Have you heard of Blue Apron? It is a subscription recipe delivery service and when you enroll you are delivered a weekly box containing all the ingredients you need to make three meals.
Ingredients are packed in a chilled box so that you don't have to worry about them spoiling and there are detailed recipe cards provided for each meal. Various formats of the box are available (for two or four people etc) and whilst you cannot select the meals that you receive you can specify dietary preferences and opt to skip a delivery if three meals at home doesn't fit in with your plans one week.
Recently I tried out a box that contained the ingredients for three meals for two people.
The cost of this box including taxes and delivery would normally have been $59.95 however I had a coupon for $30.00 off and I ordered my box through Ebates which gave me $7.50 cash back so I ended up paying only $22.45.
Above you can see the ingredients that I received in my box. Now lets take a look at the meals and my verdict on them...
Meal #1: Fresh Pimento Cheeseburger with Collard Green and Carrot Slaw.
This was an easy meal to start off with: form the burger and cook it, toast the buns, chop and mix some ingredients together for the pimento cheese condiment, and chop and fry the slaw ingredients.
I made the burgers for this meal but served them with traditional condiments that I had in stock and used the pimento cheese as part of a toasted sandwich at lunchtime the next day.
The burger was very tasty with a good meat to bun ratio but I wish it had been larger. Mr C&C and myself are hearty eater and could have eaten two of them!
I decided to use the Collard and Carrot Slaw with another meal later in the week and instead served a Cabbage and Carrot Coleslaw which was from another Blue Apron meal from this box - I wasn't a huge fan of the slaw as I found it a little too acidic.I also served a Greek Salad that I made from my own ingredients.
Verdict:
I really enjoyed the burger, but wished it was bigger. The pimento cheese was just okay.
Meal#2: Crispy Chicken Milanese with Warm Brussels Sprout and Potato Salad.
For this recipe you needed to coat chicken breasts with panko breadcrumbs and fry them, make a vinaigrette and chop and cook vegetables for a warm salad.
This is the kind of meal that we would prepare for ourselves normally so we were looking forward to this one! However once again the portions were somewhat scant, although the chicken breasts weren't a bad size the vegetable part of the meal consisted of two celery stalks, five Brussels Sprouts and a one medium sized potato (for both of us not each!).
I cooked a little extra chicken that I had in already and rather than coating it in crumbs and frying it I simply marinaded and grilled it.
After cooking the potato I sauteed it to add colour and texture to the salad, I also made the Collard Green and Carrot Slaw and served it warm so that we had two vegetable sides.
Verdict:
I love grilled chicken breasts so this was always going to be a hit. The Collard Slaw was good but the best part of the meal was the Warm Brussels Sprout Salad which I will add to my recipe collection.
Meal#3: Avocado Tempura Tortas with Spicy Turnip and Cabbage-Carrot Slaw.
This meal required that you chop vegetables for slaw and mix them with a simple dressing, cut turnips into 'fries' and cook them, make a tempura batter and use it to fry avocado wedges that you have cut and finally assemble and toast sandwiches.
This whole meal was a fail for us I'm afraid... I don't consider a sandwich such as this to constitute dinner, it is a lunch or brunch dish as far as I'm concerned. There were a lot of steps to take to make the sandwich and the slaw which we had with the burgers really wasn't that great. And finally, I have an avocado allergy so I wouldn't have been able to eat this meal anyway.
We used the bread from this meal to make toasted sandwiches for our lunches and Mr C&C had the avocado as a snack.
And the turnip? That's still in the fridge...
Overall.
I am the last person that I expected to try out one of these recipe boxes! TBH if I hadn't managed to get it for such a bargain I wouldn't have as I think that the true price is way too high for the amount of ingredients that you receive. (Having said that I have to admit that the ingredients in the box were all of a very high quality and arrived in perfect condition.)
I enjoyed cooking the recipes and thought that they were a fun way to cook. There was a little more chopping required than I expected so you need to have a few basic skills under your belt as well as a certain amount of kitchen equipment at your disposal. It took me just under an hour to do the prep for all three meals - you can see the prepped food in the photo above - but I do cook professionally.
Personally, I didn't think that inclusion of two sandwich type meals was a good idea - as I presume these kits are geared towards families who rely on take out and/or ready prepared foods and would maybe like to take a break from burgers/sandwiches. There was also a high ratio of fried food items which are always going to be tasty but may not be the best in terms of healthy eating. It would have been much preferable if you could pick all three meals yourself (there is a shortlist as it were of six so you sort of have an idea of what you will get but you can't fine tune your selection).
For us the portions were too small but perhaps for families who eat their main meal at work or who have small children who don't eat their share of the meal this isn't an issue.
My final gripe is with the amount of packaging that these boxes contained. I know this is inevitable because of the nature of the box and it's contents but it still felt very wasteful.
On a positive note, if you are a novice cook the boxes could be a good way to broaden your horizons and increase your repertoire and knowledge of ingredients.
Overall it was a fun experience but one that I don't think I will repeat mainly because of the cost and the fact that you can't select every meal.
Are you interested?
Have a look at www.blueapron.com
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