This month marks 10 years since the founding of Blue Apron. To celebrate, we’re taking a look back at some memorable moments from our past. We’ve developed hundreds of recipes and spent countless hours in the kitchen together, all for the love of food.
From our very first meal to our latest menu additions, we’ve loved cooking with you. We can’t wait to see where the next ten years will take us.
To our community of home cooks,
Blue Apron is celebrating its 10 year anniversary, and this year is important to us and to you for a variety of reasons. Between gas prices, food inflation, and a volatile economic environment—bringing value, wellness, and human connection to people all over the country is more important than ever.
Throughout the past decade, we built a network where we source approximately 80% of what goes in the box directly from producers and farms, which in turn, allows us to bring quality ingredients to home cooks everywhere. Over the years, we have grown and scaled that network to play an even more important function today—bringing you value during a time where value is hard to find.
With our direct sourcing model, we are able to offer those quality ingredients at competitive pricing. We do so without compromising on quality of ingredients and still adhere to our animal welfare standards: no added hormones, no subtherapeutic antibiotics, seafood we seek to source sustainably, and quality produce, while keeping our pricing below the inflationary standard. In fact, we have even compared the prices of ingredients in select recipes to ingredients of similar quality in grocery stores across the US markets, and we offered lower cost.*
But cost isn’t the only benefit. Since our founding, we’ve worked to operate our business in a way that mitigates our impact on the world around us. We’ve limited our food and packaging waste, both within our operations and in your homes. And this year, we became a carbon-neutral company, offsetting estimated upstream and downstream emissions that range from sourcing, packaging, and transporting our products. Now you can confidently cook with us, knowing that we offset the impact of your box on our climate.
And finally, we’ve delivered on these benefits, while growing our product selection. Today, we have over 60 menu options for you to choose from each week, including easy breakfast and lunch meals to help you eat well throughout the day to Premium dishes to elevate any experience.
These past 10 years have taught us a lot—and many of those lessons came from you. Without your dedication and feedback, we could have never gotten to this place. I want to thank you for every single review you left, every #letsblueapron photo you shared, and for inviting us into your homes for moments both big and small.
All month long, we’ll be celebrating all that we do for the love of food—including sharing all-time top recipes, our favorite customer reviews, and a special first-of-its-kind sweepstakes. Make sure you’re following us on social media to take part in all the fun.
Thank you again for everything—here’s to the next 10 years.
Cheers,
Linda
Linda Findley, President and CEO, Blue Apron
*Internal research comparing sample Blue Apron Recipes to comparable groceries in Indiana and New York as well as San Francisco and Cincinnati
What’s better than a home-cooked meal after a busy day? It sounds delightful, but if you’re the one cooking, it can mean even more work. Blue Apron is here to lend a hand with new, Ready to Cook options that cut down on preparation and cleanup time.
Ready to Cook meals are as easy as combine, bake, and serve. Put down that knife and relax! Our chefs reduced preparation time by designing recipes that don’t require any chopping at all. Each dish is cooked entirely within the oven—there’s no need to fuss with multiple burners or a crowded stovetop. Ready to cook meals are combined and baked in an included aluminum tray that can be rinsed and recycled after use. Without sticky pots and pans, cleanup is a breeze.
These recipes include the same high-quality ingredients and sophisticated flavors that you expect from Blue Apron, but with less time spent in the kitchen. Try Ready to Cook options to enjoy homemade meals a fraction of the time, even on the busiest nights of the week.
These recipes will be available on the 2-serving and 4-serving menus. Find them online or in the Blue Apron app alongside our core recipes. Recipes will rotate, bringing you fresh and exciting options on a weekly basis.
Ready to Cook options are arriving on the menu in time for fall, when schedules fill up, and easy meals become a true necessity. View options on the menu starting 7/29, in boxes by 8/29.
The name cascatelli comes from the Italian word for “waterfalls.” Take one look at these rippling strands of pasta and you’ll see why.
