I dropped them for two reasons after using them for nearly a year. First, these meals actually take longer to prepare and way longer to clean up after than what I normally make. The food is very good, but the instructions are written by someone who (a) seems to have a gourmet kitchen at their disposal and (b) doesn't do dishes after. No, I am not going to chop all six veggie ingredients into six separate bowls, just to combine them in the next step. Also, I'm not going to chop everything up front just to realize that the garlic goes in at the last step for 30 seconds before the dish is ready.
The second was an issue I had repeatedly with the meat and fish ingredients: I had several weeks where meat/fish packaging was open when I got the shipment and the contents went bad. I emailed them every time, but at some point I got tired of having to immediately go to the grocery store to find the right quantity of pork or cod or whatever to complete the meal.
Realistically, their 35 minute meals always took me closer to an hour once all was said and done. There almost never were any leftovers (yeah two medium sized sweet potatoes don't go too far for four people). Finally, the price was just a little too high.
I keep a few of the recipe cards and try to make those once in a while, but mostly I am just back to regular grocery shopping now.
I liked Matt Levine's opinion on Blue Apron yesterday:
>Here is my theory, though: Blue Apron is a tech company in the sense that its product is not meals, or ingredients, but simulacrum. What it delivers is the idea of creating a home-cooked meal from fresh ingredients, without the tedious shopping and chopping work that that would otherwise require. What Blue Apron delivers is not exactly convenience -- ordering takeout is a lot more convenient -- but the perception that you are doing something complicated and real and primal while you are actually, through the miracle of technology, doing something much easier. Blue Apron is a virtual-reality company.
These quotes make for a nice dramatic effect, but the reality is much simpler:
Cooking & cleaning is a much bigger time investment than shopping for ingredients. In 10 minutes in a grocery store I can buy enough food for 10-15 meals, which would take hours to cook (in aggregate). The comparison stands even when you include driving to the store (before any pedants try to be contrarian)
Blue Apron is optimizing the smaller part of the time pie required for eating, but at a higher cost than delivery (that optimizes the larger part of the pie for less money, usually)
That's why takeout is a decades-proved business model and Blue Apron is a VC-subsidized non-business.
> In 10 minutes in a grocery store I can buy enough food for 10-15 meals
In the universe I inhabit there's no way that's true. I spend a great deal of time in the grocery store just finding things, then looking at the choices to figure out what's the best deal / doesn't contain Yellow #5 / isn't expired already and on and on.
Oh and...add to that the time to phone the wife to find out if when she wrote "Onion" on the list did that mean Yellow Onion or White Onion or Red Onion or Sweet Wallah Wallah Onion or Scallion and how many of them...
Well, yes, of course it assumes that, because providing value to the customer should be somewhere in the business model.
If it's not, it'll eventually become a non-business.
1. There's nothing that suggests the ingredients are less common. But if you're a Blue Apron user, feel free to list some of the ingredients you were not able to find at a grocery store.
1.5: you can learn new recipes 10 different ways already, without having to subscribe to any "X as a service".
2. Nothing that suggests an average person can cook better or faster than takeout, which suggests the takeout provides value to the customer.
My comment was saying that you're assuming time-saving is the only value, and was pointing out that's not true. I'm even willing to believe it might be the most important source of value by a long shot -- I wasn't arguing against your conclusion; I was pointing out an assumption made by the argument you stated.
Regarding 1. It's not that the ingredients are less common per se. It's that using BA means that people ended up using some less commonly used ingredients. They were introduced to new things that they hadn't used before and wouldn't have sought out on their own. They liked that.
Regarding 1.5 - obviously, but the thing is there is greater convenience (that some ppl prefer) with not having to select the recipes, get the ingredients, portion them out. For some people that different in convenience makes the difference between whether they do it or not. So treating this issue as if it was purely a matter of whether it was possible or not doesn't make sense.
Regarding 2, I have heard people say they have been able to make high quality meals that they wouldn't usually have made that are better than most takeaway.
3 is most definitely relevant, because it's an example of a non-speed-based kind of value it provides to some people - getting the kind of meal they would only otherwise get at a restaurant but at home. Most takeaway can't do that.
There was previously a free website called notakeout.com, which has since gone under (there's currently something else on the domain that's completely unrelated).
What they did was provide daily dinner recipes for fancy-restaurant type meals, with instructions, wine pairing, and shopping list. If you're an omnivore, you could simply print the day's page, stop at the grocery store on the way home, and cook whatever it was.
It seems to me that this represents about 80% of the value of Blue Apron at no cost (I think they had a for-pay email service, or something?).
It depends on your type of grocery store -- maybe gourmet stores carry things like freekah (a type of African grain) and odd varieties of fruit (like Meyer lemons), but I hadn't even heard of these things before joining Blue Apron. It's not a perfect service -- I agree with other posters saying the instructions could be made better, but I've found it quite educational.
