Last Updated on March 27, 2015 by Karen
Cooking a healthy dinner from start to finish can be a challenge. I have to admit to feeling brain-dead most of the time comes 7pm, let alone finding a recipe or thinking of what to cook with ingredients I may or may not have on hand. The worst scenario is peering inside the fridge and realize that the ingredients together can barely make up a meal. Also, there’s only two of us at home so it’s easy to resort to ordering takeout when we’re hungry.
If you’re looking for a little change of pace in your kitchen and at the dinner table, Blue Apron might be your ticket!
Each week, you receive a box of fresh, pre-measured ingredients (kept fresh with ice packs and insulated packaging) which allows you to cook three well-balanced meals. You can select the proteins when you place the order for the following week (vegetarian meals are available also) depending on your food preferences. I choose Monday between 3:30pm and 10pm as my delivery time slot since it works best with my work schedule.
Here are the three meals I received:
Hanger Steaks and Roasted Potatoes with Sauteed Long Beans and Tomato (not pictured)
This was definitely the winner for us. At first I was a bit concerned that the steaks were smaller than what I would usually get at the grocery store, but we ended up feeling comfortably satiated, and not stuffed. It was my first time cooking with long beans, and I’m pretty sure the vegetable will certainly be making more appearances in our kitchen.
Chicken Patties with Tomatos and Romano Beans
The ground chicken was lean and fresh, and the herbs added heaps of flavor, but this was my least favorite of the three meals mostly because of the side dish. I had never tried Romano beans before, so I didn’t really know if I’d like them or not. I just wasn’t too crazy about the texture.
Salmon Burgers with Corn on the Cob
I was going to switch out this dish, but decided to give it a try at the last minute. I’m the only one who can eat fish (James is allergic) so I made this on an evening when James had to work night shift, saving the other salmon patty for lunch the next day. I’d make fish patties with canned salmon or tuna, but never with fresh salmon, so I wasn’t sure how fine to chop up the salmon. I ended up leaving them coarsely chopped, and thankfully, the breadcrumbs held it all together. Actually the burgers turned out really well!
What I enjoyed most about this experience was that I could simply cook the recipes using ingredients that someone else had planned and shopped for. It is a great way to try new recipes without a lot of frustration hunting down ingredients or having unused leftover ingredients.
You have to unpack and sort the box of ingredients, matching it to the printed recipes so you know what goes to make what. It’s a bit of a process to cross-check the list of ingredients on each of the recipe cards and I wish the ingredients are clearly labeled with the recipe they belong to. I guess it was a coincidence, but tomatoes were used in all three meals and I couldn’t figure out which was for which!
By the way, their recipe cards are well-presented and easy to read (printed on full color with photos for those who are visual learners).
I also appreciate the fact that the ingredients are well portioned, eliminating any waste. In fact, we got our meal box right before we went out of town for vacation, and it was the perfect timing — I’m glad that we didn’t have any leftover food ingredients in the fridge! I would imagine that the meal boxes would be especially helpful when coming back from a vacation to an empty fridge.
Want to try out Blue Apron for yourself? Blue Apron is offering an exclusive deal for The Tasty Bite readers! First 50 readers to sign up through this link gets 30% off their first Blue Apron box.
