I've never used Blue Apron and I'm curious - how much actual cooking do you do with a typical Blue Apron meal? Are you preparing, mixing, cutting, etc. or are you primarily mixing together already prepared ingredients and timing them as they cook? Could someone who has never cooked use Blue Apron as a starting point to learn basic cooking skills?
You are preparing, mixing, cutting and cooking everything yourself. You're given the raw ingredients just like you'd buy yourself at the grocery store and given an easy to follow recipe to do everything yourself. If you've never cooked before, you are definitely in their target demographic. The recipes are generally simple enough and explained well enough that it would teach you the basic cooking skills you lack.
It sounds like grocery stores could provide that service pretty easily now that they have online shopping. Send them a recipe and they put the ingredients into a shopping bag ready to go.
They could, but flour is sold in sacks. With blue apron you get your 2/3rd cup of flour not the full sack. The labor to measure out is too high, and you need larger scale factors than a store would have to make automating that work out.
To some degree. The portions the meal kits ship for things like spices are only what's needed for the recipe. For people who don't have a well-stocked larder that's probably one of the big advantages of these kits.
My experience from trying it out a few years ago is that you do all the work. Nothing comes prepared, so basically a box of ingredients + the recipe. I would think it would be a good way to learn how to cook. I hated this, and would rather have all the prep work done for me (e.g. diced onions instead of a whole raw onion). Also I didn't like all the packaging/ice packs/bubble wrap. It all seemed really wasteful compared vs. going to the store with reusable bags.
That being said, the food/recipes were good but the portions were pretty small for two people. I think this would have been perfect when I was single and had a lot more time on my hands.
Recently they’ve been moving towards preprepped or semi prepped ingredients such as presliced beef and chicken, prechopped kale. Not sure if that’s a pro or a con, but it does make the recipes faster to prepare
> Could someone who has never cooked use Blue Apron as a starting point to learn basic cooking skills?
Somewhat; it won't, e.g., teach you knife skills, which are important for both safety and speed in preparation, but it will give you exposure to a wide range of cooking techniques and what they produce.