All those ripples aren’t just there for beauty. This pasta was invented by Dan Pashman, the host and creator of the Sporkful podcast, who designed it with three key elements in mind.
The first, “sauceability” is a term introduced to the pasta lexicon by Pashman. It refers to a noodle’s ability to grab and hold onto sauce. The ruffles and ridges of each cascatelli noodle hug sauce tightly, creating a perfect dish of pasta where each bite is composed of the ideal ratio of sauce to noodle.
Pashman also craved a noodle with perfect forkability and toothsinkability. His ideal pasta is easy to eat with a fork. It can be stabbed and lifted without noodles slipping all around the plate. Toothsinkability refers to the satisfying texture of each bite.
Pashman partnered with Sfoglini Pasta to bring this new noodle into the world. Sfoglini Pasta is an artisanal pasta company founded in Brooklyn in 2012. Co-creators Steve Gonzalez and Scott Ketchum share a serious passion for pasta. Gonzales worked as a chef for over 14 years, creating the handmade pasta for beloved New York restaurants like Hearth, Roberta’s, and Frankies Sputino. At Sfoglini, he oversees all things culinary, ensuring their pastas match the standards of any high-end kitchen. Ketchum oversees the creative side of the brand, drawing on his 18 years of experience as a designer in New York and San Francisco. Today, Sfoglini produces over 25 types of pasta, including cascatelli, in their Hudson Valley factory. Each batch of cascatelli is extruded through a bronze die, which creates a slightly rough surface that helps even more sauce cling to these noodles.
To complement the unique texture of cascatelli, the Blue Apron team created a recipe Creamy Calabrian Shrimp & Cascatelli with Salsa Verde Zucchini. After reviewing the recipe, Dan Pashman approves:
Ever since I invented cascatelli, people have been asking me what they should cook with it. I think sauces that are thick and/or creamy are fantastic, because the shape holds those sauces so well between its ruffles. Preparations with big, stabbable chunks like cut up vegetables or shrimp are also great, because cascatelli is so hearty and forkable, so you can assemble great bites by stabbing the pasta along with those other chunky components. That’s why I’m thrilled that the chefs at Blue Apron came up with a preparation that is thick, creamy, and chunky—and full of spice and flavor too! It’s an ideal dish to highlight cascatelli’s sauceability, forkability, and toothsinkability.
For cascatelli and countless other delights delivered right to your door, order your next Blue Apron box now.
This guide to almonds was contributed by Nikki Miller-Ka. Nikki is a culinary expert and social media influencer based in North Carolina. A former associate editor at Food And Wine, her favorite things to cook are tacos and biscuits.
Depending on how they’re prepared, almonds can be slightly sweet, rich and toasty, or mild and buttery. This versatile ingredient can be the golden brown star of a dish, or it can subtly enhance a recipe as a garnish. Almonds have a high oil content, giving them a long shelf life when handled and stored properly. Whole, sliced, diced, slivered, ground, chopped, or blanched—almonds add flavor and texture to just about any savory or sweet recipe.
All almonds taste nuttier and richer when they’re roasted. Roasting almonds brings their natural oils to the surface, and also crisps up the bronze, papery skins. Roasting nuts deepens their flavor, rendering them richer, nuttier, and more complex. It also gives them a crispier texture that shines in many recipes. There are two ways to roast almonds: in the oven or in a frying pan. Read on for instructions for both methods.
Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil.
Place almonds in a single layer on the sheet. To enhance browning, it’s optional to use a neutral oil and drizzle a small amount (1-2 teaspoons total) over the nuts and toss to coat evenly. Roast whole almonds in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes, sliced almonds for 5-7 minutes, and slivered almonds for 6-8 minutes. Place in the oven and check every 5 minutes.
Stir and shake the pan so that the nuts are redistributed to roast evenly. When the nuts are browned and smell nutty, remove them from the oven and immediately transfer to a work surface or an unheated baking sheet to cool. The nuts will continue to cook and potentially burn if not removed to a cool surface.
