Blue Apron is a subscription meal delivery service. Every week, they send seasonal recipes created by their culinary team and the pre-measured ingredients you need to make them at home. For a limited time, they've collaborated with Chrissy Teigen to offer one of the meals from her book Cravings to the menu each week!
This is a review of the 2-person, 3-meal subscription plan ($9.99 per serving, or $59.94 per week). I normally cook for myself, but having meal kits delivered to my home has given me a way to lure friends over to help and enjoy the recipes with me. It's so much more fun with a buddy if you can spare one. No buddies? You'll have some leftovers then, so this doubles your value! In addition to their standard 2-Person subscription plan, Blue Apron also offers a Family Plan that features kid-friendly recipes and family-style meals for four.
My Subscription Addiction paid for this box. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes.)
About Blue Apron
The Subscription Box: Blue Apron
The Cost: You can choose from a 2 person plan or a family plan:
For the 2 person plan, it's $47.95 ($9.99 per serving + $7.99 shipping) for 2 meals per week or $59.94 ($9.99 per serving + FREE shipping) for the 3 meals per week.
Family plans start at $79.92 ($9.99 per serving + FREE shipping) for the 2 meals per week, $107.88 ($8.99 per serving + FREE shipping) for 3 meals per week, or $>143.84 ($8.99 per serving + FREE shipping) for 4 meals per week.
Limited Time Offer: Save $60 off your first month ($30 per box) with this link!
The Products: Fresh ingredients and recipes to make healthy meals at home.
Ships to: U.S. only
Blue Apron + Bob's Burgers Review
Blue Apron has partnered with Chef Alvin Cailan of famed Los Angeles restaurant Eggslut to bring one Bob's Burger inspired burger recipe per month. This was the first time it was available (with The Quantum of Salsa Burger), while The Gouda Wife Burger and The Absentee Shallot Burger are coming in August and September, respectively.
They recently redesigned their box to have a more traditional four flaps instead of a lid with two smaller flaps like before. The recipes are right on top and the first things you see as you open it up.
Blue Apron ingredients come packaged in a big silver cooler bag that's a lot like bubble wrap. Along with the plastic-wrapped ice packs in the box, the bubble wrap bag keeps the ingredients cool while they travel.
Now that it's getting hot outside, they've reconfigured how they pack their boxes. That's something I can appreciate!
A lot of the ingredients from Blue Apron come in bags, labeled, but you have to check out the recipe cards to know which meal they go to. Smaller items like butter or sauces come in a *recently updated plastic* "knick knack" bag so they don't get lost in the shuffle, and those are labeled with the meal name as well. I'm actually pretty stoked that they switched to plastic from brown paper because there was often leakage that got all over everything. The plastic bags are the same as the larger ingredients come in and recyclable as well.
Are you ready to see the recipes? Let's dig in!
Bob's Burger'sThe Quantum of Salsa Burger aka Cheeseburgers with Corn-Pepper Salsa
Calories per Serving (as prepared): 970 calories
Total Time According to Blue Apron: 35-45 minutes
Actual Time: 50 minutes
Though I've watched Bob's Burger and do enjoy it, I'm not as big a fan as some of my friends. However, I do know that there are always punny burger special names written on the chalkboard in the restaurant in the show several different times an episode, so I love that they've taken the names directly from the show for the recipe.
Since it's summer, you'll notice that Blue Apron has been including additional grilling instructions in a lot of their recipes, and this is one of them. I didn't want to fire up my charcoal grill but ended up using my favorite cooking vessel: a grill pan. This is also when it became very real that the side dish for this is onion rings: one of my mortal enemies. Let's see how it goes...
After prepping all of the vegetables (which isn't all that interesting to see photos of), breading the onion rings was the next task. I had three separate bowls out with the spice blend, a beaten egg with salt + pepper, and half the breadcrumbs. I took the onion rings I had carefully separated and placed them in the spice blend to coat, then into the egg, then into the breadcrumbs, trying my best to get everything to stick. I have to say that my track record with breading vegetables isn't that great, and I usually have trouble getting to be a professional job. I then placed the breaded onion rings on a baking sheet and was supposed to drizzle with olive oil but completely forgot before placing them in the oven for 15 minutes. We'll come back to that.
I received two ears of corn with this recipe that I had to cut the kernels off of which is one of my least favorite things to prep. No matter what, there are always kernels flying around my kitchen that I find days later behind something. Blue Apron smartly has a lot of technique videos included online and in one of them, the address the issue and suggest prepping corn on a larger baking sheet to cut down on the mess. Here, I put the freed corn kernels into a pan of oil to cook for 2-3 minutes (until browned).
