Blue Apron: A Review

In the last five years or so, meal kit delivery services have become insanely popular. Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, Dinnerly, Marley Spoon, etc.- the options seem endless and each swear to be better than the others.

People ask me all the time how I feel about these services and as a principle, I’m a huge supporter. The whole concept has gotten people to cook for themselves much more often and I’ve watched novice cooks become more skilled in their kitchens because they have consistent practice.

Last weekend, I was gifted a Blue Apron box by someone who forgot to cancel their order before they went out of town, and I figured it would be great market research to try it myself. There were two recipes in there- Chicken Curry Fried Rice and Greek-Style Burgers.

Sunday night, I decided to meal prep for my whole week so I made the fried rice (as well as a couple other dishes not from the box.) I pulled out all of the ingredients, got my recipe card and my equipment, and set to work. My intention was to read the recipe word for word, without using my own knowledge or intuition, so I could understand what the general home cook would do when using Blue Apron.

My first impression is that there is a lot of packaging. By the time I was done with the first two steps alone, I had a pile of plastic wrapping taking over my counter, which I didn’t love. Hello, sustainability, anyone?

The second thing I noticed was that the instructions weren’t super clear.

“Halve, peel, and thinly slice the onion.” Well, which way should I halve it? Through the root or through the middle? If I slice it against the grain, the slices end up different sizes as it gets towards the root or stem end. This actually really matters when you’re cooking vegetables, especially onions- smaller pieces will burn in the time it takes to cook the larger pieces- and there was no direction on it. Instructions on chopping up a large pepper:

“Cut off and discard the stem, then remove the core.” If you haven’t learned how to properly deconstruct a pepper, chances are you’ve got seeds absolutely everywhere.

Another thing I wasn’t a fan of was the timing. It told me to cook the chicken (it was already cut in pieces, which I did appreciate very much) for 3-4 minutes before adding something, then 3-4 more minutes. This really wasn’t enough to fully cook the largest pieces of chicken or soften the vegetables I had added- I think I did about 10-11 minutes total, but if I was a novice cook, I wouldn’t know otherwise.

I appreciate that they were trying to keep the steps as succinct as possible but by doing that, they limit the understanding. There aren’t a ton of photos, and for someone who is trying to use their service as a lesson in cooking, it’s not explanatory at all. Even if there was a section on the front of the giant recipe card explaining the difference in knife cuts or something, that would probably go a long way.

Takeaways:

• This definitely isn’t for a beginner. It seems pretty important to have a good base knowledge of cooking, especially the technical stuff like knife skills and timing, to get through these recipes.
• I do really enjoy that the creativity part is already taken care of for me, and that I don’t have to put any thought into what spices or veggies to use, which is half the struggle.
• Way, way too much packaging. If you’re going to give me every little thing separately, you might as well chop it all up and put it in one bag.
• When they say each meal is two servings, they mean it! I can probably get three servings out of each one which is a fantastic deal.

Overall, I’m a huge advocate for these meal kit services because they get people engaging with their own kitchen more often and not resorting to cheap takeout. But not all of them are for everyone. If this is something you’re exploring, try them all and see which one is comfortable for your skill level, otherwise, you’ll be paying for a box of food you don’t know what to do with.