> What it delivers is the idea of creating a home-cooked meal from fresh ingredients, without the tedious shopping and chopping work that that would otherwise require.
Clearly, he's never used Blue Apron, since they have you do the chopping work.
> What Blue Apron delivers is not exactly convenience -- ordering takeout is a lot more convenient -
Takeout requires me to leave my house; that is often less convenient than Blue Apron.
Delivery is arguably more convenient, though where I live the non-pizza choices without hefty delivery fees on top of restaurant prices are limited.
Leave the bars when they close at 2:00 a.m and take an Uber home; call UberEATS for McDonald's because you're too drunk to drive. I don't know if it's true or not; but, my local McDonald's does a lot of UberEATS business between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m.
it's a lot. most restaurants will deliver for free (if you're in their radius, and order above a minimum $ threshold) and you can optionally tip the driver a buck or two if you feel like it. $5 is a lot considering the competitors costs (basically $0).
Couldn't the same kind of argument be made about buying ingredients from the grocery store to make meals?
"What making meals from store-bought ingredients delivers is not exactly convenience -- ordering takeout is a lot more convenient -- but the perception that you are doing something complicated and real and primal while you are actually, through the miracle of technology, doing something much easier [than harvesting your vegetables, slaughtering and butchering your own animals, grinding your own flour, etc]"
I don't butcher my own animals, but I do purchase half a cow in the fall from a local farmer here in Idaho. In the end it comes out to roughly $6 a pound for grass fed beef. Much cheaper than the grocery store since grass fed ground beef is $6 a pound. I also do that with a pig (whole, $750 total after butchering fees) and chickens (not economical, but tastes better). I also get to see the animals as they grow and are fed when I visit. More time consuming but I know exactly how the animals are treated and fed.
When I grew up in India, we didn't have "supermarkets" to process food, we would go to a market which had butchers, fishmongers etc. The butchers usually had live chickens that they would slaughter right in front of you. I believe they use the halal method where they slit the throat of the chicken and then put it in a box. The chicken knows whats happening when its fetched from the overcrowded cage, so it cries a very loud, pitiful scream.... that caused me much alarm as a little kid to hear it scream in pain :( :( :(.
Depends what you're dealing with - plenty of things like cakes are weirdly cheaper for me to buy than to buy the ingredients for.
Preservation matters - the cutting up of vegetables for meal kits is a form of processing that reduces their shelf life, and therefore increases cost and waste.
Well, there is buy in bulk and sell at a cheaper price than it takes to buy a limited amount of ingredients and prepare. I mean that's economics 101. The preservatives are really just to extend shelf life but you find that a lot of places are just going preservative free as much as possible.
Actually probably not. You have to get the wheat (or grow it/harvest it) and then raise the animal/butcher it, save the excess. Will you eat everything before it spoils or otherwise goes bad?
The thing I hate most about Blue Apron is the fact that their recipes are written like a novel. No one needs paragraphs of text to cook a chicken. Recipes have always been step-by-step numbered. Instead, Blue Apron crams 20 different steps into 3 sentences and calls it “Step 1.” When you’re moving back and forth between the stove, fridge, and where you have the recipe, it’s impossible to figure out where you left off without re-reading.
I used Blue Apron for a while, and didn't have quality issues but the meals were definitely a hassle. I got fed up with every recipe requiring that I pick tiny leaves off tiny herb stems. I don't have a sous-chef to dump that kind of stuff onto!
After I quit Blue Apron, I tried Hello Fresh. Their recipes were a lot simpler to follow, and tasted just as good, but I had serious quality issues. By the time I quit, I determined that 11% of the meat packages I had received were punctured, and started leaking when they defrosted. If the punctures happened after they were frozen and sealed they were probably safe to eat, but I had no way of knowing that.
The benefit is that the ingredients that are already in the pan aren't being overcooked or burned while you're busy chopping the other ones; that's a concern that "normal people" have.
The tradeoff is dishes; sometimes you can get around this by just using a giant cutting board and setting pre-chopped ingredients off to one side of it (instead of in separate bowls).
The problem is not mise en place itself, that is important to not burn or overcook various ingredients, it is that they have you mise en place _everything_ when you might be taking 3 of those ingredients and putting them into a bowl. That's a waste of time and dishes.
Just say: chop these 3 things and add them to the same bowl you are going to marinate next
For the recipes that I cook multiple times I have figured out optimal pan/bowl management, including reusing dirty bowls or pans if it doesn't hurt. For example for rice pudding I whip the egg whites in the bowl that will be used to store the final pudding, saving 1 bowl. IMO recipes should include a bowl/pan strategy, as well as a time management strategy to interleave steps (e.g. whip the egg whites while the rice is boiling).
