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 $50 over your first two boxes! Use this link – no coupon code required!
The meat is at the bottom, surrounded by still-frozen gel ice packs. Blue Apron is always aiming for optimization with the packaging, and packaging nerds like myself are into it. The meat is now double-bagged in sealed packages, which is great for keeping errant meat juice inside.
It’s 2019! New year, new you. A you who cooks interesting meals at home? You can do it! We rang in 2019 with a couple of hearty recipes for a cold and rainy weekend. First up was Italian Beef and Fontina Sandwiches with Caesar-Dressed Broccoli.
As usual, all of the ingredients were included. The focaccia bread smelled SO GOOD.
The meals come with nutrition info and ingredients, now efficiently organized on one sheet for all the week’s potential meals. Know what you’re eating–and what you could have been eating.
All of the produce looked great this month. One thing I like about Blue Apron is that the meat is always of top-notch quality. I don’t eat a lot of meat, but when I do, it’s important to me to know that the animal was treated humanely and the meat is safe. This Neiman Ranch grass-fed beef was delicious and great to work with.
The directions are straightforward. Roasted broccoli is such an easy and delicious side–even the 9-year-old will eat it.
The mis-en-place was just some easy chopping. And, yes, that’s a Blue Apron wine subscription bottle over there.
The recipe calls for the cheese to be melted onto the bread, which I’m sure was delicious, but the team here voted for broiling it on top of the meat, which was DEFINITELY delicious. You’re the boss of your kitchen! Change it up if you want.
This meal was simple but tasty. It was perfect for movie night and everyone got seconds (even of broccoli!).
Our second recipe was a Sunday-meat-and-veg, the Sweet and Smoky Chicken with Cheesy Sweet Potatoes and Cabbage Slaw.
Everything was ready to go here, even an adorably-halved red cabbage. There were 3 sweet potatoes, which was plenty of starch. Sometimes BA gets called out on the reviews for not including enough sides for people, but this month was great.
This quick sauce of chicken demi-glace, ancho paste, and honey was tasty and added gorgeous color to the chicken. And, as usual, just the amount you need to make the sauce was included, so there was no random leftover demi-glace, and you didn’t have to worry about measuring how much to use. Combine in bowl and move on.
The directions are straightforward, though I don’t think I’d use nonstick for a seared chicken dish with a sweet sauce.
The quick slaw looked awesome and the color really jazzed up the plate. It needed something, though–sugar or salt or heat. It was kind of just there, and the peanuts in it seemed random. Still, veg is veg, and we ate it.
I mean, it doesn’t get prettier than that. And the (nonstick) pan cleaned up just fine, don’t you worry.
Panning right to get the nutrition facts for the chicken.
This was a nice Sunday meal. The chicken was tasty, the slaw was fine, and the cheesy sweet potatoes were the star of the show.
Two good meals to kick off 2019! Next month, I’m going to change things up and review a few of Blue Apron’s new Weight Watchers-approved meals for 2. Come back and see how they are!
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 Malvasia Bianca we had with the beef sandwiches.
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!
Any cooking resolutions for 2019? Let us know in the comments below!
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