9 ms·

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 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.

leesalminen 9y ago
I canceled for the same 2 reasons! Seems to be pretty common...maybe someone at Blue Apron is reading this.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
homersapien 9y ago
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.
rrdharan 9y ago
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.
SippinLean 9y ago
>I am not going to chop all six veggie ingredients into six separate bowls >I'm not going to chop everything up front just to realize that the garlic goes in at the last step This is the concept of "mise en place" and is actually a great habit to get into, I understand the concern about dishes though.
- rglover 9y ago
  Sure, but normal people looking for an easy way to prepare dinner after work could care fuck all about mise en place.
  - SippinLean 9y ago
    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).
    - chrisan 9y ago
      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 source: frustrated Blue Apron customer :)
      - gipp 9y ago
        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.
        9y ago
DLay 9y ago
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. https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/view/articles/2017-08-09/yogurt-liquidity-and-listings https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/view/articles/2017-08-09/yogur...
- antisthenes 9y ago
  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. __________________________________________________________________ That being said, I do agree with it being a virtual reality company. And by that I mean a company that can't really exist in actual reality.
  - jamesrcole 9y ago
    That analysis assumes that the service is only about time-saving. I've never used it but I've heard people say how they like it because - they get to learn new recipes using less-common ingredients - have good quality meals (which take out often doesn't provide, if we are considering time saving) - they, sometimes at least, prefer eating at home.
    - antisthenes 9y ago
DougWebb 9y ago
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.
cddotdotslash 9y ago
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.
oso2k 9y ago
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.
- spraak 9y ago
  > 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
  - spraak 9y ago
    s/mal/animal
dragonwriter 9y ago
> 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.)
jly 9y ago
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.
jghn 9y ago
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
- blang 9y ago
  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.
  - jghn 9y ago
    As with many things, "It Depends"™ 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.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 9y ago
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.
- jules 9y ago
  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.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

leesalminen 9y ago

I canceled for the same 2 reasons! Seems to be pretty common...maybe someone at Blue Apron is reading this.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

homersapien 9y ago

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.

rrdharan 9y ago

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.

SippinLean 9y ago

>I am not going to chop all six veggie ingredients into six separate bowls >I'm not going to chop everything up front just to realize that the garlic goes in at the last step This is the concept of "mise en place" and is actually a great habit to get into, I understand the concern about dishes though.

rglover 9y ago
Sure, but normal people looking for an easy way to prepare dinner after work could care fuck all about mise en place.
- SippinLean 9y ago
  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).
  - chrisan 9y ago
    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 source: frustrated Blue Apron customer :)
    - gipp 9y ago
      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.
      - 9y ago

DLay 9y ago

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. https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/view/articles/2017-08-09/yogurt-liquidity-and-listings https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/view/articles/2017-08-09/yogur...

antisthenes 9y ago
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. __________________________________________________________________ That being said, I do agree with it being a virtual reality company. And by that I mean a company that can't really exist in actual reality.
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  That analysis assumes that the service is only about time-saving. I've never used it but I've heard people say how they like it because - they get to learn new recipes using less-common ingredients - have good quality meals (which take out often doesn't provide, if we are considering time saving) - they, sometimes at least, prefer eating at home.
  - antisthenes 9y ago

DougWebb 9y ago

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.

cddotdotslash 9y ago

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.

oso2k 9y ago

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.

spraak 9y ago
> 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
- spraak 9y ago
  s/mal/animal

dragonwriter 9y ago

> 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.)

jly 9y ago

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.

jghn 9y ago

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

blang 9y ago
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.
- jghn 9y ago
  As with many things, "It Depends"™ 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.

eeeeeeeeeeeee 9y ago

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.

jules 9y ago
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.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]