Mail-Order Lifestyles: Blue Apron

When you're working, or even when you have some free time, it can be a challenge to eat well, or develop your cooking skills. It is easy to fall back on the same rotation of frozen and ready-made meals, or overpriced takeout and restaurant dishes. And, even if you want to cook more, it can be intimidating to figure out new foods to try, so it's easy to fall back on the small number of meals you are familiar and comfortable with.

With that in mind, I decided to follow a friend's suggestion and try out Blue Apron, a cooking service which delivers ingredients and recipes to your doorstep on a weekly basis.

When subscribing with the service, you set the number of people who will be eating the meals (2, 4, or 6), and any preferences in terms of meats that you are willing or unwilling to eat. You can also designate a day for the food to be delivered. Once your preferences are in place, the company will ship the ingredients for three meals every week, unless you notify them (at least one week in advance) that you will be skipping a week.

The packages contain recipe pages for the week's three dishes; ingredients and calorie counts are displayed on the front side of the page, and illustrated recipes are on the back. Underneath, encased in a layer of insulating materials and ice packs, are the actual ingredients. All of them are in little plastic bags with labels, in case someone can't recognize a particular ingredient (though I can't see anyone getting confused about what a carrot looks like).

When I've received shipments, the ice packs have seemed to work well, with the ingredients looking fresh. Everything is fairly densely packed into the box, and all the ingredients are precisely measured so you don't have anything left over after you've finished cooking.

 

So far, I've received two weeks' worth of meals. The first week, I made chicken sliders, kind-of made the grilled steak tacos (I basically rearranged the ingredients to make something simpler), and enlisted Nick's help to try and make corn and pea fritters. The second week, I made beef picadillo on my own, and made chicken with sautéed bulgur and heirloom tomato and Fontina sandwiches with Nick.

There has been one disaster; the corn fritters didn't quite turn out how they were supposed to. Otherwise, the meals have been good, and have forced me to try using, and eating, ingredients that I normally would shy away from. It's also nice to have the fresh ingredients to work with, though, on the other hand, it also means that the recipes involve quite a lot of chopping and preparing vegetables. I also like that the fresh ingredients are measured out, because it means I can make use of, and enjoy, fresh vegetables, and not worry about spare ingredients going to waste in the refrigerator later. In general, I've enjoyed the variety, as well as the opportunity to experiment and try meals that I end up liking but wouldn't have necessarily gravitated towards.

The shipments cost $60 per week for two people, or $10 per meal per person. I think it is sometimes worth the price, but can depend a bit on the circumstances. First, while it's good to experiment, there are some weeks where none of the meals seem to align with your taste, so it is better to skip rather than pay for food you won't like. In addition, it's not really practical to get a shipment unless you know that you'll be able to share at least two of the meals. With all the vegetable chopping and cleanup, the food is generally a bit time-consuming for a person to make on their own, particularly after the end of a workday. Beyond that, the price is a bit too high if you know half of the meals will end up as leftovers.

In general, I would recommend the service to interested people, and have personally been having fun with it, though I think there is room for improvement. Right now, you have to affirmatively "opt out" if you don't want a delivery on a given week; I think it would be nice to be able to change your preferences so you need to "opt in" to receive a delivery. There are periods where it usually won't make sense for me to get the meals delivered, so I'd rather not have to think about declining individual shipments from week to week or worry about getting charged for a series of meals I didn't want because I forgot to notify the company in time. And, while I don't know if this is actually feasible, it would be nice to have slightly more detailed preferences in terms of ingredients.

Notwithstanding any gripes, I hope, and expect, that I will continue to have fun using Blue Apron, and trying out new foods and cooking techniques. It's always valuable to experiment with something new.