Meals at your doorstep

A friend of mine gifted me a free week of Blue Apron meals not too long ago.  In case you're not familiar, their service delivers the exact amount of ingredients you need to make delicious recipes throughout the week.  Their slogan is "Blue Apron Makes Cooking Fun & Easy." Services like this come and go and I assumed that Blue Apron was a sham with low quality ingredients made for people who were too lazy to shop and cook.  I stand here today to say that I am wrong.  I've found myself in a cooking rut recently where I come home after work/yoga/spinning and stare at the fridge like a meal will miraculously appear.  Thanks to Blue Apron, in this case it did and I really enjoyed it!

After signing up, they let you pick the meals based upon your dietary restrictions and then they magically arrive on your doorstep in a cooler on the day of your choosing.  We chose the plan which sent us three meals - shrimp, chicken and veggie based - and they arrived in one box with ice packs and recipes cards for each meal.  It was fun to open the box of goodies which were perfectly measured and labeled.  The first meal we made was Shrimp Pineapple Fried Rice.

The instructions were easy to follow and the recipe required chopping a few things like the carrot, scallions, and garlic. I let the rice boil while I sauteed the veggies with the shrimp and pineapple.  

Once the shrimp was opaque and the veggies were soft, I added the soy sauce and Salbal Oelek and sauteed until the sauce thickened. Then the recipe called to add the rice and it made the meal seem more like a stir fry than a fried rice.  While the meal was delicious, the rice wasn't as crispy as I anticipated.

I will say that this recipe was definitely the one with the least amount of effort involved. The other two recipes required much more chopping and multiple pots and pans.  A friend and I were talking about it and we decided that Blue Apron is great for people who love to cook and try new recipes.  If you don't like knives, the act of chopping or waiting for 30 minutes or more for your meal, then Blue Apron is not for you.  Also, part of it felt wasteful since as you'll see in my picture, everything comes packaged in individual bags or containers. On the flip side, if you don't like to shop and buy a package of twelve carrots, a pound of cashews, and the spicy sauce Salbal Oelek, then it's perfect since you won't have these extra ingredients sitting in your fridge or pantry for eons. 

Blue Apron's service is fantastic and while I am not sure we'll continue it (because I love to grocery shop and pick my own recipes), I can see why people rave about it. Cooking is cooking and regardless of how your ingredients make their way into your kitchen, meals deserve to be enjoyed!  Sidenote: we've given a week of meals as gifts for weddings, new houses, and holidays and gotten yummy reviews.  Highly recommend if you're looking for a gift idea!