In 2012, Blue Apron was the first meal delivery service to start operating in the USA. Its emergence was to herald a fast-growing trend in the USA. Blue Apron has undoubtedly withstood the test of time and remains, to this day, one of the country’s most known meal kit delivery services.
Blue Apron delivers creative chef-designed meals with pre-portioned ingredients to your home. They offer a variety of meal kits, fully prepared meals, and add-on market options. With Blue Apron, you can enjoy cooking restaurant-quality meals in your kitchen.
Blue Apron meal kits are designed to improve your dinner cooking experience and make your life much easier. They save you time by doing all the meal planning and grocery shopping in one excellent service.
The Blue Apron service is also surprisingly affordable for the quality you get. It costs no more than standard meal preparations and sometimes even less!
Blue Apron has grown and changed a lot over the years. That’s why we revisited this classic meal delivery service to bring you our updated and revised review of Blue Apron’s meal delivery services for 2024.
At a Glance – Intro to the Blue Apron Service
Blue Apron is a meal delivery service that provides chef-designed meals with fresh, high-quality, pre-portioned ingredients. Their easy-to-follow recipes aim to make cooking approachable and fun for everyone.
Many options are catering to many different dietary preferences and cooking skill levels. In addition to their meal kits, they offer quick and easy ready-to-cook meals, fully prepared meals, and even market items for breakfasts, lunches, desserts, and extra proteins. We appreciate that anyone can try the service without a subscription by ordering a meal package from the market options.
Pros:
- One of the largest and most popular meal kit services in the US.
- Variety of over 80 changing restaurant-quality meals per week.
- Quick meals at 20-45 minutes prep time.
- Recipes for both experienced Home Chefs and beginners in the kitchen.
- The menu supports different diets, including vegetarian recipes, carb-conscious recipes, Mediterranean options, low-calorie meals, and more.
- Option to customize protein choice in some of the meals.
Cons:
- Some meals have higher sodium content than others
- Some limited options for specific dietary needs, like vegans
- Some meals have high-calorie content
Who Is Blue Apron for?
Blue Apron is ideal for individuals, couples, and families who enjoy cooking and trying new recipes without the hassle of meal planning or grocery shopping. The service appeals to those looking for ready-made options (like students), easy customization, and the convenience of having new and diverse recipes delivered right to your door.
Their recipes are usually exciting and have a twist of flavor. Moreover, it is clear that Blue Apron is dedicating time and effort to creating balanced and relatively healthy meals full of fresh vegetables, high-quality meats, and seafood.
With Blue Apron, you get a lot of variety. Some dishes take some time to cook, while others are quick and easy to prepare. Each dish’s cooking time can vary from 20 minutes to 45 minutes.
Blue Apron Plans
Blue Apron offers several customizable meal plan options. You can choose between meal kits or fully prepared meals and customize the plans to fit your dietary preferences.
Meal Kits
The meal kit plans include the Signature Plan for 2 or the Signature Plan for 4. Each plan can be tailored to low-carb, calorie-conscious, or diabetes-friendly dietary preferences. Choose between 2 and 5 recipes from the ever-changing menu of over 80 options each week.
You can customize the types of meals by chef favorites, nutritionist-developed wellness meals, family-friendly, fast and easy, and a veggie-focused option. However, the full menu is available each week, along with add-ons like fully prepared meals, snacks, desserts, breakfasts, and more.
Fully Prepared Meals
The prepared meal kit plan offers between 4 and 10 individually portioned meals each week, all ready to eat in less than 2 minutes. Dietary preferences include keto-friendly, 600 calories or less, 30g of protein or more, and carb-conscious, with less than 30g of carbohydrates per serving.
How to Get Started With Blue Apron
Getting started with Blue Apron is a breeze! All you need to do is sign up for the service via their website or app. We have some great coupons for newbies here. After signing up, you simply need to choose your plan and select your meals from their weekly menu.
Once you have chosen your desired meals, browse the add-on menu for more lean proteins, easy lunch options, desserts, and breakfast items. Want more meals for the week? You can easily add on prepared meals or more meal kits to fit your needs.
Then it is merely a matter of waiting for the delivery! A few days later, you will receive a labeled box containing all the ingredients for your meals and detailed step-by-step recipe pages. The final thing to do is follow the recipes and eat a perfect dinner! Bon-Appetit!
It is important to note that with Blue Apron, you have complete flexibility to skip weeks whenever needed. You can choose and swap recipes, which is handy when planning a few weeks ahead. You can also cancel your subscription at any time. These account management tools mean that you only order what you want and when you want it, with no huge commitment involved. You can even order meal kits and packages without a subscription, plus the customer service is excellent.
What Diets Does Blue Apron Support?
