Been doing the Blue Apron thing here on an off for the past couple of months.
For those who don’t know, Blue Apron ships you all the ingredients (besides salt and pepper) to make 3 meals that will feed 2 people per meal. The ingredients seem to be pretty top notch and I think they time their meals to coincide with whats in season at the time.
The recipes they include are well written and for the most part fairly easily skill and time wise.
I’ve been pretty happy with most of em. And like the fact it forces you to try new things.
Just wondered if anybody else was enjoying the service.
I’ve not done this but am very interested in people’s answer to this question. Also, I am very, VERY interested in Taste The World. Sorry to horn in on this OP, but I’d like to know about any subscription type food services.
Blue Apron
Taste The World
Plated
Hello Fresh
Turntable Kitchen
Those are the ones I’ve looked at. Again, sorry for the highjack but it doesn’t seem feasible to make a post for each of these services.
My sister does this. For the most part she likes it but isn’t convinced it worth the money. The meals tend to be pretty tasty but it’s very rare that they ship any ingredients she can’t find at our local small town grocery at similar or better prices. Mainly what they seem to provide are tested and reliable recipe ideas. What that might be worth to you is your business.
My BIL gave us 2 weeks of Blue Apron for Xmas last year. It was pretty good I guess, and it made a good gift, but I wasn’t impressed enough with it I’d buy it for ourselves. You still have to do all the work, and I’m certain I could purchase the same ingredients myself at a better price. The dishes were good, but there wasn’t anything particularly special or unique about the recipes.
The best thing I can say about it is, again, it was a good gift, and it perhaps expanded the usual dinner menu to things we wouldn’t necessarily have thought to cook on our own. Also, the recipes come on these glossy sheets that you could punch holes in and put in a binder to make again.
On a pure “here are the ingredients you get for the money” basis it is not worth it.
But remember, they have to pack all this stuff up. Put in a big box. With ice packs. And ship it FAST across the country. All that costs money.
Blue Apron cost about $60 for 3 two person meals. Thats $10 per meal. My WAG each $10 meal has maybe $5 worth of ingredients (at best).
What you get that may or may not have value for you is:
Conveinence. You don’t have to shop to gather up all these ingredients.
Many of the recipes have non standard ingredients which you aren’t going to find in a run of the mill grocery store.
You get exactly what you need. So you don’t have to buy extra stock that will sit around and may go bad before you need to use anymore of it.
And, as I mentioned earlier, it FORCES you to try new things.
Also, if you aren’t much of a cook, I think it might give you some good practice, confidence, and a chance to find out if cooking (and or being more adventorous) might be something you’d like do for yourself more often for fun.
I see this advertised constantly on the Twit webcast network. As others have said, it seems like a great way to try ingredients and recipes that you otherwise wouldn’t bother. Or would spend too much money buying extra of a particular ingredient.
We’ve been treating ourselves to Blue Apron delivery about once a month for the last 3 months. It’s $70 for two 4-person meals. We consider it a treat, and as such, think it’s worth the price. Cheaper than dining out, but easier than finding new recipes to try, then shopping for unfamiliar ingredients, etc. As a bonus, the recipes are so easy to follow that our 17 yo son has been doing most of the cooking.
We took a look at it, and passed.
Here in California, with both big regular supermarkets and lots of ethnic supermarkets, we can get all the ingredients we want. Three meals a week means you have to shop for the other four anyway, so there isn’t a lot of time saving. The sample recipes looked okay, but just okay.
$10 a person a meal is way more expensive than what we are spending, and you don’t have the flexibility of buying more for leftovers. So that’s a negative.
As for recipes, we have a large bookcase full of cookbooks of all types, so that isn’t a problem. (And you can search for something interesting to make with what is on sale.)
Plus we both cook, so it isn’t like we need handholding.
I don’t think it is a ripoff because shipping costs are pretty high, but definitely not worth it. I did sign up for their free daily recipes but none have arrived yet.
How does the delivery and timing work for this, specifically as a gift? My sister has never been a good cook, but has been trying. She’s a little afraid at times to try new recipes because she thinks they might be too complicated. This sounds like the kind of thing I could get her, and she’d be able to make something…and then know how to.
