Wally's Blue Apron Experience

For Christmas, Wally got a subscription to Blue Apron from one of his cousins. Blue Apron, for the few of you who might not know, is a service that delivers ingredients and recipes to your home for you to cook. I've always been interested in what one of those meal delivery services looked like so Wally brought a box over and we cooked a two meals.

The food came in this box and was inside an insulated sleeve with ice in the bottom. It was well packed and everything was appropriately cold.

These were the box contents, ingredients for three meals.

Each meal came with a recipe card with a description of the dishes on the front along with a list of ingredients.

And the back had detailed instructions for every meal preparation.

Everything was provided except salt, pepper, and olive oil for sauteing. 

First, all of the vegetables were cleaned and chopped.

Then the cooking began. The steak was cooked in the skillet.

And the potatoes were roasted in the oven.

After the steak was done, mushrooms and shallots were cooked in the same skillet. After they were browned, balsamic vinegar was added.

Then the only mishap of the day occurred. The garlic, that was browning in some ghee, burned. At that point, there were two things cooking at the same time and Wally got a little overwhelmed. However he was able to recover and cook the kale with special cheese sauce minus the burnt garlic.

Ta-Da! Dinner is served.

So what did we think? First some background. Wally is not a cook. He has some experience in the kitchen, but doesn't like to cook. He's happy with a spoon and jar of peanut butter for supper, or sometimes a simple rice and bean dish involving a rice cooker and some cans. Actually, pretty good nutrition that he is very happy with. Repetition is not a problem for him.

He cooked this meal entirely by himself. The only help I provided was to occasionally help him find a pan or spoon he needed. It took him about an 1 1/2 hours from start to finish. An experienced cook, would have been able to do it faster, but there were a lot of steps to do including a lot of chopping that would take time no matter what the experience level.

By the time he was done, Wally was totally frazzled. Getting everything cooked and ready at the same time at the end was very stressful for him. However, he was pleased with the results. The whole family tried the meal and everyone thought it was good.--very flavorful. Ward said it was the best kale he's ever had. There were a couple of grizzly pieces in the meat, but overall not bad.

After that meal was completed, Wally and I together prepared another one, Beef over Zaatar-Spiced Rice. This one was a little easier to prepare and was also very tasty. This was the preferred one between the two.

Wally decided that Blue Apron was not for him. Too much work. However, he said that it was a good service because the ingredients were of high enough quality and the instructions were detailed enough that a non-cook like him could produce a tasty meal.

This weekend we're going to try some more Blue Apron meals here. Those are coordinated with Weight Watchers and I am very curious what those will be like.

Note: As for cost, I think Blue Apron meals are expensive. They were $10 per person per meal. A good price for nice restaurant quality food but could certainly be done cheaper if you did the planning and shopping yourself. But if you like to cook, it might be a fun way to spend a date night. Or if you like to cook, but don't have the time and energy to do the planning and shopping, this might be a good thing.

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