I read the entire recipe through once to get a feel for what I must do before cooking and what I can delay. This hasn't proven to be an issue for me. Even if you just make it as-written, you're killing what, an extra 5-10 minutes? I pour a nice glass of wine or a beer and turn the cooking into a fun experience instead of viewing it as a waste of time.
This applies to any recipe, though? It's not hard to just read the next step, especially when every ingredient name is in bold. Hell, it never even actually says to put things in individual bowls.
I dunno, I've followed many where they explicitly tell you to put in same mixing bowl. Things are written in a more logical order.
> It's not hard to just read the next step
It's not always the next step, sometimes its one of the last as its a raw salad of some sort with a quick marinade or simple dressing.
> Hell, it never even actually says to put things in individual bowls.
On every recipe they provide you it is formatted with picture on left and steps on the right. Every recipe prep shows individual bowls of cut ingredients.
So it may not _say_ to put them in individual bowls but it always shows you you should put them in individual bowls.
It's a minor gripe the original poster had (and I share) you shouldn't have to study the recipe. It's not hard to just say cut up x,y,z and place into same mixing bowl. I want to pull out all the ingredients and start cooking and do my best to meet their advertised time, not spend more time planning their recipe.
I'm sure many people have made the same mistake, pictures speak a 1000 words after all.
Or just read ahead and figure out what you can and should not pipeline. When I see I need to cook rice for 20 mins I know that I can wait to chop the garnish
When I make a recipe I like, I've gotten in the habit of rewriting it with consideration for minimizing time and dishes preparing. Like, if I know the meat has to brown for a few minutes before adding garlic+ginger+peppers, I'll say to start browning meat, then chop g+g+p together. Or if I know vinegar needs to be used in three different mixes, I'll start a bowl of each mix at the time vinegar is first needed so I only need to worry about it once.
It's good to write this yourself since you work it into your head...and also because such instructions could appear a bit batshit if you didn't write them!
I also cleanly distinguish the "shopping list" part of the recipe (which has it's own standard structure organized by pantry, fresh, spices, and unique ingredients) and the "cooking" part, which provides measurements in the cooking text without needing to refer to the ingredient list. It's a small thing, but I really hate scanning ingredient lists every time I need a measurement in the middle of cooking.
In the example given, the ingredients were immediately combined into one bowl, at the same time, in the next step. No French philosophical doctrine justifies that.
That's just not true. Normal people who understand and utilize this concept turn out meals much faster and much better than the ones who do not. It does take time to get it - but when it does it just clicks.
To expand on this: It helps with timing things (no need to rush to chop something) and also helps ensure you're organized and have all of your ingredients.
I agree with you. I used them off and on over 3 months and our family had a similar assessment.
We chose the 2 person meal plan because if our (even if nutritionally adventurous) 5 & 7 year olds didn't like the meal, we didn't want way too much leftovers. I'm the only person who has any dedication to leftovers (lunch about 3 times a week).
Portion wise, it felt like 2 person meal plan was usually ok for 3 adults so we'd often supplement with an extra chicken breast or something and spread the sauce thin.
Nutritionally, if felt like a TON of SALT & OIL. Mind you, it's not always bad thing, but I'm currently trying to keep my blood pressure, A1C, HDL, & LDL numbers in check and this always felt like it was harmful to that goal though I didn't check and measure if it was. I did lose weight however, on those weeks which is an odd dichotomy maybe.
In terms of recipe selection, sometimes, it felt like the recipes were just one or two minor ingredients off from being copies of a previous recipe. It did change the flavor, but for me, is that really a different recipe?
I too also had issues with the produce. Bad garlic, bad potatoes, etc.
And yes, there was the cost. $60/week felt just a little high to do that much of the work yourself as well as all of the clean up.
My wife is a one pan/pyrex/crockpot kind of cooker (and she did a stint in cooking school!). I'm more adventurous with the techniques, cooking styles, and willing to try foods of other origins. But, like IgorPatola mentioned, sometimes, specifying early on that you need so many prep dishes and/or X more are recommended, would be a huge help to the clean up part of the process or doing some pre-planning.
> but I'm currently trying to keep my blood pressure, A1C, HDL, & LDL numbers in check
For that you may also explore a vegan diet, though you do need to continue to be aware of salt and oil in recipes, but in general avoiding avoiding mal products goes a long way
I've not used Blue Apron, but I recently cancelled Hello Fresh for these exact same reasons. Interesting business model, but I think Blue/Fresh will be out of business within the next year or two.
I've been a happy user of the service for about a year. I've never had any problems with missing or poorly packaged ingredients, but have had shipping delays maybe once every six weeks or so, often resulting in a refund.
At any rate, wanted to point out that they recently expanded the number of meals you can choose from in a given week and introduced new "faster to prepare" meal options, so they are definitely listening to that criticism. Note that I haven't tried any of these.