Blue Apron has options to customize preferences for a variety of dietary needs. Their meal plans cater specifically to vegetarian, low-calorie, low-carb, keto, high-protein, and wellness meals designed by nutritionists.
Their extensive weekly menu has options to select meal kits and prepared meals to fit most dietary needs. They even offer some diabetes-friendly options. With easy-to-customize protein options like swapping out different kinds of proteins or omitting them altogether, there is something for everyone.
Variety & Style of Meals Kits
Blue Apron offers over 80 weekly ever-changing meals and kits plus market add-ons. The meals provided by Blue Apron have been chef-designed and are home-cooked dishes with restaurant-quality results.
The Blue Apron menu enhances your dining life at home and can spice things up in the kitchen, allowing you to regularly explore great new flavors. Blue Apron is innovative with its menu, offering fantastic collaborations with well-known chefs and food gurus.
The immense variety of Blue Apron dishes ranges from favorites such as Mexican tacos and burgers to Asian-style dishes like noodles and stir-fries or European classics that can include flatbread, Italian-style pasta, and quiches.
They also offer dishes to cater to different popular diets and lifestyles, like Carb Conscious, Beyond Meat vegan, Weight Watchers Approved, Diabetes-Friendly recipes, Mediterranean recipes, and meals with less than 600 calories per serving.
On their weekly menu, you will also find vegetarian and quick-and-easy dishes, which take 20 minutes to cook. We are big fans of the quick dishes and premade options and highly recommend including at least one of those in your delivery. It is so lovely to have a delicious but fast option available when you simply run out of time.
Quality of Blue Apron Meals Ingredients
Our team of meal kit experts has experienced Blue Apron meal kits on multiple occasions over the years. We are happy to confirm excellent consistency in the quality of the ingredients in their meal kits.
The Blue Apron experts directly source the best seasonal ingredients from local farms, importers, and family-run purveyors. This includes:
- Meats with no antibiotics or added hormones from farms like Country Natural – a cooperative of cattle ranchers dedicated to the highest animal welfare standards.
- Authentic premium ingredients, like those from Cento, a New Jersey-based family-run business that has been providing quality Italian products, such as its organic tomatoes, for over 50 years.
- Farm-fresh local fruits and vegetables from local farms such as Reeves Farms – a 4th-generation, family-run operation in NYS.
- Artisan sauces and spices, like saffron, are available from Rumi Spice, a partnership of local Afghan farms that employs more than 300 women.
- Fine cheeses from Vermont Creamery – a 30-year-old goat and cow dairy company from Websterville, Vermont.
- Fresh pasta from Severino Pasta – a small-batch pasta-manufacturing. This local company is a three-generation family business based in Westmont, New Jersey.
Is It Tasty? Our Experience With Blue Apron
Our team has extensive experience with this service, having tested Blue Apron’s meal kit delivery services over the past six years. In 2024, we retested the service for two weeks to update and verify our past reviews.
We loved that the box is so easy to sort, with fresh proteins kept cold at the bottom and quality plant-based ice packs. The fresh produce was of high quality and in generous portions. We also love the colorful and easy-to-follow recipe cards.
We tried Blue Apron’s Ribeye Steak And Dijon Pan Sauce
A steak dinner is a classic comfort food for cold days that everyone loves. Putting it with a side of creamy truffled mashed potatoes and Dijon mustard sauce makes it absolutely irresistible! It’s fine dining in the comfort of your home (like with many of Blue Apron’s Meals).
Another side that came with this dish is cooked green beans with mushrooms and shallots – a nice addition for an extra healthy touch.
It was well noticed that we got some high-quality ingredients for this meal kit—a perfect cut of pasture-raised ribeye steak, beautiful potatoes and mushrooms, and amazing truffle-seasoned butter with a delicate earthy aroma.
We Also tried Blue Apron’s Chipotle Chicken Fajitas with Refried Beans, Avocado and Sour Cream
Chicken fajitas are a classic, and this recipe highlighted Blue Apron’s ability to deliver delicious and satisfying meals that are so easy to prepare. In less than 35 minutes, we had a fresh Mexican-inspired restaurant-quality dinner.
The chicken was tender and well-seasoned in a spicy Chipotle blend, and the fresh vegetables were easy to roast. The fajitas were topped with creamy avocado and cheese for the finishing touch. The meal also included a large side of well-spiced pinto beans topped with cheese.
This dish was delightful with its bold flavors and truly generous portion sizes. We appreciated the ability to swap proteins if desired to customize the meal. The fresh ingredients were another standout for us.
