Blue Apron Review

My wife and I both like to cook and we both have our “things” we are good at (mine is steak, hers is fish) but it turns out that neither one of us is very adventurous when it comes to food.  I really never thought about it before but our choices were hamstrung by what we had found good in the past.  And by “good”, I really mean “good enough”.  Sometimes we just want a burger, sometimes we don’t feel like going to the store, and sometimes we just don’t feel like doing dishes.  So this drove what was actually for dinner, regardless of how many cookbooks we owned.  “Deliciousness” was something people paid extra for at restaurants and even then we typically ordered things that were pretty much the same stuff we have always had before.

It's not like this was a problem in desperate need of a solution, and really it wasn't a problem at all. We just didn't care enough to research changing that part of our lives.

But what if we didn’t have to seek out specialty ingredients?  What if gourmet meals were chosen for us instead of having to pick from the endless sea of possibilities out there, only to end up preparing near carbon copies of the stuff we already knew we liked?  What if we could routinely discover new food combinations that we would never try in a million years with no risk of having expensive, unused ingredients slowly go bad in the pantry or fridge?

My wife’s sister and her husband told us about their experience with Blue Apron a few months ago so we decided to give it a shot... After 48 meals, we have come up with the following.

The Good

Unboxing is a joy and is one of the reasons I hope they don’t change the way they do this part of their business.  For us, Christmas comes every Wednesday. Everything comes in what has to be the second least environmentally-friendly packaging you can imagine. “Why is this ‘good’, you Earth-hating monster,” you ask? Personally, I think it’s kind of funny to unwrap exactly one celery stalk helpfully labeled “Celery”. Besides, you have to respect the challenge of keeping everything in the 1-cubic-foot box from smelling like everything else so it’s all good.

Here’s a typical box of stuff:

Beautifully photographed and easy-to-follow recipes printed on heavy, glossy stock are meant to be kept for a long time.

High food quality to price ratio.   The meats, cheeses, veggies, and spices are all (usually) top-notch. Also, at $10 per person per meal, the end results are way cheaper than what you would pay for the same dish in many high-end restaurants.

Learn new techniques or fine-tune old ones.  Searing fish and applying rubs properly, seasoning as you go, and cooking things in parchment paper.  Neat!

Bonding experience.  We like spending this time together so we even enjoy the unabashed lie the listed prep and cook times are (see “the Bad” below).

Unusual food combinations.  For me, cranberry sauce used to be a once-a-year thing… A slowly melting, largely untouched, can-shaped blob made exclusively of cranberries, high fructose corn syrup,  water, and regret.  Now, it’s a go-to concoction made from beets, scallions, vinegar, honey or other things I would have sworn would simply self-destruct if they were placed in close proximity to each other. Also, offering me a fennel and persimmon salad in the past would have gotten you reported to the DHS or the Men in Black for “extremely suspicious activity”.  Now, I’m all Oliver Twist please-sir-can-I-have-some-more about it.

Hmm. Now that I re-read that last paragraph I'm pretty sure I've just inadvertently joined a government keyword watch list of some kind… Meh… It's probably ok.

New food in general.  Farro, freekah, pickled beets, cornichons, Castelvetrano olives, weird pastas, even weirder spices, and loads of other cool stuff we have been “forced” to try makes me think that Sam I Am had a point (although I still think his delivery could use a lot of work).

Old foods made new.  Brussel sprouts and beets used to be on my “nope” list. Now they ain't. I still don't see what the point of sweet potatoes is (they are, like, the most overrated dirt apples ever, especially in this part of the country) but since many of these dishes have a serious flavor-gestalt thing going on I don't mind Blue Apron meals that include them.

You can customize the stuff you get within reason. For example, if you have an allergy to shrimp, you can make sure no shrimp recipes ever come in to your recipe rotation. Also if you feel like skipping a week or three or quit altogether you can do that. There is no contract.

The Bad

Editor’s Note: Blue Apron is awesome.   There is no “bad”.  I can’t express that strongly enough.  But, since the bar for “good” is so ridiculously high, here are some “bad” things.  In the spirit of the Internet, feel free to grossly overweight these minor things because, after all, everything that is not flawless is a complete and utter lawsuit-worthy failure.

The prep time is an enormous lie… like “I swear I thought this was a 55 MPH zone, officer” enormous.  I mean, have you ever tried to “small dice an acorn squash”?  Cripes.  If not, you can practice by trying to small dice a rolling pin.  Unless you own an industrial wood chipper you have no chance at meeting the estimated prep time on that meal.

