bottle over there. Meaty Monday calls for wine.
Sometimes these recipes can be a bit of a juggling act, but steak frites is easy–slice, roast, and sear. The salad dressing was easy and tasty–the mayo/mustard mix helps keep it all emulsified nicely.
The steaks cooked evenly and the directions were spot-on with the time to medium-rare. I don’t sweat a meat thermometer when it comes to steak, but you could definitely use one if the timing or rareness makes you nervous. (135 degrees for medium rare; 145 for medium).
These turned out great! I don’t think about cooking steak on a regular weeknight, but it really was a fast and tasty dinner. I noticed that a couple of people online wondered at 2 steaks for 4 people, but we had plenty for all of us and even one serving leftover for lunch tomorrow. Your mileage may vary.
Our next meal was Turkey Ramen with Bok Choy and Furikake. Nope, I didn’t know what furikake was, either. (It’s a Japanese seasoning, sometimes with seaweed and MSG; in this case, it seemed to be chili flakes and sesame seeds). My kids saw a Chef’s Table about Ivan Orkin, and now they’re obsessed with ramen. Pretty excited to give this one a go.
Lots of ingredients for this one. The produce for this meal was in better shape than for the steak frites.
As usual, 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.
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. There are a lot of steps to this recipe and the prep time is a bit longer than advertised.
No eats a bowl of pasta because they thought about the nutrition facts; however, that’s a lot of sodium for one meal.
The knifework here was greatly helped along by kitchen shears, especially for the rehydrated mushrooms, which I found very difficult to slice–like slicing a bouncy ball.
The turkey was a very fine grind, almost pate-like, and I was worried it was going to turn into a brick, but it separated out as it cooked. The bok choy almost disintigrates when you cook it, so don’t skimp on it.
This was very interesting, and had a lot of flavor. My mushroom-averse husband wasn’t a huge fan, but the kids and I enjoyed it. Plenty leftover for lunches this week. And scratch ramen is definitely not something I would have made without Blue Apron, which is the best part of a meal prep subscription.
Hey, did you know that Blue Apron has a wine program now? It’s super easy to match your wine to your meal, like the tasty Sauvignon Blanc I had with the steak (which, to be honest, was not the red my recipe recommended, but it was what I wanted to drink, so I did).
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!
What unusual foods are your kids obsessed with? Let us know in the comments below!
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