To toast a small number of almonds, use a frying pan. Place the nuts in a single layer in a small dry skillet. Cook over medium heat, stirring often, for 3 to 5 minutes until they start to smell nutty and they look golden. Pay attention to the pan closely as pan-roasted almonds burn easily on the spots in contact with the pan.
Try this romesco sauce recipe using roasted whole almonds. Store it in a jar in the refrigerator for up to one week.
Blanched almonds are almonds with the skin removed. Blanching refers to briefly submerging the almonds in boiling water to loosen and remove the skins. Without skins, almonds have a shorter shelf-life but can still be roasted or processed to make almond meal, milk, or flour.
There are two common methods for blanching almonds: an overnight soak or a 5-minute boil. Be sure to dry the almonds thoroughly after blanching in a single layer on paper towels or on dish towels. Store in an airtight container, in a cool, dark place.
Overnight Soaking Method
Place almonds in a bowl. Fill it with cold water just until they are fully submerged. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, a paper towel, or a loose-fitting lid, and let it sit under refrigeration overnight. Drain the water from the bowl. Gently squeeze the almonds to loosen their skins—they should slip off easily. Compost the discarded skins.
Boiling Method
Fill a small saucepan with 2 cups of water and bring it to a boil. Once it boils, add the almonds to the saucepan. Turn off the heat, cover the pan and let them rest for 2 minutes. Drain the water from the pan into a colander as soon as the skins become wrinkled. Rinse the almonds under cold water and gently squeeze the almonds to loosen their skins immediately. Start peeling the skins while the almonds are still warm—as they cool down it will become more difficult to remove the skins.
Try this Tangy Sweet Meyer Lemon Almond Tart recipe with blanched almonds. The crust will become brown, nutty and pair perfectly with the bright, fresh meyer lemon filling.
Blue Apron advocates for dietary and planetary wellness – and that includes our commitment to the ocean. The world’s oceans – their temperature, chemistry, currents and life – drive global systems that make the Earth habitable for humankind. Our rainwater, drinking water, weather, climate, coastlines, much of our food, and even the oxygen in the air we breathe, are all ultimately provided and regulated by the sea. The concept of a ‘World Oceans Day’ was first proposed in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro as a way to celebrate our world’s shared oceans as well as to raise awareness about the crucial role the ocean plays in our lives and the important ways people can help protect it. To support this year’s World Oceans Day theme: One Ocean, One Climate, One Future – Together, we want to share more about Blue Apron’s efforts to support the preservation of oceanic health.
Let’s start with carbon. We know that human activities (primarily the burning of fossil fuels) have fundamentally increased the concentration of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) in the Earth’s atmosphere, warming the planet. But the ocean is also affected. The ocean absorbs about one third of those GHGs, which has negative effects on ocean health causing pH reductions and alterations in fundamental chemical balances (commonly referred to as ocean acidification). This is why finding ways to reduce GHG emissions is critical, and why we were so proud to announce Blue Apron’s carbon neutrality earlier this year. As Blue Apron (and other companies and countries around the globe) strive to find ways to reduce emissions it is not only with climate change in mind, but ocean health as well.
The increase in ocean plastic is also a concern. Blue Apron has committed to achieving 100% recyclable, reusable or compostable packaging in our meal kits by 2025. We have already done a lot of work towards that goal. We partner with How2Recycle®, a standardized labeling system that clearly communicates recycling instructions to the public, and are working to add How2Recycle® labels to all of our internal packaging. The gel packs that are used to keep our meal kit boxes cold in transit are designed to be drain safe and fully recyclable. We also operate a packaging engineering lab that conducts regular tests on new materials and innovative solutions to identify opportunities to reduce the environmental footprint of our packaging, including improved recyclability and increased post-consumer recycled content. Also, as part of our carbon neutrality commitment, we are working to assess the GHG emissions associated with all of our packaging to support more informed decision making in support of our sustainability goals.
