We decided to give Blue Apron another chance to face off against Hello Fresh (since Hello Fresh won by forfeit last time, due to Blue Apron’s delivery problems).   So we cooked two meals from Blue Apron: 1) Cashew Chicken Stir-Fry and 2) Pimento Cheeseburgers; and two meals from Hello Fresh: 1) Mustard-Breaded Chicken Thighs with Brussel Sprouts and Sweet Potatoes and 2) Melty Burrito Bake with Baby Gem Chopped Salad.

We will describe each meal and then give you our overall decision at the end of the post (don’t skip ahead! you’ll miss all the juicy details).  Also, just to be fair, both meal kits were well-packed, with no damage and no missing items.  Recipes were easy to follow and photos great for both companies.  Advice to both: put 3 holes in the left side of your recipe page, then eager users like us can easily put them in a binder.  (Our mom has a 3-hole puncher, but she’s nerdy, so we are sure not everyone does).  You could even send a free Blue Apron or Hello Fresh binder to users who purchase a certain # of meals…)

Blue Apron’s Cashew Chicken Stir Fry (Alex)

This dish is super good, super fast and definitely something we wouldn’tcook normally, so this dish brough us out of our comfort zone but was still a delicious meal.  There was a lot of flavor without that much work.

Step 1: cook rice

Step 2: cook the veggies (celery,ginger, cabbage, and bottoms of scallions)

Step 3: toss chicken in cornstrarch and saute in olive oil

Step 4: add the vegetables to the chicken and add the rest of the ingredients.

Step 5: Plate chicken with the rice and mandarins.

Our only two negatives: could’ve use more vegetables and we didn’t like the idea of cooking the mandarins.  (The recipe called to toss them in the pan at the end, with the chicken, with the heat off but the heat would still cook them a little.–which just seemed wierd.)  We decided to use them as a garnish and that worked really well.

OVERALL GRADE: A –

compared to:

Hello Fresh Mustard-Breaded Chicken Thights with Brussel Sprouts & Sweet Potatoes (Alex)

Overall this was a good meal but definitelly not outside our comfort zone — this something very similar to what we make ususally.  Also using sweet potatoes wasn’t best choice.  The recipe called for cooking 4 of them.  Probably better to have 2 normal potatoes and 2 sweet potatoes.  Not everyone loves sweet potatoes. very good.

Step 1: Trim and halve brussels sprouts, roast with olive oil

Step 2: Bread chicken (recipe called for mustard dipping, we also made a few without mustard…just dipping in olive oil and then breading

Step 3: bake chicken in 425 degree oven (little too hot…we turned it down to avoid burning bread crumbs)

Step 4: Microwave Potato for 10 minutes

Step 5:  Plate chicken, potato and brussels sprouts; add sour cream to potato if desired.

So our thoughts on this was that the recipe wasn’t very original. Also using sweet potatoes wasn’t best choice for a family meal.  The recipe called for cooking 4 of them.  Probably better to have 2 normal potatoes and 2 sweet potatoes.  Not everyone loves sweet potatoes. The recipe also calls for cutting brussel sprouts in 1/2 before roasting them.  Depending on the size of the brussel sprouts, its really better to cut them in quarters (unless they are really small)–that way lots of leaves fall off and get really crispy.  Finally the recommended cooking time for the chicken was off.  It said 15-20 minutes at 425.  And then broil.  After 10 minutes at 425, the breading was getting very brown so we felt we had to turn down the heat to avoid buring the breadcrums.  We turned it down to 375 but then the cooking time was over 30 minutes.  We didn’t broil them because breadcrumbs already too dark.

OVERALL GRADE: B

Hello Fresh’s Melty Buritto Bake (Max)

This dish was said to take only thrity minutes but it actually took an hour. It was a lot more work than we thought. That being said, the end result was delicous and gave us a new way of making burritos.

