- Over the years you've seen me cook a lot of family meals
on this channel and one of the questions
that you've often asked is,
"Do you ever use a meal delivery service?"
So today, I have partnered with Blue Apron
to try out a couple of their meals and give you my review.
I'm also including a link in the description box below
to save you $60 over your first three boxes.
Blue Apron offers meals for two and for four
and many vegetarian options.
For my delivery, I chose family meals
that I would typically not cook as often
and provided us an opportunity
to try a new flavor or recipe
without having to purchase a lot of ingredients
that I might not use again.
So this week I order the Mongolian beef and noodles
and the salmon avocado rice bowls for my family.
In today's video,
I'm going to be making the Mongolian beef recipe
since that is what my audience wanted to see me make.
The box arrived this morning, right at my front door,
so now let's check out what's inside the box.
And as you can see, my two meals are in here.
Here are my ingredients for the salmon avocado bowls
and right away, I can see that the salmon is super fresh,
it arrived cold, so that's a bonus right here.
Big points for quality and it has a beautiful color.
And then what I absolutely love,
and I specifically picked this recipe,
is because there are a lot of small ingredients
that I would typically never keep in my pantry,
like sambal oelek, soy glaze.
So this is a great meal that I'm going to enjoy
without having to have a ton of bottles in my pantry.
Big points for this one.
Now the Mongolian beef and noodles, here's the recipe card
and what I love is that the ingredients that are in the box
also match what's in the recipe card
and in the back, which we're gonna cook along,
is the step-by-step instructions.
So if you're not a chef
or you don't cook a lot all the time,
this is the perfect delivery with visuals.
You don't have to watch all my videos,
you can just cook along.
For this recipe, I also have a Knick Knack bag,
which has pre-measured ingredients,
which is a bonus it's like having a sous-chef
and everything I need for this recipe,
is inside its own bag and it's labeled,
so if this is not what I'm cooking today,
and I just throw it in the fridge,
I can find it really easily.
The reason I picked the Mongolian beef and noodles
is because it's a recipe that we love eating out
and I would not make at home
because I can't get shishito peppers
at my local grocery store,
I have to go to a market that's 40 minutes away.
The beef is pre-weighed and measured,
it has a beautiful color, it's still really cold,
so big bonus for this one, right here as well.
And it is a premium cut
and you can see it right in the packaging.
And the lo mein noodles are fresh noodles,
and just everything I need for this recipe,
so let's get started.
Like in any recipe, it is always a good idea
to read through the directions before you get started
and get all your ingredients out
and put them in one place.
While I heat my water and get it to boil
so I can cook my noodles,
I'm going to chop my peppers.
I peeled and chopped my garlic, the ginger,
which I already put in a bowl
'cause we're gonna make the glaze.
My peppers are all sliced right here
and my green onions,
I separated the whites from the greens and chopped them.
In this bowl I have my ginger,
I'm going to place my garlic as well,
my white bottoms and my peppers.
In this bowl,
I have some warm water to which I'm gonna add my soy sauce
that's already pre-measured for me,
I love that.
My demi-glace, some brown sugar
and then as many red pepper flakes as I want.
How many?
How spicy do I want this?
(joyful music)
Okay, so let's whisk this stuff up.
All right, so now that my vegetables
are chopped and combined
and I've made my sauce, all we gotta do is start cooking.
So let's heat up our pan and heat up some olive oil.
All right, so I'm going to add my peppers to the pan
with the garlic and the ginger.
What's great is the recipe card is going to tell you
three to four minutes,
so you don't really have to guess when something is done.
So now we're going to remove these
from the pan onto a plate or a bowl in my case.
The next step is to toss our sliced beef
with some corn starch.
Now, one step I can totally appreciate
is the fact that the beef came already pre-thinly sliced,
so that totally saved me a step on prep,
so I'm gonna put my corn starch with the beef
and combine it, toss it around.
So now that my beef is nicely coated with the corn starch,
I'm gonna heat up some oil in my pan.
and what I love is that it's gonna have
that crispy, outer texture that we love from eating out
and it's gonna thicken our sauce,
so it's a win-win step right here.
So we are gonna cook our beef.
Meanwhile,
I'm going to drop my fresh noodles in my boiling water.
To my beef, I'm gonna add my cooked peppers
and also my noodles,
add them from the pot, right onto my big skillet.
(pan sizzling)
And then the sauce.
Check this out, so much food,
this is a four-portion family meal,
so I definitely think size-wise,
is right on target for a recipe
and it definitely helped me eliminate that fatigue
of trying to figure out what to cook.
I cannot wait to try this.
(joyful music continues)
The recipe's flavor is right on point,
and I have to say that Blue Apron's cost per serving,
it is a lot cheaper than going out to eat.
I can see why this could be a long-term option
where you can order a couple of meals a week or skip a week.
So make sure you check the link below this video,
where you can save $60 off your first three boxes.
See you next week. (camera beeps)
Oh my god!
Drainable gel?
Okay, so this is a bonus right here.
You can,
you can put this in the sink.
This is one of my pet peeves
of getting fresh things shipped.
Made from water, 99% water.
Guess what?
These gel packs are designed to stay cold longer than ice
and you can drain them,
which means less material waste going to the landfills.
(imitates explosion booming)