Lastly, seafood is a critical dietary component for over 3 billion people and a favorite ingredient in our recipes. How we source our seafood is crucial for ocean health. We partner with The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch®, a leading authority on seafood sustainability. As we monitor the sustainability of seafood, we aim to source as sustainably as is reasonably possible. This could mean sourcing from farms or fisheries with sustainability certifications from leading sustainability organizations, such as from Marine Stewardship Council, Aquaculture Stewardship Council or Best Aquaculture Practices or finding smaller fisheries who are involved in fishery improvement projects. Additionally, in March 2021, Blue Apron became the first meal kit company to join the Ocean Disclosure Project, a platform for voluntary seafood sourcing disclosures.
We will continue to find ways to share our love of the sea and shape our business practices with that value in mind. Share below ways that you show your love to the sea for World Oceans Day.
2. https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/
3,4. Doney, Fabry, V. J., Feely, R. A., & Kleypas, J. A. (2009). Ocean acidification: the other CO2 problem. Annual Review of Marine Science, 1(1), 169–192. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.marine.010908.163834
Jam has been a beloved way to preserve fragile fruits for centuries. With inventive flavors like blueberry bourbon and banana with a splash of rum, Brooklyn-based jam company The Jam Stand is putting a modern twist on this classic food preservation technique.
The Jam Stand co-founders Sabrina and Jessica first met while studying at the University of Florida. Their shared passion for crafting and learning new things quickly sparked a lifelong friendship.
Years later, the idea for a modern jam company was born. Jessica and Sabrina started testing unique flavors in an apartment kitchen in 2011. Today, The Jam Stand produces hundreds of thousands of pounds of jam a year.
Although their business has changed, their mission remains the same. The Jam Stand aims to create fun and innovative flavors made with quality ingredients. Two of these exciting flavors, Blueberry Bourbon and Raspberry Jalapeño, are coming to the Blue Apron menu.
The Jam Stand’s jams are designed to work with sweet or savory recipes. Try serving their inventive preserves alongside your next cheese plate, spooned over ice cream, or incorporated into dinner. Check out the recipe below to see how we used their Blueberry Bourbon preserves to create a sophisticated duck dinner.
Duck & Blueberry-Thyme Pan Sauce with Caramelized Onion Mashed Potatoes
Rich, savory duck breasts pair perfectly with a delicately fruity sauce like the one we’re making here with fresh thyme, shallot, butter, and our new blueberry bourbon spread.
For recipes like these delivered to your door, sign up for a Blue Apron box here.
Blue Apron is here to make your mornings brighter. The chefs you trust are using the ingredients you love to bring breakfast to the Blue Apron menu.
Chef Ashley Giddens took the lead on developing breakfast recipes. As an adamant food lover, Ashley advocates for making every meal as delicious as possible. A quick breakfast of a protein bar or pre-packed pastry is a missed opportunity. She designed the Blue Apron breakfast menu to make thoughtful, delicious morning meals a little bit easier.
With Blue Apron, breakfast can be a lovely moment of indulgence before the day’s duties begin. Our dishes are created with busy mornings in mind. Each recipe is designed to be ready 15 minutes or less, and without creating a pile of dishes.
Recipes like Fried Egg & Prosciutto Sandwiches with Smoked Gouda & Calabrian Mayo and Creamy Spinach & Egg Sandwiches with Parmesan Cheese elevate the classic egg sandwich with unexpected ingredients. You can tailor this recipe to your liking by cooking the eggs to your desired doneness. These sandwiches will be delicious with sunny-side up, over-easy, or over-medium eggs.
Homemade pancakes might seem like a weekend-only treat, but our pre-measured ingredients make it easy to throw together a batter in the morning. With recipes like Buttermilk-Cornmeal Pancakes with Maple-Fig Syrup & Pistachios, Sourdough French Toast with Cherry-Maple Syrup & Almonds there’s no need to fuss with measuring cups. Just combine, cook, and enjoy your short stack. Bring the leisure of a Sunday brunch to your Tuesday morning table.
Tacos don’t need dozens of salsas or garnishes to be special. Our Cheesy Egg & Bell Pepper Tacos with Chipotle Sour Cream are an easy and delicious breakfast treat that you can eat with your hands.