Also, have you ever tried to pick thyme leaves off the stems?  The fact that thyme comes dry and stemless in containers in the store means that, regardless of how you feel about your 8-to-5 grind, there are poor souls out there that have it much, much worse than you do.  Machines can’t do everything yet.  Think about it.

And making garlic paste… by smooshing finely chopped garlic with the side of a knife? – Yeah, that ain’t happening.

So we can't figure out what kind of NASCAR-esque pit crew the Blue Apron folks use to arrive at their prep and cooking times.  Maybe they don't have such a crew and they simply have a much higher acceptance metric for “accidental stabbings per food calorie” than most of us are accustomed to. Or maybe they have people there that know what they are doing. I'm sure it's one of those three. Regardless, the prep time for us is usually closer to twice that listed (seriously).

Three or four out of 16 deliveries so far have had something wrong with them but, in all instances, that "something" was small.  One time it was a leaky vinegar bottle, one time it was a dented can, spinach or kale or something else was missing another time.  My in-laws and I have about the same complaint rate (25%) but they have had more food freshness issues than we have had. Not exactly Six Sigma... But on the upside complaints so far have been dealt with quickly and generously.

If you are the only one prepping and cooking, Blue Apron might be kind of a drag. The wife and I take turns – she reads the instructions and I prep and cook, the next meal we switch. We clean as we go and the one who reads does the dishes at the end. It's a good system.

Other Stuff to Know

The ingredients that you need to have on-hand are water, olive oil, salt, and pepper.  And when I say salt and pepper, I mean a lot of it. You will “add salt and pepper to taste” an average of four times per meal. Again, not a negative. I like salt. Salt rules.

They assume you own one pot and one high-sided skillet.  A knife and a cutting board.  Maybe a strainer.  Some paper towels.  I guess they assume you don’t want to use every damn dish in your house to prepare the meals so you end up wiping out “the pan” or “the pot” frequently.   That's fine with me. They don’t assume that you own a sous vide hip-traption or have access to a professional set of vichyssoise forks or whatever.  You are just a dude who wants to cook up some fancy vittles. That said, a garlic press and a nice big box grater will help out a lot.

If you robotically follow the instructions and refuse to use common sense you are going to be enjoying many of your meals with a huge helping of whatever your kitchen fire extinguisher is filled with. Our stove is old and low-end as are our pots and pans so temperature control is a complete crapshoot. Cooking the chicken “on medium heat for 4 to 6 minutes per side” is most likely going to result in a squad of unexpected dinner guests arriving in a very big, very loud, and very red truck. Also, the two stable settings for our oven seem to be “fluffy towel fresh out of the dryer” and “smelted copper” so things that are baked warrant quite a bit of babysitting.  You might have similar challenges to overcome.

Our Opinion

Full disclosure: because she got sick from Chinese takeout a long time ago, my wife has a slight taste aversion to Asian food (Indian food excluded).  I have a taste aversion to Southern Comfort but that’s unlikely to affect the menus we are presented with each week.  Anyhow, she tries every meal and so do I.  So does the eight-year-old but, since he only cares exactly how McNuggety his chicken is, he doesn’t get to vote yet.

The meals are freaking delicious, and I would order about 90% of these recipes in a restaurant.  The wife would order about 70% (the Asian food thing drives that, I think).  Crispy Catfish (recipe #982) is my wife's favorite and the Spiced Pork Burgers (#998) made me want to weep with joy.  There has been only one out of 48 meals that neither of us would ever try again – the Paprika Shrimp & Cheddar Grits (recipe #964). That kind of bummed me out. I had never had shrimp and grits before and I knew it was “A Thing” so my expectations were high. This was a heavy, bland porridge that neither of us could finish.  I blame that on their choice of cheese.

We have recreated about 25% of the meals and have noticed that the quality of the items from Blue Apron is usually better than what we can get at the grocery store down the road. I suppose if we spent the time and the gas we might be able to do better, but the costs outweigh the benefits as soon as the driving radius exceeds five miles. Also, we appreciate the second time might not be as good as the first for psychological reasons. Your results may vary.

So, all that said, we give Blue Apron a thumbs up and recommend you give it a go. We might switch off to a different service like Plated or Hello Fresh sometime soon just to check out what else is out there.  Meanwhile I am looking forward to tonight's meal of… let's see… Guacamole Hamburger with… oh, are you kidding me… sigh… Sweet Potatoes.

Maannnn…