Blue Apron Review

I know I am very late to jump on the Blue Apron bandwagon, but I thought I would still share my personal experience with it. I received my first delivery for free (~$60 dollar value). If you know a friend or family member that uses Blue Apron, they can gift you a free box. It contains enough food for 3 meals for 2 people, meaning 6 servings/week. This means each serving amounts to approximately $10. For 1 person, I do not think this is a good deal solely based on price since it only accounts for 6/21 meals a person is supposed to eat in a week. That means you still have to spend money on groceries for the week to get food for the remaining meals. One person can buy themselves groceries to last the entire week, all 21 meals, for less than $60.

Money aside, let me give my opinion on the actual quality of the product. So first off, the first time I submitted an order for my Blue Apron box it never arrived. Blue Apron did send an apology email and refund, but I was still disappointed that I was missing out on the recipes for that week. The second time, the box arrived without a hitch. The ingredients come in an insulated bag with two large icepacks at the bottom. When I opened the box only the items on the very bottom were cold. I think that the icepacks could have been placed around the ingredients to keep everything cool.

This is an example of one of the three recipes, Sweet Corn and Pepper Empanadas. It comes with a recipe card which tells you what you need to do in order to prepare the predesignated meal and the ingredients, properly proportioned for the recipe.

The quality of the ingredients is pretty good - everything appeared fresh, except for a few spots on the snap peas and browning of the scallions.

Here are all of the ingredients chopped up which did take a bit of time. You will also need a cheese grater and tool to remove the kernels from the corn of cob.

It also would have been nice if they would have included salt, pepper, and olive oil in the box since the recipe required quite a bit of it.

Here's what the meal was supposed to look like:

Here's what mine looked like:

I don't think my version looks too bad, until you compare it to the picture it came with. But hey, I'm not a professional cook! Overall, the meal took about an hour to prepare and did require a lot of preparation (and dishes!) for the vegetables. The meal itself was delicious (except the radishes - I don't like them). Overall, I think that Blue Apron's subscription service is a good idea for those that do not know how to cook, like me, and do not want to eat frozen food all the time, like me. It makes it foolproof.  However, there are only a limited number of options to choose from each week and it is a bit pricey. So it's really up to you based on what you value more. Please note that if you decide to use a free box gifted to you from a friend or family member, it will require you to sign up for a subscription. However, you can cancel it immediately after receiving the trial box.