Find Blue Apron breakfast on the Add-ons menu. Our first recipe will be available to ship starting the week of April 18 through Blue Apron’s website and mobile app. Follow along for more breakfast dishes, coming soon to the menu.
What separates a restaurant-quality dish from homemade dinner? More often than not, it’s the ingredients. Restaurants tend to put extra effort into creating a luxurious sauce, garnishing with a crunchy topping, or finishing with decadent compound butter.
John and Janey Hubschman founded Epicurean Butter with the goal of making these special restaurant touches achievable for home cooks. The company got its start in 2004 when the Hubschmans were looking for their next venture. After working in the fine dining industry for 20 years, John was looking for a way to bring restaurant-quality meals into peoples homes. Since its launch, Epicurean has expanded in ways the Hubschmans never imagined. Today, Epicurean Butter offers 14 different products, available in over 6,000 grocery stores. You can find their garlic & herb butter on the Blue Apron Menu.
These flavored butters are a quick and easy way to make almost any dish taste even better. Epicurean products are made with high-quality ingredients. For the butter with truffles, coming soon to the Blue Apron menu, white and black truffles are imported from Italy.
In addition to adding flavor, compound butters save time while you’re cooking–there’s no need to measure out herbs and spices. Epicurean Butter can be used to sauté, cook, bake, or finish a dish. The right Epicurean product can transform anything from vegetables, pasta, meat, or seafood into a restaurant-quality dish in minutes.
The dedication to quality, ease, and flavor makes Epicurean butters right at home on the Blue Apron menu. With high-quality compound butter delivered to your door, it’s never been easier to make restaurant-quality meals at home.
Find recipes with Epicurean Butter on the Blue Apron Cookbook.
Creamy cilantro sauce is one of our favorite ways to add a contrasting pop of flavor to our plate. We love drizzling cilantro sauce over grilled chicken, spiced beef, or seared fish dishes.
We send our sauce premade to make dinner fast and easy for our home chefs. If you love your meal so much that you want to make it again, use this recipe to recreate your favorite Blue Apron dinner at home.
Makes ¼ cup
Combine all ingredients in a blender or small food processor and blend until smooth. Add more water, lime juice, salt or pepper to taste. After it’s blended, measure your sauce. If it makes slightly more than ¼ cup, save the remainder in a sealed container in the fridge for up to three days.
For our quick spin on piri piri chicken—or Portuguese-style spiced, marinated chicken—we’re coating chicken with a blend of paprika, ground yellow mustard, and more, then topping it with a creamy cilantro sauce for cooling contrast.
Served over a bed of fragrant, vadouvan-seasoned rice, our beef and carrots also get dynamic flavor from the spicy, sweet, and savory Indian tomato chutney they cook with in the pan. To bring it all together, we’re finishing the dish with a drizzle of bright, creamy sauce.
This vibrant dish is bursting with exciting flavors thanks to the blend of smoky spices (like paprika and ground yellow mustard) on our seared chicken, the herby cilantro sauce drizzled on top, and the fiery bird’s eye chile pepper mixed into the farro salad served underneath.
In this dish, flaky tilapia fillets are seared with a coating of our Mexican-spice blend, then served over a bed of barley tossed with spinach and marinated carrots. It’s all topped with a mix of crème fraîche and herbaceous sauce.
This dish is filled with bold, Mexican-style flavors thanks to the creamy cilantro sauce drizzled over spiced chicken, and a bed of rice loaded with toasted pepitas, spicy pickled jalapeño, and bright lime zest.
These crowd-pleasing enchiladas are stuffed with a hearty filling of Mexican-spiced chicken, black beans, kale, and tender bites of rice. It’s all brought together with a bit of rich sour cream.
This colorful dish features spiced salmon fillets served over hearty quinoa (studded with shishito peppers) and a fresh orange-radish salsa—all topped with a drizzle of herbaceous sauce and crunchy roasted peanuts.
