I love to cook but deciding what to cook is the hardest part for me. When I got an email for $30 off my first order, I decided to give Blue apron, the meal delivery service a try for 1 week (2meals, 2 servings each) I went online, picked my meals and set my reminder to cancel it after that week if I didn’t really love it. (Otherwise it auto renews) I week later I got the email that it had shipped.
I was off the day of delivery so I waited to hear a knock, but around 6pm, when I still hadn’t heard anything, I went online to check the status. I found out that the box had been sitting on my porch, in the direct sunlight, in 85 degree wether for 6 hours! Not thrilled FedEx! But that was more on the delivery company than the providers.
Since it had been sitting out so long, I was in a hurry to get the items in the fridge, but basically they were in a thermal wrap inside a box. On the bottom was a large ice pack (95% melted), then the ingredient@, then another ice pack, then the recipes. The pasta and the steaks had completely thawed from frozen.
Since the box was shipped overnight from Texas to Wisconsin in the middle of summer, I think they did the best they could. The ice packs said they were reusable, but if you get 2 every week, how many ice packs do you really need?
The steaks were the only meat in my order. They seemed a little small and really bloody, but tasted good. I was a little frustrated when I cooked bother in the same pan for the same amount of time and one came out medium (minimal pick) and the other came out rare (very pink).
I liked that the meals came labeled as to what ingredient went with which meal as well as being listed on the recipe to make sure you had everything.
So I followed the instructed and shucked & carved my corn, sliced my zucchini and diced my garlic (They sent about double the amount of garlic needed) while boiling my pasta.
I got a little stressed with some of the multitasking thin the recipe, but there was enough time to get it all done. Once cooked, I combined everything according to instructions. It turn out well but definitely could have used more sauce/cream.
The recipe called for a based of ricotta and the pasta and veggie mixture on top. Unfortunately I did not feel like there was enough ricotta to meet the pasta, but it still tasted fine without. I ended up getting 2 full meals out of it and an extra 2 side dishes out of the remaining to eat with another meal.
Unfortunately there was a lot of plastic that went into 1 meal dividing up all the materials. I would rather have seen a recyclable or comparable packaging, especially since the items are not preserved for long.
I also read the label on the ice pack which said 99% water. Well apparently that other 1% does not flush well. I ended up doing this to my sink trying to get it to drain out. It did go down eventually with a little help, but I definitely would not to that again.
In the end, the dishes did turn out very pretty and tasty, but I would not pay the $50 a week to get it again. The $17 that I paid with the coupon, maybe. But full price is just not worth it when you could get the recipe for free from them and buy the items at the grocery store for some much less.