My sister recently sent me a free trial of Blue Apron meals. The concept of Blue Apron is that they send you all of the necessary ingredients for 3 meals, already portioned out to make exactly 2 meals per recipe, along with a step-by-step recipe and guide to follow to prepare each meal.
Initially I was most curious to see how the ingredients were packaged, since the Blue Apron website advertises the freshest of ingredients for healthy meals, and I couldn't imagine how they could keep them cool long enough to be safe to cook.
The ingredients arrived in the box shown above, all inside a sealed thermal insulated bag with two large, reusable ice packs. I didn't realize it had been delivered that day until about 3 hours after it was delivered, because my flatmate had received the package and left it on the counter amid several other boxes (we've just moved). Still, the ice packs were about 2/3 frozen!
Inside the package I found 3 recipe cards as promised:
3 packages of "knick knacks," one for each recipe:
And a cornucopia of fresh produce, proteins, packages of grains, and a can of tomatoes:
I was particularly excited to try the recipes because the sister who sent me the trial offer actually gave up her subscription just a few days before I received my box because she said the preparation took significantly longer than advertised, and not only was it not practical for a busy mother of two, but particularly so for an amateur cook. She was skeptical that even a trained chef could accomplish the meals in the advertised "30-40 minutes". Consider the challenge accepted!
I decided to work as quickly as I could with no distractions to get the most accurate idea of how long the meals would take. The first meal I tried was the Seared Chicken & Caramelized Vegetables, which also happened to be the most tempting of the three recipes provided. The pictured mise en place made it easy to figure out which ingredients were intended for the meal I was making:
The first step was to chop all the produce. As expected, this step took the longest. The instructions recommended that I first start the water boiling for the potatoes, and then begin chopping the produce, so I did that. Though I was not instructed to, I went ahead and added the potatoes to the water as soon as it began boiling, and finished slicing up the rest of the veggies to save myself a dish and make room on my chopping board. I was glad I did this because it saved a little time by overlapping tasks.
The next instruction was to coat and cook the chicken. I appreciated the beautiful cuts of meat provided in the package, which required no trimming at all. I also liked the specific instructions to help cooks of any experience level achieve a nice crust and sear.
What I didn't appreciate was that the necessary ingredients weren't 100% provided. At first I thought it was just a bit inconvenient that they took for granted that you would have salt and pepper in your kitchen and not provide it. It's an understandable assumption, really, but I would have appreciated something somewhere in my order mentioning the need to have essential ingredients stocked, especially because in my case I had intentionally timed my delivery to be the day after we moved in so that I wouldn't have to worry about grocery shopping or getting the pantry/spices unpacked right away. Furthermore, it turned out that in order to cook the chicken I needed olive oil. In addition to my reasons above, I don't actually believe that amateur home cooks necessarily consider olive oil to be a kitchen staple, and they may not understand food science well enough to know what to substitute. It just seems to me that it wouldn't be too difficult for them to either list additional essentials the cook needs to provide for themselves in the confirmation email, or in the package, or just include a little bottle of olive oil and a little baggie of seasonings in the knick knacks.
The next steps were mashing the potatoes (pretty easy), and setting up the tomatoes and thyme to roast. Again I needed Olive oil, and I think they could have included a sentence about how to remove leaves from thyme. It seems like one goal of Blue Apron is to encourage people who don't know how to cook to learn to do so, and it would have been helpful to teach them that step.
Next I caramelized the veggies in the same skillet that I cooked the chicken in. I did appreciate Blue Apron's attempts to reuse skillets, though they still used 3 cooking pans and 3 plates, not including the plates the food was served on and the cutting board.
