It’s been virtually 5 years since we began utilizing Blue Apron as our major meal plan. Here are my ideas on a Blue Apron assessment, the professionals and cons, and why we maintain subscribing. Disclosure: This publish is sponsored by Blue Apron, however I’ve been a paying subscriber for years.
Putting a meal collectively night time after night time can usually really feel by no means ending. There are research that present how usually planning weekly meals can result in stressed households. Meal supply companies like Blue Apron take a load of the stress off your plate (ha!) by delivering the recipes and substances to the doorstep. The comfort doesn’t finish there: you’ll save time not having to go grocery purchasing, get the advantages of cooking at house, and have much less meals waste since you’ll use each ingredient in its entirety.
Blue Apron has remained my favourite meal supply service for years. I first tried it over 10 years in the past in 2014. Rather a lot has modified since then! While it began extra as a chef-inspired fancier meal expertise (good for a date night time in), as of late Blue Apron is the best versatile meal service for all sorts of individuals.
Having used Blue Apron for thus a few years, right here is my newest Blue Apron assessment publish together with the professionals and cons and the way we use it to save lots of us plenty of time! If you’re already able to strive it, get the most recent promo right here!
Blue Apron Review
What is Blue Apron?
Founded in 2012 in New York City, Blue Apron is a subscription-based meal package service that delivers recipes and substances proper to your door to prepare dinner at house. Their purpose is to make wholesome consuming and home-cooked meals straightforward and enjoyable. They attempt to supply the very best high quality substances and companion with farmers and sustainability specialists to make sure we’re getting REAL meals.
How does Blue Apron work?
The means of ordering via Blue Apron could be very straightforward and stress-free. First and foremost, be sure you subscribe utilizing my promo hyperlink! (You’ll save $80 throughout the primary 5 weeks of a brand new subscription proper now.) Also know that any choice you make, you possibly can change! Want to maneuver from 2 to 4 individual, swap your recipe varieties, or change what number of recipes you get every week? It’s all tremendous straightforward to do on-line or of their app. You may also simply skip every week in case you are touring or in any other case not in a position to prepare dinner that week.
1. Choose your most popular sort of meal
Choose between Meal Kit Recipes and the Prepared & Ready line (Note now you can combine and match these!!).
2. Select your recipe preferences
If you need to set-and-forget your recipes and have Blue Apron select them for you, you begin by choosing a method of recipe to deal with (Chef Favorites, Family Friendly, Fast and Easy, Vegetarian, and so forth.) But word you possibly can all the time select your personal recipes! If you neglect, they are going to select for you. The 15-minute meals are additionally persistently on our order as a result of they save a lot time with pre-cooked substances like pasta or meat. Blue Apron provides over 100 weekly choices.
3. Select your plan
Choose between 2 and 4 servings and in order for you 2, 3, 4 or 5 recipes per week. We all the time do the 4 serving and prepare dinner as soon as, eat twice! We additionally do two recipes per week for a complete of 4 nights of Blue Apron meals.
Once you set in all that data, the recipes and substances are shipped proper to your door. The recipe playing cards are very properly written and straightforward to observe. They’re value hanging onto for those who ever needed to recreate a sure meal in a while.
4. Choose recipes and add ons
Once you’re logged in and subscribed, you possibly can select your recipes for every week in addition to any add-ons you want for a small added price. They supply breakfast and lunch meals, soups, desserts, and additional proteins.
What are the Pros and Cons of Blue Apron?
Pros
Convenience
Blue Apron meal kits have saved us one million hours of time. Our meal plan is predictable and constant. Gathering recipes on the internet earlier than the grocery retailer run used to all the time be the toughest a part of meal planning for me, and recipe inconsistency could make cooking a bet. Blue Apron recipes are all the time so properly written, and in 5 years I haven’t had one “not work.”
Easy Grocery Trips
Since Blue Apron takes care of dinner, our grocery journeys are only for breakfast and lunch staples. This saves us a lot time since we all know the place all of the fundamentals are in our grocery retailer and might be out and in far more effectively. No extra trying to find oddball substances. For our last night time of cooking, we’ll plan one kid-friendly meal like do-it-yourself pizza or spaghetti.
Cook Once, Eat Twice
I like having a plan and having the ability to look forward and know what’s on the menu for every day. I divide into two chunks: prep and prepare dinner. I spend 20 minutes throughout the day to prep the greens and sauces and examine the recipe, and the opposite 10-20 minutes at dinnertime to execute the dish. Another means we maximize Blue Apron is to order the four-serving possibility and have it two nights in a row. It’s the last word time-saver as a result of not solely will we save on cooking time, however there are fewer dishes to wash on these nights, too.
I strategically plan our schedule across the longer “cook days” versus the times we all know we’ll be having the leftovers. On a leftovers night time, we’d have a late gymnasium class, one in all us out in town, or child soccer follow.
Variety
My trustworthy opinion: Blue Apron recipes are high notch! There is all the time an additional layer of taste/sauce/topping that I wouldn’t have thought so as to add if I have been simply throwing substances collectively. They are continuously including new recipes to their assortment, so we by no means get bored (however we do repeat our favorites typically!).
Portion Size
The portion sizes from Blue Apron are good for us. Often we can get a fifth meal out of the 4 serving package if Mazen likes what we’re cooking (Maybe Birch will get pleasure from grownup meals when he’s 40 
). When we’ve tried different meal package firms, I didn’t discover the parts to be so plentiful. Often there was a vegetable or carb lacking. Blue Apron’s recipes are very properly balanced with veggies, carbs, and protein in each recipe.
Cons
Price
The common Blue Apron price is $9.99 a recipe. You are paying a bit extra for the comfort and no, it’s not as low cost as meal planning from bulk. But what you fork over (ha!) in {dollars}, you achieve in hours of time. What is your time value? For us, the service is properly value the fee. And it’s positively cheaper than takeout and more healthy than quick meals.
Packaging
This con goes to be unavoidable with any meals subscription service. Since the substances come within the mail on an ice pack, there may be packaging to recycle. Plus the little containers the substances are available. However, Blue Apron has actually tried to plan this with sustainability in thoughts, and when packaging might be minimized and recyclable, it’s. I re-use the packing containers on a regular basis for a Goodwill run or pal needing to maneuver.
Local-ish
Living in Virginia, we’re surrounded by native farms, vineyards, breweries, and so forth. And we all the time attempt to store and eat native every time we are able to to help our fellow Virginians. So ordering from Blue Apron clearly received’t can help you store regionally. However, Blue Apron does work with small farmers and meals suppliers, like Vermont Creamery, Sun Noodle, Reeves Farms, and Rumi Spice. So you possibly can know you’re nonetheless supporting small enterprise.
Is Blue Apron value it?
A powerful YES. We’ve been utilizing Blue Apron for years now and wouldn’t proceed to be paying subscribers if it wasn’t! It has actually simplified our family routines, and the brand new 15 minute meal possibility has been a recreation changer for making dinner even quicker than if we have been planning all of it from scratch.
We nonetheless get pleasure from cooking different artistic meals on our 5/sixth nights, and we positively order much less takeout then we did earlier than Blue Apron started. If there’s a Blue Apron meal within the fridge, we aren’t permit to exit, so we’ve simply saved cash on takeout over time.
Check out some extra of my Blue Apron weblog posts and Reels!
Still not satisfied? Check out this publish, the place Blue Apron goes head-to-head with different meal package service firms like Hello Fresh and Green Chef.