Meanwhile I've found that what helps a lot on cutting down extraneous dishes is just to read the entire recipe card a couple of times before starting so I know what's coming up and which steps can be cut down or combined to save dishes. It also helps to make the whole thing go quicker and feel less stressful during time sensitive portions.
Fwiw I find their meals take me less time just because left to my own devices I tend to make more complicated affairs.
However your comment about preprepping everything, aka mise en place, actually does improve your cooking experience in the long run once you get used to doing it. Sure some things you can multitask on but it's not always possible to say how long it'll take you to chop up that garlic and maybe you timed it wrong
Anecdotally I disagree with mise en place. Chopping all the things and then putting them in a separate bowls to be used later has never been faster for me than chopping things as I need them and throwing them into a pan that is already cooking the thing I just chopped.
I theorize that all recipes are written with mise en place in mind because many recipe writers have experience in the restaurant world and that is how things are done there. There is a prep time to chop everything before the busy times and then when orders come in they can quickly fire all the chopped ingredients, so the actual cook time to table is fast when time is most important but the overall time is slower, but it does matter because the prep time occurs when people are not waiting for food.
Again this is all theory and I could be super wrong.
You're absolutely correct that a true mise en place, for most dishes, is more of a hyperoptimization for people who aren't cooking on a line. Things like quick stir fries are an exception, mind you.
I started, as most people do, prepping as I go. My cooking sucked. Not just because I prepped as I went, but partially so. I'd get to step 3 and see for step 4 I needed chopped onions, so I'd start chopping onions. But step 3 was supposed to cook for less time than it took me to chop onions, so step 3 went on too long. In this sense, a full mise en place helped me get better at the actual cooking parts.
As time went on I developed better cooking habits. I'd understand the full recipe prior to cooking. I had a better body of experience to estimate how long chopping those onions would take so I could plan ahead on if I should be doing it ahead of time or while some step < 4 was going on. I also had a better conception of the economies of scale in that perhaps it would be faster prepping items A, B, and C at the same time instead of separately but item D didn't matter.
Once you get to that point I think you're absolutely correct in that a hybrid model is better overall, but I think one needs to go the full mise en place route first to develop better cooking chops (pardon the pun) prior to going that route.
I agree with many of your points. I didn't have an issue with the time or complexity - I cook most nights and spend a lot of time doing it so this wasn't an issue.
My biggest problems were that #1 it's expensive relative to what I would pay to buy my own ingredients (especially for no leftovers), and #2 a lot of waste in the process. Specifically regarding waste, a lot of extra shipping packaging and each individual item is often individually wrapped in plastic. I get that they might not have any easy choices, but it seemed excessive and after a while it didn't sit well with me.
At the end of the day, I view this as an occasional luxury and not an everyweek thing like they want it to be. It's considerably more sustainable to go to the local farmer's market and grocer to pick up healthy, locally-grown produce and meats that are fresher and cheaper.
The recipe cards are by far the best part and I will give them a lot of credit for crafting some real tasty meals. I have made several meals more than once on my own with the recipe card.
I had the exact same experience. I thought the main selling point of these services was to save time, but I never felt I was saving time. And the amount of dishes and pans I had to clean up after was obnoxious.
If someone can make a service that focuses on using a single pan/dish per meal, I'm interested.
It may be a great habit in a restaurant where you always have more work in the queue, but for home cooking it makes a lot of sense to interleave cooking with chopping. It saves time not just because the cooking and chopping happens in parallel, but also because you don't need to get six bowls and wash them afterwards. The exception is if you know that you won't be able to chop quickly enough, e.g. wok.
> The food is very good, but the instructions are written by someone who (a) seems to have a gourmet kitchen at their disposal and (b) doesn't do dishes after
I got exactly the reverse impression; the recipes go out of their way to minimize the number of pieces of cookware required (both per recipe, by reuse, and across recipes), which both caters to those without a well-studied kitchen and minimizes the work of dishes.
They are obsessive about mis en place, which can use a few more prep bowls than strictly necessary, but prep bowls are easy cleanup, pots and pans are the time consuming items. (OTOH, mis en place is pretty much the secret key to efficient meal preparation, especially with multiple components, that many home cooks overlook. It's better to be slightly overboard with it than the alternative.)
The second was an issue I had repeatedly with the meat and fish ingredients: I had several weeks where meat/fish packaging was open when I got the shipment and the contents went bad. I emailed them every time, but at some point I got tired of having to immediately go to the grocery store to find the right quantity of pork or cod or whatever to complete the meal.
Realistically, their 35 minute meals always took me closer to an hour once all was said and done. There almost never were any leftovers (yeah two medium sized sweet potatoes don't go too far for four people). Finally, the price was just a little too high.
I keep a few of the recipe cards and try to make those once in a while, but mostly I am just back to regular grocery shopping now.