Other Recommended Blue Apron Meals To Try
- Glazed Pork Belly & Ramen with Miso Butter Vegetables and Soft-Boiled Eggs
- Chicken and Dijon Pan Sauce with Green Beans and Apple Rice
- Poblano Sausage and Pinto Bean Tacos with Tomatoes, Sour Cream, and Cotija
- Smoked Gouda Burgers with Caramelized Onions and Roasted Carrots
- Pan Seared Steaks and Aioli with Crispy Gnocchi and Sauteed Zucchini
- Ginger Beef and Snow Pea Stir Fry with Sesame Seeds
Is It Easy To Use?
All of the meal kits come with easy-to-follow, full-sized recipe cards with simple step-by-step instructions. Most meals are designed to be ready in less than half an hour. Some of the more challenging recipes can take up to 45 minutes to prepare, but most offer faster prep times.
The added benefit of a large selection of pre-made microwave-ready meals is a massive bonus for when you are short on time or just don’t feel like cooking. You can customize each week’s delivery for a combination of premade meals and meal kits to fit your schedule and interests.
Blue Apron microwave-ready meals:
The Blue Apron Market – How Does It Work?
The Blue Apron Market offers many great add-on options to subscribers and meal kit packages for those without a subscription. Choose from meal kits, ready-to-cook meals, and pre-made microwave-ready options. They also offer breakfasts, lunches, tempting appetizers, desserts, a la carte extra proteins, and snacks.
What’s Inside the Blue Apron Delivery Box – Is It Well Organized and Eco-friendly?
With Blue Apron, all the ingredients are delivered in a labeled box, with the refrigerated proteins packed at the bottom with ice packs.
Some sorting needs to be done with Blue Apron deliveries since the produce has not already been sorted and packed for each meal. But this only takes a few minutes, and we appreciate the reduced packaging from a waste perspective.
A great feature of the Blue Apron delivery is that they wrap each dish’s smaller ingredients into individual plastic bags or paper bags. They even provide recyclable cooking trays for some of their recipes.
As part of the Blue Apron delivery, you will also find a detailed step-by-step recipe card for each meal of your choice. The straightforward recipe card makes the Blue Apron cooking experience fun and light.
Blue Apron also focuses on making its packaging eco-friendly. Over 85% of Blue Apron packaging is recyclable by weight. That includes rigid plastic cups and trays, metal cans, carton boxes, Cardboard inserts, and molded fiber containers.
The Blue Apron Website & Ordering Process
Blue Apron’s website and app offer both a well-organized and user-friendly experience.
You can register, specify eating preferences, select and change your weekly recipes up to four weeks in advance, change your payment method, etc. All of this can be completed online, quickly, and practically.
You can also see past recipes and future menus, including the recipe itself, the ingredients list, and additional nutritional information for each dish. Pre-planning and swapping out recipes is convenient and easy. Plus, the extensive add-on menu offers flexibility when you want to include some breakfast and lunch recipes or quick snacks and desserts.
What Do Customers Think of Blue Apron?
Subscribers to Blue Apron love the fresh ingredients and diversity of delicious recipes. Many appreciate the commitment to sustainability and making the home cooking experience approachable and fun. Geared for the novice cook to the experienced chef, there is something for everyone.
One subscriber shared on Reddit, “Thanks to BA, I am a much better cook than I was before with no fear about new ingredients. A bonus is that we have much less food waste and spend a lot less on weekly groceries. There are frequently leftovers.”
Another user shared, “the service has been great for us; BA has introduced us to foods and spices we would never have considered on our own, which means we have a larger variety of things we can make on the fly as we pick up “new” fav ingredients at the grocery store. Not having to plan out an entire week every week or so saves time and headspace, and the occasional specialty meal does make for a solid “at home date nite” experience.”
A third reviewer on Reddit posted, “I find the recipes to be way better than what other meal kits offer and there aren’t all these hidden up charges like with some. Never have an issue with quality.”
Customer Support
Blue Apron offers fantastic customer service alongside its extensive FAQ and help section on its website. Customers can choose from a variety of support options including live chat, email, and phone assistance.
From our team’s experience, the customer service team is responsive and helpful, ensuring that any issues or questions are addressed promptly.
Delivery Areas
Blue Apron delivers to most locations within the contiguous United States. You can check specific delivery areas and availability on their website.
The Bottom Line of Our Blue Apron Review
If you love to cook but are bored with your regular recipes, or if you want to save money and spend less time on meal planning and grocery shopping, Blue Apron is a great meal kit option!
Blue Apron delivers incredible, creative meal kits and pre-made options with the freshest ingredients straight to your door. It supports sustainable farming practices and works with trusted producers to bring you tasty ingredients and premium-grade gourmet-like meals with a restaurant-quality finish.
The Blue Apron service is like fine dining in the comfort of being home and at a much affordable price!
We hope you found our 2024 Blue Apron review helpful. Don’t forget to use our great beginner’s promo codes. Just press on the link below and start your culinary adventure with Blue Apron!
