My Other Week with Blue Apron

Time to recount my second week of trying Blue Apron!

I didn't establish this last time, but you might like to know that each week, Blue Apron offers eight recipes to choose from. It's good variety, and if you absolutely hate everything being offered that week, skipping is an option.

For me, choosing the recipes was the hardest part of signing up. For my second week, I went with Salmon Burgers & Smoky Potatoes with Tartar Sauce and Maple & Barbecue-Glazed Chicken Wings with Sweet Potato Wedges & Coleslaw.

No bonus recipe this time! I was way more sad about that than I should have been. Also, I realized belatedly that three of my four Blue Apron recipes featured a roasted potato dish. Heh heh...whoops.

First off, Salmon Burgers & Smoky Potatoes with Tartar Sauce.

I was especially delighted with the one-egg carton.

I've never had salmon burgers before, and I was expecting them to be a lot more complicated than they were. This recipe took me just under an hour from start to finish.

First I chopped and cooked the potatoes. They were the exact same potatoes from the steak recipe last week, just with a different spice blend. To avoid having underdone potatoes again, I cooked them eight minutes longer than the recipe required.

The burgers required cooking the salmon, chopping it up, and mixing it with an egg and spices (and that mythical "garlic paste" first seen in the steak recipe). Then I formed it into patties to be cooked again.

I was rather proud of my patties.

However, I made the mistake of thinking I could fit them both in a small pan, and I ended up having to slightly deform one to get them both in there.

Although getting the patties off the plates and into the pan was really hard! They didn't stay together well, probably because they were simultaneously both heavy and wide. That also contributed to the deformity. While I was turning them, I said aloud, "How do I do this without them falling apart?" The answer was that I couldn't, and each patty lost a bit of mass and cracked as I turned it.

The only things left to do were mix sour cream and pickle relish to make a homemade tartar sauce and toast the buns in the pan. The bun-toasting was a nice touch that helped reduce my aversion to homemade burgers!

I was running out of clean dishes and ended up eating off the same plate I'd put the patties on after cooking, thus the grease.

The Verdict: The potatoes turned out wonderfully: slightly blackened and crisped on the outside and mealy on the inside! The spice blend was better than last time, too (though I could barely taste it). The salmon burgers were delicious, although the patties were not only difficult to cook but also much too big to comfortably eat one burgers in a single sitting. This meal could easily have been stretched into three or even four servings.

My chief comment is that, although most Blue Apron recipes contain an abundance of produce, this one didn't. The only thing resembling a vegetable was the pickle relish in the homemade tartar sauce (which was good, but not amazing). I imagine this was because of the cost of the salmon: they felt obligated to do just potatoes because cheap. Still, some veggies would have spruced the burger up mightily.

What I'd Do Differently: Make smaller patties from the same amount of salmon. I'd probably have to use a different spice mix in the burgers and the potatoes as the Blue Apron-provided one lists the ingredients but not the proportions. I'd probably replace the tartar sauce with fry sauce. I know that sounds gross, and trust me, I'd never put fry sauce on a regular piece of salmon—but this burger is processed in such a way that it wouldn't be a travesty. Finally,  I'd also add a slice of tomato and a slice of American cheese. Maybe even a bit of lettuce.

The last recipe I tried was the Maple & Barbecue-Glazed Chicken Wings with Sweet Potato Wedges & Coleslaw.

I actually don't like chicken wings that much. Or sweet potato wedges (I prefer my sweet potatoes mashed with honey butter if I must eat them at all). Or coleslaw.

You're probably wondering, "Then why did you choose this recipe?" I chose it because I was curious about learning to cook chicken wings. Like, who makes those for dinner?! It was too good a learning opportunity to pass up (come to think of it, I felt similarly about the salmon burgers). Also, my opposition to chicken wings is more that they're so messy and difficult to eat while yielding so little meat than it is the flavor. So they did sound tasty, especially compared to the other menu offerings for the week. And since I can endure sweet potato wedges and coleslaw if needed, I thought it was worth a try.

Unlike the other potatoes, the sweet potato wedges cooked to perfection at the recommended time and temperature. They actually looked rather appetizing after they came out of the oven!

The coleslaw and chicken wings were both fussy dishes. Because of that, and because both the chicken wings and potato wedges had to cook a half hour in the oven, this recipe was by far the longest I tried. It took me at least an hour and a half to do everything.

This recipe also occasioned my one and only Blue Apron error. I accidentally added the vinegar that was supposed to go in both the wing sauce and the coleslaw to just the coleslaw. It had minimal effect on the coleslaw flavor, but I felt like the chicken wing sauce needed all three flavors. I rummaged about for a viable substitute and ended up using Sprite from a can left over from my Christmas stocking.

Once the wings were seasoned, baked, tossed in half the sauce, baked again, tossed again in the other half of the sauce, and garnished with green onions, and once the vegetables were peeled/grated/chopped and steeped in vinegar, sugar, and mayonnaise for an appropriate length of time, my dinner was ready!

The Verdict: Once again, there was a ton of food: enough for three meals. The chicken glaze/sauce was good. However, as with all chicken wings, the effort it took to extract the meat wasn't worth it. The potato wedges were better than expected (although I did happen to have some honey butter to put on them). The coleslaw probably was the second-best coleslaw I've had, after that coleslaw that Saladmaster lady (who looking back I can't believe now I even let in my house) made. So the dishes were decent. However...the sauce was sweet. The coleslaw was sweet (because sugar). The sweet potato wedges were, obviously, sweet. So when eaten together, the effect was a bit unappetizing. Why are they selling these three dishes together? I especially can't understand why the coleslaw has the scallion/green onion bottoms in it. Did they just add them to the coleslaw so that they wouldn't waste them when garnishing the chicken? Is the coleslaw on the menu for that exact reason? I hope not—I've never before seen onions in coleslaw, and I hope it's not a thing.

What I'd Do Differently: Use the sauce on non-wing chicken. Skip the green onion garnish, which adds absolutely nothing except visual fanciness. Serve with a potato dish and some cooked carrots and maybe some cornbread. However, it's unlikely that I'd revisit this recipe unless I really had a hankering for barbecue chicken.

I thought I would be strapped for cash and very hungry during this Blue Apron experiment. Weirdly enough, I actually ended up saving money since I barely ate out. (Though that wouldn't have been the case without the discount, which allowed the service to fit within my grocery budget. Without the discount, the price would have exceeded my entire weekly grocery budget. It also helped that all the meals ended up being enough for three servings instead of the advertised two.) I guess that since I was no longer eating the same thing for seven days straight, eating out had less appeal. I was always full of yummy home-cooked food!

On the other hand, cooking so much got a little exhausting. One week I cooked literally every other day. All that cooking also led to a lot of loading and unloading the dishwasher, and I hate loading and unloading the dishwasher. I'm ready for a break!

I won't be continuing this unless I get more discounts. But while it lasted, I loved trying new recipes and eating new things! I had such a good time that when I got a gift card for HelloFresh (it was included with my new sneakers for...some reason...?), I decided I'd like to try that next! Stay tuned for more food subscription box shenanigans and opinionated opinions.