Dish meals arrive in labeled plastic trays, while Assemble and Bake and Meal Kits come in labeled clear plastic bags filled with ingredients. There’s no way around it: If you’re doing any amount of prep or cooking with Blue Apron, these meals will fill your trash can with packets, trays, and tiny plastic bags—not to mention the giant ice packs and cardboard boxes.
What I liked about Blue Apron
Meal Kits
I sampled the Chili Crisp Beef Bao Buns Meal Kit, which is billed as a 25-to-35-minute endeavor. It was involved but not stressful. The buns arrived premade and just needed warming. My tasks included searing shishito peppers, slicing a cucumber for a quick pickle, mixing a three-ingredient spicy hoisin mayo, and shaping and cooking beef patties to fill the buns.
The four-step instructions suggest using the same skillet for the shishitos and patties, which I appreciated to minimize dishes. The grass-fed beef was excellent—juicy, flavorful, and high-quality even with minimal seasoning. The whole meal took me under 30 minutes and was overall a satisfying dinner. The quick-pickled cucumbers were a bright, acidic counterpoint to the rich buns.
Dish
The Dish options from Blue Apron generally adhere to a formula of protein, veggie, and sauce. Some are more starch-heavy, including the Coconut Korma Chicken I tried, which comes on a bed of saffron-infused rice. This dish is marked as a “customer favorite,” and I can see why. There’s an ample amount of rice, the chicken thighs are juicy and tender, and the coconut korma sauce is deeply flavorful and rich.
Dishes arrive refrigerated, and they’re hot and ready to eat after three to five minutes in the microwave. The sauce on the chicken and rice dish comes in a sort of chilled butter button. It melted into the chicken and rice and coated every grain. If you don’t have a microwave, the dish can be heated in the oven.
Assemble & Bake
I tried the Sheet Pan Shrimp Panzanella Assemble and Bake meal. It’s billed as a 20-minute recipe, and this was pretty accurate. Aside from tearing up a baguette, I had to do almost no prep work. I didn’t have to touch a knife or cutting board, just a baking sheet and a mixing bowl. The instructions were clear and easy to follow, and I loved the finished dish.
The kale and fresh dill were both in great shape after transit. There was plenty of shrimp for two people, and the crispy bread and salty olives made for an excellent meal. This dish relied on a premade sachet of roasted garlic pesto, which saved most of the prep time.
What I didn’t like about Blue Apron
Overall, I was impressed by the quality and variety of Blue Apron’s meals, though I did run into a few small drawbacks.
For instance, the beef bao bun meal kit only included microwave reheating instructions for the buns, which could be limiting if you don’t own one. The flavor was still enjoyable, but it leaned more toward a fun hamburger-with-hoisin twist rather than a classic bao. On the plus side, the shishito peppers were excellent (I wish there were more!), and the beef itself was juicy and flavorful.
The packaging can feel a little excessive, especially if you’re cooking multiple meals in a week. That said, it’s fairly standard for meal kits, and the trade-off is that every ingredient arrives neatly portioned and well-protected, which makes cooking faster and easier. Though I felt the time estimates were accurate, some of the instructions, if you opted for a four-person meal rather than two, were harder to follow.