Step 1: Chop tomatoes, lettuce, onions and mash beans (this took a long time)

Step 2: Sautee ground beef in olive oil, remove from pan

Step 3: Cook onions in pan, add spices, add tomatoes (remove 1/4 cup tomato sauce)

Step 4: Add beans and beef to pan

Step 5: Put burritos together: put beef mix in each tortilla, roll up, place in pan, cover with reserved tomato mix, and sprinke cheese on top. Bake about 5 minutes. (NOTE: not enough cheese provided, espeically if its called Melty burrito bake)

Step 6: Plate with salad, sour cream dip, etc.

We love this meal. The meat was great quality and the salad veggies were fresh and delicious. Our only two negatives was that this took longer than the 35 minutes listed to cook.  We spent a lot of time chopping and then cooking stuff separately.  Also, there definitely wasn’t enough cheese. We had to add our own grated cheese to put on top.  Never skimp on cheese.

Overall Grade: A-

compared to: 

Blue Apron’s Pimento Cheeseburgers (Max)

This was probably our least favorite meal. We expect Blue Apron and Hello Fresh to introduce us to new, exotic foods, so the simplicity of a burger was disapointing.  I mean almost everyone, even the worst cook, knows how to make a burger.  And from a family meal perspective: just go with regular oven fries. Home made potato fries are just so good.  And somebody will definitely be disappointed to get carrot fries instead.

Anyway, here are the steps:

Step 1: Peel and cut carrots and parsnips (needed more parsnips or white potatoes)

Step 2: Mix grated cheese with pimento peppers and may to make a cheese spread

Step 3: Form and cook burgers

Step 4: Assemble burgers (toast buns, put cheese* on buns, ad burgers) and plate with veggies.

*we really didn’t like the pimento cheese spread…we substituted mozarella cheese.  Mom & Dad ate the pimento cheese spread and EVEN THEY didn’t love it.

So one of the big problems with this meal we found was too many carrots, not enough parsnips.  Luckily we had a whole cauliflower so we roasted that with olive oil and salt and pepper.

So here are the negatives. As we said, this was a pretty INSIDE the box recipe (as opposed to Blue Apron’s usual OUTSIDE the box recipes)  We could have made a burger without Blue Apron, and ours would probably have been more interesting (like a lamb burger with goat cheese and olive tapenade.).  Also as usual with Blue Apron, we couldn’t seem to find enough vegetables in the dish so we add our own cauliflower to roast. Finally, if you are going to make burger and fries, at least some of them should have been potatoes.  That being said the carrots and parsnips were tasty and sweet. I, not being a  total veggie guy, wolfed down several servings of them. I think kids hesitant to the thought of eating veggetables would enjoy these (but they would love a few home made potato fries too).  Also note on the pimento cheese spread: sorry tasted like what I think cheeze whiz would tastes like

Grade:  B –

Final Score???

So overall Blue Apron and Hello Fresh were pretty equal (on the chicken dishes, Blue Apron won A- to B and on the beef dishes, Hello Fresh won A- to B-).  That being said when we look at everything as a whole, we honestly liked the two Hello Fresh meals a bit more than the two Blue Apron meals.  So we declare Hello Fresh the winner by the closets of margins. 

This morning I (Max) decided to make pancakes stuffed with nutella and bananas.  I had seen a video demonstrating how to make it, and they looked delicious.  First you make a circle of nutella on a baking sheet and put a slice of bananna on top.  You let the freeze for 20-30 minutes while you make the pancake battter.  When the nutella is pretty solid, you start making the pancakes.  You pour batter on to the pan and put the frozen circle of nutella in the middle, then you cover with more batter and cook.  It’s a little trickier than usual to flip (becaues the pancakes are thicker) so use two spatulas.  No matter what the results are delicious.

Note: next time we make these I am going to make the nutella circles bigger and thinner.  That way you will get nutella in every bite of the pancake!

This week we wanted to have a cook-off between a box from Blue Apron and a box from Hello Fresh! (both meal kit companies).  We have tried Blue Apron in the past and had good results so we were pretty confident they would make a good showing.  Unfortunately they completely failed.  They didn’t even make it to the starting line…their box never showed up.  Their delivery service first said it was delivered and then told us it had been delayed so long it was no longer deliverable (since it had perishable foods).   Blue Apron did give us a refund and credit but still pretty epic fail.  (Maybe we will give Blue Apron another chance…what do you think?)