It was at this point, however, that (as I suspected would happen but I followed the directions exactly to make my review completely fair) my smoke alarm went off because the "roasting" tomatoes and thyme caused the thyme to burn. Any time you put a dry herb at high temperatures without mixing it with something or wetting it or something, that's likely to occur. Moreover, I was a bit annoyed at this step, because I feel like I could have just as easily blistered my tomatoes in the mashed potato pan or even the skillet I cooked the veggies in really quickly on a high heat after plating- the thyme added nothing but aroma. So that step felt extraneous and an unnecessary hassle between the extra dirtied pan and the smoke.
Here was my finished product before plating:
I have to say it looked exactly like the photos, even down to the cut and sear of the chicken; Blue Apron really does set you up to be able to succeed at these recipes.
I'd rank the kitchen and dish aftermath at about a 6.5; it wasn't as bad as baking with five year olds, but it wasn't a one-pot wonder either.
I took screen shots of the counter when I started cooking and when I finished cooking to get an accurate and impartial measure of how long it took me to make this meal from start to finish:
That was 11:44-12:46, so 62 minutes from start to finish. Even subtracting 2 minutes for posing the plate and pulling out my phone, and even subtracting 2 minutes for fanning the smoke detector (though I really think it should count because I think it was their method error that caused the smoke in the first place), I still took 8-18 minutes longer than the given prep/cook times. That includes the fact that on the recipe, prep time and cook time are listed separately and add up to 40-50 minutes, though all over the website and advertisements it's indicated that these are 30-40 minute recipes. In general and especially in the case of something that is claiming to help people make cooking at home easier to pull off, I think it is more important to give an honest indication of prep AND cook time, rather than playing semantics games "well it only takes 30 minutes to cook!" because ultimately the customer is going to go off of your recommendations and set aside that amount of time for prepping and cooking.
8-18 minutes longer, and I'm a professional, trained chef. Someone less experienced, even with zero outside distractions, would likely take 10-20 minutes longer to prepare this meal.
Ultimately it was delicious. It was super guilt-free, and I never would have prepared it without Blue Apron. In fact, this recipe cured me of a strong dislike of fennel!
So I think it's worth a try for most people, just set aside a little extra time and realize that the main benefits gained are healthier food, less grocery shopping hassle, added variety to your diet, and a LOT less waste. To me, that's actually pretty worth the price of about $10 per serving.
My biggest feedback for Blue Apron if they see this review is this:
1) Include a list of ANY ingredients provided by the customer (water, oil, salt, pepper)
2) Include a list of tools used in the recipe (knife, cutting board, extra plates, skillets, pots, paper towels)
3) Be a bit more realistic about cook times- not how fast a chef that's made the dish before can do it, but a normal, every-day cook who's never seen the recipe
4) Consider offering limited ingredient substitution options
5) Embrace your position as an educational subscription for new cooks, and provide basic food safety facts and tips in or on each box- you take for granted that home cooks know not to cross-contaminate, and to wash their hands after handling raw meat. Don't. You're uniquely able to make everyone a little healthier and safer.
Pros:
Super Healthy
Super Delicious
Low Hassle
Nearly Eliminated food waste
Variety
Adventure
Pretty Fun
Perfect for dieting or trying to eat at home more often- very motivational
Cons:
Literally every ingredient is not provided
Moderate to high number of dishes used
Takes about an Hour
Lots of prep
No room for pickiness
My last recommendations if you try Blue Apron is to consider the recipe and instructions like an SAT reading prep course. It's the ultimate test of reading comprehension and application. I think I might have sped up my meal just a tiny bit if I had read all the instructions completely, from start to finish, before I started cooking, so that I wouldn't have to stop between each step to know what was coming next. Some of that was my desire to execute it exactly as it was intended so that my review could be completely fair- but a novice cook would likely put as much care if not more into reading the directions, too. You also might consider pre-prepping your veggies on like a Sunday evening so that you can just pull them out when you're ready to cook. That would cut back significantly on your execution time before serving the meals.
All in all, I will likely get my own subscription for Blue Apron as soon as I can budget it.
And please share/retweet this review and tag @BlueApron to encourage them to acknowledge the feedback please!
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