The problem is she travels for work, and I wouldn’t be able to predict when it’s a good time for things to be delivered. Would she be able to schedule it?
As several have stated, it’s cool because it gets you to try to new things. I would add that it **allows **you to try new things without a prohibitive initial layout for ingredients. I’m thinking here primarily of the non-standard spices and flavorings. I might really like that dish with harissa or squid ink or miso paste or szechuan peppercorns or sambal oelek, but even assuming I can easily find those ingredients, I don’t necessarily want to buy a whole jar of something that may end up never being used again.
That said, I personally wouldn’t use it as a regular meal service, but as a sampler for things you might want to add to your own cooking repertoire, it’s pretty cool.
When you get it as a gift, you get a code to put into their site. They make you fill out a profile and whatnot as if you’re going to be a full-on customer, but I don’t remember having to give them any credit card info. You schedule it for whenever you want; there’s a calendar and you can go on the site and look at what the menu will be for the upcoming week. You can re-schedule at your convenience, either because you can’t do it that week, or you don’t want what they’ve got planned. You can set preferences for what types of protein you want (or not, if you’re vegetarian). I think you have until late the week before to change your mind. They try to deliver on Wednesdays IIRC. It comes in a cardboard box, in which there is a fancy insulated foil package with ice packs. It will stay cool sitting on your stoop or wherever for at least a few hours.
As for the actual cooking, what you get is raw ingredients in the exact amount you’ll need, and full-page (8.5x11) recipe cards with step-by-step instructions. The instructions explain things in simple language (they look exactly like this). It’s as easy as they can make it without actually preparing anything for you.
.
I used it for nearly a year and loved it. I loved the gentle challenge of cooking something brand new three times a week. I loved the variety. I loved not having to plan meals or think about dinners while grocery shopping. I loved having just the amount we need, and not having food waste.
The meals are good, with some being excellent and an occasional dud. The instructions are VERY well explained and even as a good cook, I learned the occasional new technique or ingredient. I’d have never made a cheese sauce with hops or cooked with black garlic on my own.
It is pricey. If you compare it to grocery shopping it’s a lot more. If you compare it to take-out, it’s less. If you are a light eater you can sometimes get enough leftovers to get a lunch out of it, but you can’t count on it.
We eventually canceled, as our kid was getting old enough for table food and I needed leftovers for lunch. But if it fit our lifestyle I would do it again in a minute.
I use Hello Fresh (again, thanks to a gift from a friend). $70 for 3 meals that feeds two adults and a rapidly growing middle-schooler, though sometimes supplemented with an additional salad. I know how to cook, I have shelves of recipes, but I still sometimes find myself reverting to standards instead of stretching.
Plus:
Trying new stuff, and some techniques as well
No leftovers (for us this is good). Just enough of each ingredient, so I am not tossing out the remaining 1/4 cup of something after a week.
Portion control (I don’t grab the seconds that I don’t need).
Easy to follow instructions. The afore-mentioned 12 year old gets paid to cook, and he is learning new methods. He takes the leftover recipe cards to the Scout troop and other boys are using them for campouts.
We only do 3 meals a week, so we still have time to do other recipes as desired.
Negatives:
Cost per meal is more than if I had my act together. Then again, I don’t have my act together.
Gotta watch storage once they arrive - push a certain meal out a few days and the fresh herbs or lettuce stuff can go bad.
The ice packs stack up - so a bit more waste than I like to have. I am sure there are some overall environmental concerns about shipping, delivery, packaging, etc. They (Hello Fresh) have been working on adjusting their packaging though, and I appreciate that.
So we are converts, and have no intention of stopping anytime soon.
Blue Apron strikes me as a solution to problems I don’t have (contrast Soylent, a solution to a problem no one has). That said, if it’s much cheaper than what I’m doing now, it may be worth considering.
Been using it for about 6 months, and my wife and I love it. We like to cook, we really like trying new things, but we detest:
Planning a menu
Doing the grocery shopping for the menu, especially if it involves multiple trips to various stores because we can’t get everything at one place.
Wasting ingredients
Measuring/portioning everything out to fit the recipe
Blue apron is a perfect fit for us - it takes care of everything we hate about cooking. Sure, it’s a little more expensive, but its worth it to have a completely hassle-free dinner three times a week.
