Blue Apron - Chef Testing Meal Kits
Meal Kits are hailed as an easy, sometimes cheaper, alternative option to planning and cooking your own meals. But what’s the hype all about? I tested out a few popular ones to see. This is my review of Blue Apron.
Blue Apron
Oven-Baked hoisin Eggs & Rice
Let’s start with the Oven-baked hoisin egg & rice with mushrooms and snow peas. I found this dish to be really….well, weird.
I love all the components of this dish. Mushrooms are one of my favorite foods, hoisin is one of my favorite sauces, and I can crush a bag of snow peas in a matter of minutes. And while I thought this dish was creative, something about the mixture of flavors was just a bit off for me.
I did enjoy that the dish came with a pan to prepare everything in. There was no cutting or chopping needed so it really was a one pan dish. What made it better was that the dish could be recycled or reused. There was no food waste and that’s always a big plus for me.
The instructions were very clear and simple that I feel like a beginner cook could have prepared this with great ease.
Again, the flavor combination was just a big no for me so much so that I didn’t eat the whole portion of my half.
Vietnamese - Style Turkey Meatballs
Overall, this dish was easy to make and had no food waste. That’s basically all the positive things I have to say about this dish, though. Again, I enjoy the components of this dish but there was just something about the combination of flavors that did not work.
I often use ground turkey to make meatballs and meatloaf but this ground turkey had a very strong flavor that it overtook the meatballs and would not let you forget that you were eating turkey. I enjoyed the quick pickled flavor of the carrots and cucumber but then it was quickly lost when the dish was toped with a sweet chili sauce that was mixed with mayonnaise. This dish came across as just too busy for me when simplicity would have worked best for flavor.
Seared Chicken & Black Vinegar Pan Sauce
Scallions. Give me scallions all day long.
I liked this dish, overall. The instructions were easy to follow, the dish was not hard to prepare, and the flavors were good. I have never used Black Vinegar to make pan sauce before but am familiar with the flavor and love it. The pan sauce was a nice use of the black vinegar and I was relatively surprised to see it in use. I think this dish provides a good exposure to an ingredient that some people will go most of their life without ever having.
I do have a few notes on this dish however. First, I had about three mini bottles of rice vinegar and the black vinegar that were not recyclable. Secondly, the dish came with a chili pepper used as an option for the glazed carrots. I chose to use the chili pepper but found the spice of the pepper to be out of place with the dish. Third, and maybe my biggest issue with this dish, is that the pan sauce ended up being more butter than anything else as the black vinegar was soaked up by the scallion whites and garlic. Don’t get me wrong, I love butter, but I am not a big fan of just spooning flavored butter over my chicken. It felt wrong to type that especially since flavored butter is usually a large component in the preparation of my steaks. I stick by what I said though. Butter has a place among meats but not here with my chicken.
Moroccan - Style Chicken & Couscous
I know, I know. My picture isn’t the same as what Blue Apron shows. It was a long day and I misread what my instructions said BUT I will say that this dish still came out deliciously, even though I mixed my yogurt in with my harissa sauce. This wasn’t my favorite dish that I tested out with Blue Apron but it also wasn’t my least favorite. I am a big fan of couscous.
A couple of notes about this dish. I did not add in the dates as I have a problem with certain food textures. I also, obviously, mixed my yogurt and harissa sauce together so my plate isn’t as beautiful as the one Blue Apron put forward. Surprisingly, this dish yielded much less than what I expected from Blue Apron as all my other dish sizes I was pleased with. The couscous didn’t go far between two people and I was left wishing I had just a few more pieces of chicken.
The recipe was easy enough to follow but after a long day, it felt rather tedious. I am kind of wishing I saved an ‘easier’ dish for this day since I was having such a hard time.
In Summary
I was pleased with the amount of food the recipes yielded 3 out of 4 times.
I would have welcome more couscous or even protein.
The preparation instructions were clear and yielded good results.
While Blue Apron tried to explore with more flavors, it sometimes was hit or miss.
Half my dishes were good, the other half were kind of….weird…as far as flavors go.
With the introductory price, I ended up paying about $5.17 a serving.
There are print-out instructions as well as follow along instructions on the app.
With instructions in the app, it makes me wonder why I needed the extra paper for print-outs.
There was zero food waste.
There was no leftover food from food prep that I was expected to use on my own time.
The instructions were clear and easy to follow.
While everything was relatively simple, 3 out of the 4 dishes had more work than I expected while 1 dish had hardly no work.
