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.
The Blue Apron website got a redesign recently, and you now have more options from which to choose for your meals. It’s easy to switch up or add meals to your box.
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.
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 meat was double-bagged in a zip-top bag, keeping errant meat juice inside.
It’s December! Which for the Southeast this year, has meant cold and rainy rain all weekend. A great time to NOT go to the grocery store and have your ingredients brought to you! We changed things up this month from our typical protein-and-veg to get a couple of “fun” meals. First up was the Za’atar-Spiced Chicken Pitas with Tzatkiki & Pickled Peppers.
As usual, all of the ingredients were included. The chicken breast was already chopped into pieces, which was a terrific time-saver.
The meals come with nutrition info and ingredients. Know what you’re eating!
All of the produce looked great this month. We got a couple of fun specialty ingredients in this box, like this wee packet of preserved lemon puree. I’ve never had it before–it was a bit salty, intensely lemony, and it added a lovely brightness to the couscous.
The directions are straightforward. The hardest part was getting that sealed packet of chicken open, which is to say, any human can do this.
The mis-en-place was just some easy chopping. I added an extra cuke to put directly into the pitas–always looking for ways to sneak some more veg into our meals. And, yes, that’s a Blue Apron wine subscription bottle over there.
Other than the extra cuke, the only change I made to this recipe was to saute the onions separately. I wanted them to really carmelize and cook down slowly, so I started them early and let them get gorgeous and sweet.
Boy, this meal was delicious. The artisanal pitas were perfect, the meat was spiced nicely, and the tzatziki balanced everything out. We had leftover meat and couscous, so I combined them for leftover lunch the next day. This really could not have been a better meal on a rainy Saturday night. Thumbs up!
Our second recipe was a Sunday treat, the Yellow Tomato and Basil Pesto Pizza with Kale Caesar Salad.
Okay, I hate it when a recipe reviewer is like, “I loved it! I did these seventeen different things and changed the recipe totally, and it was great.” Buuuut… I changed a few things on this one. And it was delicious!
To start, I just couldn’t with the kale salad, you guys. I’m so, so over kale. It’s hard to chew, the kids and husband don’t like, and I just didn’t have the energy to argue about salad on Sunday. So I made the tasty and easy Caesar dressing and put it over some spinach greens I had in the fridge. Sorry, kale.
The directions are straightforward, though I don’t think I’d use nonstick for an acidic veg like tomatoes.
I have never in my life seen yellow canned tomatoes! How fun–I love that Blue Apron throws in these neat ingredients every now and then. The tomato was lovely (as canned tomatoes usually are), and came up sweeter than red tomatoes usually do. I jazzed up the sauce (I know! I’m sorry!) with about triple the garlic plus dried oregano, thyme, and red pepper flakes. It was so good!
Annnnd I added some shredded cheese. Because we like cheese on our team.
Nutrition facts are good for you. No, obviously, this is not a pristine paleo-friendly meal, but you don’t eat pizza at every meal, right? All things in moderation.
This was great and the perfect end to the weekend. I’m not sure the pesto was necessary, but it was tasty. Thumbs up all around here.
Everything was so tasty and easy this month. Blue Apron did a great job with the box December for sure.
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 delicious Zinfandel we had with the pitas.
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’s your favorite rainy-weather meal? Let us know in the comments below!
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