Blue ApronTop pickThis popular service offers well-tested meals with broad appeal. The recipes are consistent and simple to follow, with the most accurate time estimates we’ve seen. And it uses transparently sourced, good-quality ingredients.Blue Apron is one of the longest-running and most popular meal kits services in the US, and it shows. Novice and confident cooks alike will find Blue Apron reliable and easy to use. Ingredients arrive clearly labeled and grouped by meal, and the straightforward recipes are broadly appealing, if a little safe.The recipes are approachable and reliable. Like HelloFresh, Blue Apron offers a great variety of tasty dishes with accessible instructions. The recipes are simple to follow, and our testers noted fewer mistakes or confusing steps in these recipes than in those of other services we tried.While Blue Apron offers fewer options than Hello Fresh each week, we noticed that the recipes are tightly curated. If you value simplicity and control over variation and excitement, Blue Apron could be the meal kit for you. Recipe temperatures and timings were consistently accurate, and we almost never felt overwhelmed while prepping the meals. Barbecue chicken tacos with sweet potato fries from Blue Apron. Michael Hession/NYT WirecutterThe flavors are simple, but with a twist. Think za’atar-spiced burgers, lemon-ginger salmon, or chipotle-lime chicken fajitas. A salmon-and-sushi-rice bowl seemed basic at first. But the citrusy sauce (which called for simply mixing yuzu kosho with mayonnaise) was a nice touch that elevated the dish.The ingredients are fresh and transparently sourced. Although Blue Apron occasionally sent some wilted herbs or a banged-up zucchini (as did every kit we tested), we were overall impressed with the quality of the ingredients. For instance, the avocado that came with our rice bowl was ripe and unbruised.Like Hello Fresh, Blue Apron also partners with sustainable farms to source many of its ingredients. While the company doesn’t share what percentage of its produce is sustainably or organically grown, it does guarantee that all of the ingredients are non-GMO, if that’s important to you.All of the included fish is certified as either a Best Choice or a Good Alternative by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch. And Blue Apron is also transparent about its animal-welfare considerations when sourcing beef, pork, chicken, and dairy. (HelloFresh, on the other hand, shares its approach to poultry only.)Blue Apron’s recipes are easy to follow, with photos and check boxes for each step. Sarah Kobos/NYT WirecutterOverall, Blue Apron supplies fresh, good-quality ingredients. Sarah Kobos/NYT WirecutterBlue Apron’s recipes are easy to follow, with photos and check boxes for each step. Sarah Kobos/NYT WirecutterApart from salt, pepper, and oil, all of the ingredients are supplied. So typically you don’t really need to think about dinner until you start cooking. Some services ask home cooks to supply things beyond the basics, such as eggs and flour (looking at you, Marley Spoon) or even garlic cloves and red wine vinegar (Dinnerly, sigh). This can cause last-minute panic, which is something Blue Apron’s approach avoids.Cleanup is easy. We found that Blue Apron’s more-streamlined recipes also resulted in a more-considered use of pots, pans, and other prep tools. Our testers noted that, compared with meals from other kits, Blue Apron meals more often required less cleanup than a typical weeknight dinner.You can order meals without subscribing. Blue Apron defaults to à la carte ordering, which means you can order just a few kits without committing to a weekly delivery — though you’ll pay a few dollars more per serving than you would with a subscription. (You can still select Autoship & Save to subscribe.)Flaws but not dealbreakersYou can’t order more than four servings of a meal. For larger families or anyone who relies on leftovers throughout the week, this could be a real deterrent.There’s less variety than with HelloFresh and no vegan options. Blue Apron’s recipes are well curated and well tested, but there are only about 40 to choose from per week. While all services repeat meal options, Blue Apron’s smaller cache makes the repetition of some meals from week to week more noticeable.We didn’t test any service for more than three weeks, but if you’re choosing from these limited options over a longer period of time, boredom might creep in. And none of Blue Apron’s meals are designated vegan, though about a quarter are vegetarian.Our other top pick, HelloFresh, offers nearly 80 recipes each week — many of them more on-trend or adventurous — with some vegetarian and vegan choices. And though Green Chef provides a total of 42 meal choices each week, it offers many more vegan, gluten-free, and dairy-free options.Most of the packaging is plastic. All meal kits generate waste. But it can be extra disheartening to open a Blue Apron box and see all of the meal components bundled in large plastic bags, including smaller items (like a single scallion stalk).Although Blue Apron says its packaging materials are recyclable, this depends on where you live and how much effort you’re willing to put into recycling. In New York City, for example, you can recycle soft plastics, such as bags, only by dropping them off at specific locations; this is something a busy meal-kit subscriber may not be inclined to do.Specs:Price: $9 to $12 per serving for a two-person subscription; $8 to $10 per serving for a four-person subscription; up to $14 per serving for à la carte optionsMeal choices per week: about 40 options, 10 of which are vegetarianSubscription sizes: two to five meals a week for two or four people
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