A few weeks ago we were blessed to receive a free week of Blue Apron thanks to a friend’s referral. I thought that I would write a little review here on the blog in case any of you have been wondering about it and wanting to know more. Just so you know, this post is not sponsored by Blue Apron in any way.
So, if you’ve never heard of Blue Apron, they are a food subscription service. If you are a subscriber, every week you receive a box of fresh ingredients in the mail along with instructions for making three meals (or two, or four, depending on your subscription.)
I was super excited when our box arrived. I felt like it was Christmas haha! I was impressed with how everything in the box was kept nice and cold… definitely didn’t need to worry at all about the food going bad.
It was fun unboxing it all. I loved how it was all packaged so cute haha. And I loved that the recipe pages were very thorough in their instructions and even included pictures. So cool.
We received ingredients for three meals: one with steak, one with chicken, and one with shrimp. Yum!
Our first meal, the steak, was our favorite by far. We made it exactly according to the recipe. It was fun using some ingredients that we’d never even heard of before. The onions on top of the steak were the perfect touch and we really enjoyed both sides. Seriously so delicious.
On the chicken meal we deviated a bit because the potato salad and colesaw did not sound good to either of us haha. Some people love the stuff but not us. Anyway, we made the chicken according to the recipe (super good by the way!) and used the potatoes to fry up some yummy hash browns. Oh, and added our own salad. We were quite pleased with our meal.
The final meal, a shrimp pasta dish, was our least favorite. As a disclaimer, I ended up making it the following week so I had to leave out an ingredient or two that had gone bad. 🙁 That was not Blue Apron’s fault … I’m just really terrible about letting vegetables go bad in my fridge! Anyway, we enjoyed the shrimp but weren’t raving fans of the pasta sauce that went with it.
So, should YOU try Blue Apron? Here are my thoughts:
Blue Apron is for you if . . .
You already spend extra on organic, grass-fed, etc.
At about 60 bucks for three two-person meals, Blue Apron is not cheap. However, Crystal from Money Saving Mom compared Blue Apron’s prices with a regular store’s prices for comparable organic items and found them to be only a few dollars different. Add in the convenience of Blue Apron being shipped to your door and it may be worth it to you!
You want to branch out in your cooking
A lot of Blue Apron’s meals use ingredients I don’t normally have on hand. I thought it was really fun to try out some new recipes and use different ingredients than what I’m used to.
You want to save time shopping
It’s really convenient to have your meal ingredients all show up at your door, super fresh and ready to go in your fridge. I know it would’ve taken me a lot of time to shop for all those items, particularly the ones I wasn’t familiar with.
Blue Apron probably isn’t for you if . . .
You have a tight grocery budget
I like to try to spend about $60 TOTAL for a week’s worth of groceries, so 60 bucks for three meals just isn’t in our budget. Like, not at all.
You have little kids
Okay, this totally may just be me, but I say this because 1) it’s hard making a brand new recipe with hungry little kids under foot and 2) they’re probably not going to like it anyway. 😉
BUT if you have little kids and you still want to give it a go, one idea would be to feed your kids first and then have fun making your fancy new meal together later once the kids are down for bed. We did that for our second meal and had such a fun time!
All in all, a Blue Apron subscription isn’t a fit for us in our stage of life right now but we thoroughly enjoyed giving it a try!
Have you tried Blue Apron? Did you like it? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below! 🙂
