I decided to give Blue Apron a shot

Use it 4 meals a week. Great stuff and never have to worry about what we are making.

Add more garlic than it calls for.
Doctor up the spaces...some of the recipes are for Midwestern palates.

quote:

---

Hello Fresh is equally good. Anything that calls for garlic, they already have the garlic peeled for you. That's a nice little help.

---

sold

So I've been a Blue Apron/Plated/etc skeptic since I first learned of the service. I'm just back from visiting a very very busy urban dweller friend who uses Blue Apron. She got a delivery while I was there & prepared one meal for us....and I understand the appeal for a certain sort of consumer, I guess. I sampled a baked pasta dish, whole wheat rigatoni w cabbage/potato/cheese. It was fine....but definitely on the bland side. Photo instruction card had an odd ordering of steps--onion was only cooked until translucent, not browned enough to add any oomph, garlic wasn't sweated w/onion, so it made little impact in the dryish baked dish. No real seasoning to speak of beyond the cheese flavor (dish would have benefitted from some nutmeg, for sure, or a hit of red pepper and some acid, some color contrast; it would have been legitimately delicious if a small amount of smoked pork of some sort had been browned w/the onions & garlic & cabbage).

The photo recipe cards give just enough info to get you through the recipe---you're not gonna learn any brilliant technique or even gain much understanding of why certain ingredients are paired, or how/why the particular cooking technique is chosen for the ingredients in question. Nor will you encounter anything to offend a finicky palate.
I was surprised by the ingredients' quality; I expected the stuff to look more beat up. All of it was tidily packaged & labeled, in case you're too ignorant to recognized grated parmesan or rigatoni.

As revenge for teasing my friend about her farmers' market shopping habit juxtaposed w/her Blue Apron reliance, she sent me a free box. So I'll get a free box week after next, and we'll see if my average cook better half likes it (he can cook if instructed, but isn't much on planning). My friend thinks it saves her money, as it eliminates food waste....I was raised to eat everything & improvise w/leftovers & trimmings, so I don't throw out much food. I find it expensive, compared to the average sort of weeknight meals prepared in my household. Admittedly, I'm not the target market for this stuff. My elderly, non-driving mother might give it a whirl, as it offers small portion sizes, convenience, and variety.

Indie Plate has pre-assembled meals. Plus, it's all local food. I did Blue Apron for a couple months, and (personally) I think indie plate wins hands down.

Isnt this super expensive?

quote:

---

I like Blue Apron but a lot of the meals are high in calories and have to be heavily modified to meet my diet, which kind of defeats the purpose..so I stopped using it. Plus it's a bit on the expensive side

---

same here. wife and i are very strict with our diet, so we enjoy cooking and knowing what we are putting in our food to adjust the calories, etc.

My family has been using 'Hello Fresh' for a few weeks now and really like it. I work two jobs and my wife works 50+ hours a week.

The meals are easy to put together, they are under seasoned as the recipe is written, and the variety is nice (even if our kids don't eat all of them).

THEN I get our box for this week... Shrimp packaged in NYC and 'Honey Orange Chicken Jambalaya' ( ) in the same box.