So even though Hello Fresh! won, just by showing up, we still wanted to review their meals.  And honestly, they were pretty good that they might have won anyway.  Here’s what we made with Hello Fresh!

Shawarma Meatballs with Bulgur & Sumac Vegetables (Alex)

There are two really positive things about this meal: first it really didn’t take that long to prepare (less than 30 minutes) and there were lots of vegetables.  It also introduced us to some new flavors: sumac and a middle eastern spice mix.  Here’s what I did:

• First I started the bulgur (put it in water with chicken stock and salt…a lot like cous cous)
• Second, I cut the onions, tomatoes, and zucchini into strips, mixed with olive oil and sumac and put them in the oven to raost
• Then I mixed the ground beef with panko, middle eastern spice blend, salt, and pepper. I formed them into small balls and sauted them in olive oil for 6-10 minutes.
• Finally, I fluffed the bulgur with parsley and plated (bulgur on the bottom and veggies and meatballs on top…plus sour cream and the extra parsley)

Note I also made a few regular meatballs (with egg, Pecorino Romano and breadcrumbs) to do a taste test against the Hello Fresh meatballs.  Max said mine tasted better 🙂

The only negatives about this meal: packaging (see photo below).  All the ingredients were tossed in a box so the tomatoes were a little bruised and the parsley packets opened up.

All in all though, I give this meal: A-. It was DELICIOUS…and we cooked with new spices.

Sweet Apple Pork Chops with Cauliflower Mash & Snap Peas (Max)

I really liked the idea of this meal because we cook pork chops a lot and serve it with home made apple sauce, so having an actual sauce with apples in it to pour over the pork sounded like a good idea.  I didn’t like the idea of mashing the cauliflowers in with the potatoes though.  I think both are better by themselves.  Also the instructions were a little unclear: it didn’t say anything about peeling the potatoes before you cook them (which you usually do when you make mashed potatoes) so I did it anyway…  Here’s the steps:

• Peel, cut and boil potatoes. (note the instructions didn’t say to peel potatoes but we did anyway.
• Chop and boil cauliflower (note instructions said to boil with the potatoes but we wanted separate mashes)
• Trip sugar snap peas and start roasting in oven
• Sear pork chops in sauce pan with salt and pepper and thyme*, then finish in pan with peas
• Peel, core and chop apples and sautee with butter and chicken concentrate (that’s your sauce) (note again the instructions didn’t specify to peel or not, so we did)
• Mash your potatoes and cauliflower and plate with pork chops and snap peas; top pork with sauce

*Be careful with the thyme, we only used HALF of what they recommended but it was still too strong…THYME is a really strong herb.

The negatives about this meal were that the instructions were a little unclear (to peel or not?), and called for too much thyme.  The thyme took away from the unique taste of the pork chop when you really want to bring that out. The apple sauce wasn’t as good as our own, and the combination of thyme with the apple sauce really tastes bad. The positives were that pork tasted great and we had lots and lots of sugar snap peas. Plenty of vegetables for all (unlike the meager portions of veggies usually found in Blue Apron).  All in all I give this meal a B.

Last week we tried a couple more Blue Apron dinners but didn’t have time to review them.  Alex mostl made the first one: Italian Meatloaf with Cauliflower and Fregola Sarda Pasta, because Max was at soccer practice. And Max mostly made the second one, Za’atar Chicken Souvlaki with Tahini-Yogurt Sauce & Roasted Potatoes, because Alex was at soccer practice.  (We say mostly because these were school nights so mom had to help out alittle.) Both recipes were pretty good but unfortunately were missing we some ingredients so we had to improvise.  Also (and sorry to say this Blue Apron) but some of the red onion for the Chicken Souvlaki was rotten.  We love your recipes but you got get your logistics in order!! Come on, missing ingredients and rotten onions??