To elevate our seared, spiced steaks, we’re topping them with a bright, herbaceous mix of cilantro sauce, fresh lemon juice, and spicy pickled jalapeño.
Our verdant sauce lends bold, herbaceous flavor to sautéed vegetables and jasmine rice—a satisfying accompaniment to bites of tender chicken dressed with a delightfully spicy-sweet chipotle mayo.
Find more recipes like these in the Blue Apron cookbook.
It’s a familiar cycle: a trend is cutting edge, it becomes popular, and then it’s overexposed. It happens in music and fashion, but it can happen in wine as well. This was the case with rosé, which was as maligned in the early 2000s as it is now adored. This is also the story of Moscato.
Moscato is the Italian word for wine made from grapes in the Muscat family, often Muscat Blanc. Around 2010, Moscato sales skyrocketed in the U.S. The majority of the wine sold was simple and sweet, and sometimes lightly sparkling. This is the image of Moscato lingering in our collective memory, but it’s not the whole story. Muscat Blanc can also be vinified into a still, dry wine. Dry expressions, like the Blue Apron 2021 Lucas & Lewellen Moscato, are powerfully aromatic, refreshingly acidic, and exceedingly food-friendly.
Look for these classic aromas in your pouring of Moscato
Moscato’s lush fruit flavors and tart acidity make for easy pairing. These are some of our favorite meals to pair with dry Moscato.
Try serving the salad component of this dish as an appetizer. The fresh herbs are the is the perfect complement to aromatic Moscato.
The lemony yogurt and pops of sweet raisin in this stuffed poblano pepper will play nicely with Moscato’s lemon and ripe fruit flavor profile.
For a light dinner, try a glass of dry Moscato alongside this green farro salad. The bright herbs and roasted vegetables will get a lift from Moscato’s tart acidity.
The 2021 Lucas & Lewellen Moscato comes from old vine grapes grown in the Don Miguel vineyard, where rocky-clay soils, cool temperatures, and a long growing season yield exceptional Moscato. The old vines yield fruit with concentrated flavor, creating an aromatic and complex wine. This example fills the glass with stone fruit aromas and flavors.
In the U.S., Mexican salsa verde is more popular than its Italian counterpart. These two sauces share a name and a beautiful green color, but the similarities stop there.
Mexican salsa verde is a green sauce made with tomatillos and hot green peppers. It can be used to top meats, tortillas, or enchiladas. It can be mild or quite spicy.
Italian salsa verde is made with fresh herbs like parsley and basil, capers, and sometimes anchovies. It isn’t spicy, but delivers plenty of powerful flavor.
We love using this piquant green sauce to add complexity to our favorite meals. Our favorite Italian salsa verde recipe is packed with green herbs and briney capers. These ingredients create a sauce with aromatic herb flavors and enough acidity to enhance the flavors in the rest of your dish. We love spooning this sauce over light proteins like chicken and fish, or stirring it into pasta dishes for an herbaceous kick.
Ingredients
Instructions
Mix all prepared ingredients together in a small bowl. Taste and season with salt and pepper as desired. Leftover salsa verde can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to one week.
In this recipe, an Italian-style salsa verde brings bright flavor to warm orzo pasta tossed with roasted broccoli. It’s a perfect bed for rich seared salmon.
This sophisticated dish highlights exciting contrast of texture thanks to the irresistibly crispy pistachio breadcrumbs that we’re sprinkling atop soft gnocchi.
Our herbaceous parsley and caper-based sauce is the star of this dish—bringing bright, zesty flavor to pan-seared vegetables tossed with tender strands of fettuccine pasta.
We’re making our potato salad extra special by tossing tender potatoes with crisp green beans, fresh tomatoes & tangy green sauce.
This simple, flavorful dish pairs seared tilapia with orzo pasta tossed with sautéed tomatoes and spinach.
This quick-cooking dish brings together earthy mushrooms, creamy mascarpone, and delicate strands of spaghettini in our own vibrant salsa verde—a blend of parsley, basil, capers, garlic, and more.
Find more recipes like these in the Blue Apron Cookbook.