While prepping I had reserved 1/4 of the onion to be chopped and I added them to the pan for another 2 minutes with salt + pepper.
Once everything was softened, they joined the peppers in a bowl of lime juice to marinate for at least 10 minutes (with more salt + pepper).
Meat time! The ground beef was placed into a bowl with the rest of the breadcrumbs and was mixed together, with salt + pepper and a lot of the provided chipotle chile paste.
I'm rather proud of the patties I formed here. They soon went into my pre-heated GRILL PAN!
Here, I basically follow the grilling directions although I'm technically am cooking them on the stove. I like my burgers on the rarer side, so I cooked them for 6 minutes on one side and 4 on the other. When I flipped them, I added the cheese and covered loosely with foil to get it all M E L T Y.
While I was cooking the burgers, the onion rings were done. Since I forgot to drizzle them in olive oil, they were on the dry side, but I swear to you that they tasted good anyhow. I must admit that even though I despise onions, these were way better than ones from a restaurant and I found them really mild and easy to eat.
The last thing I had to do was toast the buns, which I did on the still hot grill pan after the burgers were done.
Plating this one was easy! All I had to do was put the salsa on top and it was ready to go. I added a bit more on the side as well.
I found this to be really delicious and unexpected. I would never order something like this out but really enjoyed all of it. It was just a touch spicy due to the chile paste but juicy and the corn and peppers brought a real freshness to it. I even ate ALL of those onion rings. GASP. Who am I even?
Seared Steak & Garlic-Mashed Potatoes with Summer Vegetables
Calories per Serving (as prepared): 720 calories
Total Time According to Blue Apron: 35-45 minutes
Actual Time: 35 minutes
As always, I'm a sucker for meat and potatoes and even though I was already getting red meat via the burger, I couldn't resist this meal as well.
Hurray! More grilling instructions that I can use with my grill pan.
I prepped the veggies which was a breeze this time, and got a pot of salted water on the stove ASAP. Once it was boiling, I carefully added the large diced potatoes.
Once the potatoes were going, I added the halved grape tomatoes to a bowl with vinegar, red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper to marinate.
Next, I seasoned the steaks with salt + pepper on both sides and added a drizzle of olive oil.
To my pre-heated grill pan, I added those bad boys and let them cook for about 4 and half minutes on each side. Look at the gorgeous grill lines!
Buy these time, my potatoes were softened after boiling for about 15 minutes and I added the provided crema bel paese cheese, salt, pepper, and way more garlic than it called for. 🙂
Since I was using a grill pan instead of a normal non-stick one, I kept the quartered zucchini intact and added it to the pan. After about 3-4 minutes, I had these nice lines. I turned them 2 more times to get each side some "face time" with the pan.
While the zucchini cooked, I mixed the chopped up capers with the softened butter to make this great steak-topper.
Once the zucchini was done, I cut it into manageable pieces and added it to the bowl of marinating tomatoes and gave it a good stir.
I sliced the steaks (against the grain) as directed before plating this colorful meal and topped with the caper butter.
Holy moly, this was fantastic. I feel like I'm always saying that, but I truly thought this would be a run-of-the-mill meal and it turned out to have so many different textures and flavors that I was surprised. The tomatoes and zucchini tasted fresh and not overly vinegar-y, the caper butter on the perfectly cooked steak was scrumptious, and the mashed potatoes were some of my finest work in the field. I packed up the leftovers of this, fully excited to eat them again.
Verdict: Blue Apron knocked my socks off this week with two meals I was able to use on a grill or inside, and contained really fresh vegetables that made the red meat feel not so heavy. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the onion rings and the zucchini and tomato side dish for the steaks was so flavorful!
To Wrap Up:
Can you still get this box if you sign up today? This one is long gone, but if you want to try the next Bob's Burger recipe, you have until August 14th to order it for the week of August 20th!
Limited Time Offer: Save $60 off your first month ($30 per box) with this link!
COUPON – New customers, save $50 off your first two boxes! No code needed, just use this link
Value Breakdown: At $47.95 ($9.99 per serving + $7.99 shipping), you're paying $11.99 per serving.
Check out all of our Blue Apron Reviews and find other meal boxes in the Meal Subscription Box Directory!
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What do you think of the Blue Apron collaboration with Bob's Burger? Are you excited for more?
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