Provided for Review | Affiliate Links
 

Subscription Length: Weekly with “Skip Week Option”

Meals: 2-person plan (3 meals that serve 2); Family Plan (2 or 4 meals that feed 4)

Price: $59.94; $69.92; $139.84

Recently I had the opportunity to try out a week of the food subscription service Blue Apron. I had heard a lot about Blue Apron and had been wanting to give it a try but hadn’t due to a few questions that I had about the service like:

• Does it include all the ingredients?
• What are the dietary options?
• Would they deliver to my area (we live in the boonies)?
• Would the food be fresh when we received it?
• And would the food actually taste good?

Before we get into the questions I had let’s talk about the actual Blue Apron subscription. The way that Blue Apron works is that you sign-up for either the 2-person plan that feeds two people or the Family Plan that feeds four. With the 2-person plan you get three meals for the week and for the Family Plan you have the option of choosing two or four meals for the week. As you are setting up your account you’ll have the option of choosing whether you’re a vegetarian or meat eater and what meats you prefer. From your choice it’ll automatically choose the meals for you but you can enter into your menu and change those if you’d like. When you receive your box it’ll have recipe cards for that week’s meals with a link at the bottom which will have the recipe that you can load on your tablet and some tutorial videos.

Now that we’ve gone over exactly what Blue Apron is let’s talk about actually comes in the box, besides the recipe cards. When you open the Blue Apron box you’ll see a thermal bag that is sealed shut. When you open the bag you’ll see any vegetables that you’ll be using for the week along with some brown bags, shown above, that are sealed shut, you’ll have one for each meal you’ll be making. Below that you’ll have an ice pack, your meat (or perishable items), and then another ice pack. Due to the setup of the packaging and the inclusion of the two ice packs, everything was fresh when it was delivered to our house in rural South Carolina (I actually had class the day this was delivered so it sat for a bit outside as well!).

The brown bags that are inside of the Blue Apron box are “knick knack” bags. These contain all the small items that you may need for the recipe. For example, one of the three recipes that we received was the Provençal Chicken & Potato Stew and inside it’s knick knack bag was mayonnaise, tomato paste, castelventrano olives, red wine vinegar, and “chicken stew spice blend” (items like this will have what is included in it on the recipe card). I would have to say that my one complaint about Blue Apron would be in this area. They do not have an option for any allergies like gluten and/or nuts and with ingredients like their spice blends you don’t have measurements for each individual item included in the blend so you can’t substitute it out, especially if it’s an important item.

As I mentioned previously, Blue Apron DOES offer an option for vegetarian subscribers, however, the Hubs prefers a more meatier diet so we didn’t select that option. At the time I didn’t realize that you could change the menu but when I went back to look at the next week I realized that if you do want to select one of the vegetarian dishes and you select it first you can create a mixed meal plan. Anyway, the three dishes that were chosen for us for the week included chicken, salmon, and ground beef. The beef included was fed a vegetarian diet, had no added growth hormones or antibiotics, and was gotten from a co-op of family farmers. The chicken included were boneless, skinless chicken thighs that also were not given any antibiotics. Lastly, the salmon included were Wild Alaskan Salmon sourced from a group of trusted fisheries. All together not to bad of a roundup of meats, in all actuality better quality than what we can afford when we go to the grocery store if I’m honest…

As for the vegetables everything was included from the baguette that goes with the stew to the lemon and mint that go with the salmon dish. Everything was in great condition and lasted several days as we didn’t cook everything in the first three days that we had the Blue Apron box. Also, garlic was needed for all three of the recipes and while we didn’t receive three different bulbs of garlic the one bulb that we did receive was more than enough for the three recipes we received. At this point I think we can agree that you do get everything needed to cook the recipes.

Now that we’ve discussed all other points let’s talk about the most important part…taste. The first meal that we cooked was the Provençal Chicken and Potato Stew with Aioli & Garlic Toasts. This meal was supposed to have a 15 minute prep time, 25 – 35 minute cook time, and would make 2 servings that were about 650 calories each. Our prep time was a bit longer as this was the first recipe that we were trying and we wanted to make sure that we were doing everything step-by-step as mentioned for the recipe for the review (plus all those pictures!). The cook time was about what was expected, however, the servings was where things got interesting. We actually had about three servings out of our stew and tons of little garlic toast pieces! And it was absolutely delicious!

Now what about the second meal (the third meal actually got cooked differently so I’m not going to talk about it but all the ingredients were delicious!)… The second meal that we received was the Hoisin & Shiitake Burgers with Miso Mayonnaise & Roasted Sweet Potato Wedges. OH…MY…GOSH…this meal was beyond amazing. Not only is bok choy my new favorite burger topping but from now on we’ll be making all of our burgers like this. It was absolutely fantastic.

Let’s recap: Blue Apron does include all the ingredients, they offer an option for meat eaters and vegetarians but no other dietary plans at this time, they do deliver to rural and city areas, the food was fresh (even after sitting out in the heat for a bit) when we received it, and the food was absolutely amazing. If you are looking to get into food subscriptions I highly recommend Blue Apron, like I mentioned before my only issue with the subscription is the lack of options for people with allergies. However, after checking out other subscriptions I found that none of them really do offer this option!

If you’re wanting to try out Blue Apron make sure to take advantage of this offer: $20 off your first order. No code is necessary just click that link.