Italian Meatloaf: So this was a pretty straight forward recipe: mix ground beef, onions, tomatoes for a meatloaf (reserving some of the tomato sauce to put on top).  The only problem was that instead of putting it in a loaf pan to cook, Blue Apron wanted us to wrap it in foil and bake.  Certainly a good idea if you don’t have a loaf pan. But how are you supposed to check to see if it is done?  You have to peel back REALLY HOT tin foil to check it.  Yikes! Get a loaf pan…also it’s hard to see if the meatloaf is actually done because it steams in the foil (and sticks to it:).  Also we were really excited about the Fregola Sarda Pasta, which the recipe said to cook with roasted cauliflower.  The pasta looked a little like pearl couscous in the directions but we never actually saw it because it wasn’t in our Blue APron box.  So we substituted regular dry spaghetti and roasted the cauliflower as a side dish.  Still delish, but we still want to try that Fregola Sarda Pasta! PS: LOVED the roasted cauliflower by itself, even though that wasn’t exactly how we were supposed to cook it.

Za’atar Chicken Souvlaki: We were so excited to try this recipe because we went to Greece two summers ago and one of our favorite dishes was chicken souvlaki.  The recipe sounded terrific and was pretty straight forward: roast potatoes; chop onions and chicken and sautee them together; mix with spices (Za’atar); mix yogurt with tahini; serve on pita bread with lettuce.  Unfortunately:1) we were missing the main spice for the chicken: Za’atar; 2) the onion was partially rotten; and 3) the tahini for the yogurt sauce was also missing.  We managed to pull it off, however, by mixing some cumin with the chicken instead of Za’atar; only using half the onion; and adding cucumbers and scallions to the yogurt sauce.  Frankly, since every souvlaki we had in Greece had cucumber and tomatoes (as well as lettuce), it was a no brainer to add cucumbers to the yogurt sauce.  And then since we were improvising anyway, we added some sliced ripe tomatoes.  The meal was so good!! But we worry that if you weren’t used to cooking, and you were missing all those ingredients, it might not have turned out so well. Plus tomatoes are so essential to souvlaki that we were surprised they weren’t included.  Also, in Greece, the put french fries in the souvlaki so we put the roasted potatoes in ours.

And just so you know we aren’t making this up: here’s the rotten onion:(

This weekend we cooked a lot: not just Sunday dinner but we also helped out on Saturday, when we had guests over and made barbecued brisket, baked potatoes, corn-on-the-cob and kale salad.  For Sunday dinner we tried a new cut of meat: skirt steak.  We loved it!  Really tasty and fast to cook.  We did marinate it overnight in a dry spice rub (onion powder, garlic powder, paprika and salt and pepper) but then we just cooked it on high heat about 3 minutes a side.  The key to preparing it, however, is cutting it against the grain.  We also made a huge amount of roasted brussel sprouts (because mom loves them).

Here’s the before, during and after of the skirt steak:

And the brussel sprouts (quartered, de-cored and tossed in olive oil and salt and pepper)

And our world famous brownies…  with melted chocolate chip frosting

Today we decided to try out our new Lego cake pan.  We made a simple yellow cake batter, poured it in our lego man flexible cake pan, baked and frosted it.  We had a little cake batter left over so we made some extra cupcakes.  The result was delicious and it made us wonder why people used boxed cake mixes.  This cake was so easy (and we didn’t have to buy anything special) but tasted so much better than a cake mix.

Here are the ingredients:

And here are the simple steps:

Combine dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder), then mix in the wet/soft ingredients (softened butter, eggs, vanilla and milk).  Pour into ban and bake!

This dinner we wanted to try some new dishes and focus on one specific type of cuisine, Southeast Asian Cuisine. We made Asian Short Ribs and Peanut Sesame Noodles.  What was cool was that there was a lot of overlap in ingredients betwen the two recipes: soy sauce, sesame oil, sesame, seeds, ginger and garlic were all used in both dishes. Also, the dishes both had a sweet indgredient to counteract the spice – brown sugar for the ribs and honey for the noodles.

