Blue Apron has had an overhaul — here’s my review of the meal kit now

Blue Apron meal selection

If you’re a commitment-phobe who loves having lots of options, Blue Apron is a dream. There are more than 100 dishes on the menu each week, with a few favorites that appear regularly. You get to choose from three kinds of meals: classic recipe kits, one-pan “assemble and bake” dishes, and completely pre-made meals you simply pop in the oven or microwave (plus packaged snacks). I appreciated that most recipes that come with meat give you two or three different protein options.

And of course, since you don’t need to sign up for a subscription, you can choose however many meals you want at a time — though you can still save some money by setting up an autoship order on a regular schedule.

If you still get easily bored, Blue Apron sometimes mixes things up by collaborating with different chefs to release limited-edition lineups. I tried a box of dishes designed by Melissa Ben-Ishay of Baked by Melissa. The recipes didn’t seem all that different from Blue Apron’s usual lineup, but each was fresh and tasty, and full of healthy veggies.

Whatever kind of meal strikes your fancy, when you click on a dish on the site, you can see a full breakdown of the ingredients and step-by-step directions, as well as the nutrition facts, so you know exactly what will be involved. Since you order every meal à la carte, you also see precisely how much you’ll pay per serving.

Each recipe gives you the option to choose between two and four servings, and here’s where I found the à la carte model especially helpful — I ordered two servings of dishes that I knew only my husband and I would eat, but I ordered four servings if I thought my three-year-old might dig in, too. (That said, the heat-and-eat pre-made meals are all for just one person.)

Blue Apron delivery

Delivery was quick as advertised: I ordered a box on Friday, and it arrived on Monday. The included ice pack had melted a bit, so things were wet inside the box, though everything but one bulb of garlic was inside plastic bags, and only one stalk of bok choy was wilted — though, those plastic bags are a bit excessive. While all meal kits involve a lot of packaging, Blue Apron uses more than any others I’ve tried. Each package of meat comes in its own plastic bag. And I even got a cucumber wrapped in a plastic bag inside the larger plastic bag that held all the ingredients for that recipe.

Blue Apron recipes

When it came to the actual cooking, I also found the estimated cooking times a bit inaccurate. Between cooking the rice, washing and chopping the produce, cooking the bok choy, then breading and pan-frying the chicken, a crispy panko took over an hour, not the stated 45 minutes. That said, part of the reason it took longer than advertised was that I was cooking four servings instead of two, but I would have appreciated a heads-up that doubling the portions would take more time.

I didn’t always mind spending that extra time, though, since some of the meals were absolutely worth the effort. Although a Vietnamese-style ground beef bowl was a little bland, the crispy chicken thighs were a huge hit with my whole family. And a cheesy pork tortilla casserole dish was so easy and delicious that I’ve added the recipe to our regular weeknight lineup. I only wish the site included customer reviews of the recipes, as Hungryroot does, so I could get an idea of which were highest-rated before ordering.