Asian Short Ribs

For the short ribs, first we peeled and chopped the ginger and finely minced the garlic. We added that to a large bowl along with soy sauce, beef broth, sesame oil, and brown sugar.

Then we put the ribs into a slow cooker. After that we poured the mixture in and stirred it until it was well combined. We let if cook on high heat for 7-8 hours.  Then the recipe said to add cornstarch to the ribs and cooking liquid to make it thicker.  But the liquid looked like it had a lot of grease in it and we decided to try out our new grease remover (thanks Mike Holdeman for the recommendation).  We took all the ribs out and set aside.  Then we poured the cooking liquid through our grease remover.  The grease stays at the top and there is a lever at the bottom to release the grease-free liquid. It was pretty cool and we removed almost 12 oz of grease.  After that we added the ribs, liquid and cornstarch back to the slow cooker. We covered it again and let it cook (still on high) for the next thirty minutes.

We garnished the ribs dish with sesame seeds we had browned on the stop top.

Peanut Sesame Noodles

For the noodles, we cooked the normal fettucine pasta till al dente.  While the pasta was cooking we made the peanut butter dressing: we softened creamy peanut butter for fifteen seconds in the microwave. Then we whisked soy sauce, rice vinegar, canola oil, ginger, honey, sesame oil, lime zest/juice into a small bowl. We poured it into the drained pasta. (The dressing should be thick but pourable).

We chopped up peanuts and sliced scallions and half a head of cabbage.  And then we mixed the pasta and veggies in a large mixing bowl.  Finally we topped the peanut noodles with extra toasted sesame seeds (that we made for the ribs) and the chopped peanuts. Delicious!

Today, after touring the amazing Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza in the Yucatan Penisula of Mexico, we were lucky enough to have lunch at La Casona De Vallodolid, a restaurant specializing in traditional Yucatan cuisine.

We tried a lot of new things, including: lime soup, poc chuc (roasted pork with bitter orange), cochinita pibil (achiote-marinated pork, slow roasted underground), ceviche and horchata (sweet rice milk).  We also had guacamole (of course) and chips, and for dessert: rice pudding.  It was all delicious and seemed very authentic.  We will have to try out some new Mexican recipes when we get home. Plus after walking around for hours in the hot sun, it was nice to take a break.  The restaurant itself is very beautiful.  It used to be the governor of Yucatan’s home so it is large with beautiful tiles.  And there is a hidden courtyard with a beautiful ceramic fountain (see photo above). Definitely worth a stop if you are visiting Chichen Itza or Valladolid.

Poc chuc and lime soup

Cochinita Pibil

Ceviche

Rice Pudding

Wall decorations

This cake is so chocolatey and so simple.  We spent Christmas Eve with our good friends Patrick, Virginia and Wyeth.  After a traditional Swiss raclette meal, with a light green salad, we feasted on chocolate mousse cake, topped with raspberries, that we made:

This cake is really easy to make: just four ingredients: eggs, chocolate, butter and vanilla.  And if you want to put it over the top: raspberries.  Note it’s gluten free if that’s important to you.

First you melt chocolate and semi-sweet chocolate together.  Then you whip 4 extra large eggs together until they triple in volume.  You fold in the eggs to the chocolate mix, add vanilla and bake.  Let cool and top with berries if you like. Also good with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.  Merry Christmas Eve!!

Today was a cold, snowy day and we spent most of the day inside baking cookies. We decided late in the day that we wanted to make beef stew. However since it was already 5:00 PM we knew  we could not make a traditional stew that cooked for hours.  We researched “quick beef stew” on the internet and found a recipe that called for sirloin tips — because they are more tender than the usual meat used for stew, they cook much faster.  The other ingredients were carrots, potatoes, onions and beef broth.  We also cooked kale as our side dish and of course cookies for dessert.

The other ingredients besides sirloin tips were carrots, potatoes, onions and beef broth. First we cut the meat up into chunks and coated it with flour.  Then we chopped the onions, carrots and potatoes.  We sauteed the meat first, then added the vegetables.  Finally we added beef broth.  We liked the taste but next time we are going to use less flour.