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Comment by idlewords | Hacker News Reader

My experience in trying Blue Apron (a sous-chef simulator):

* extravagant, simply incredible amounts of packaging. There was easily a 4:1 ratio of packaging to food. I had to stop using the service out of packaging shame

* The produce was often not that good because it needs to withstand transport and storage. The tomatoes were faint pink and could have probably made it through a baseball game without a lot of damage

* It made me try recipes and ingredients that I wasn't used to, which I enjoyed. I feel like it's a kind of Guitar Hero for cooking.

My understanding is that Gobble is taking this stuff one step further, by doing the prep work. I'll be interested to see how they address the problem of having stuff be freshly prepared and transportable/storable at the same time.

This stuff gets marketed at beginning cooks, which seems unwise. If you're just getting started, fancy restaurant meals are not the way to go. Make an omelette or two.

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I probably cooked 50+ Blue Apron meals so far. I absolutely love it.

* Packaging: it just takes a bit of planning to deal with. Personally I fold the cardboard box and it fits nicely in my outdoor garbage can for paper (which is recycled), and I make sure the ice packs are re-used by giving them away[1]. So I only have to trash the foam (approximately 1x8 feet of foam every week).

* Quality: I am blown away by the quality of the meals. It is similar or better in taste to what is offered by a trendy restaurant rated 3½-4 stars on Yelp in my area (San Francisco). Even my wife would agree and she is a picky eater :) Yes sometimes I receive a lettuce or parsley that does not looks that great, but it is rare (<3-5% of the ingredients).

* Difficulty: I find the Blue Apron instructions very easy to follow, and I only had very basic cooking experience before (frying steaks, making rice and pasta, etc). I have never messed up the cooking of a single meal or found any one to be difficult. Just follow the instructions precisely and I believe anyone can do it.

[1] I accumulate 4 weeks's worth of ice packs, then put them in a box on my doorstep and post them on Craigslist in the "free stuff" section - someone usually picks them up in the next 12-24 hours.

I'm the founder of Gobble, and I hear you.

In particular, the packaging is a big concern for me. I'm actually in the works of landing a huge partnership that will allow us to easily pick up all of our packaging when we drop of each week's current box all across the state (just like the milkman). We're so excited to be able to re-use all the boxes, ice packs, and insulation. We'd be the first in the industry to take this big step. Look out for this announcement in the next couple weeks :)

That would make me much happier using a service like Gobble. I'm glad to hear it's in the works!

One of the awesome things about Blue Apron is that they make their recipes available on their site: http://www.blueapron.com/cookbook/

I've never signed up for their $$$ervice but I've tried a couple of their recipes. Sure, a few of them have hard-to-find ingredients or a spice blend that they don't share details on, but the rest are very possible to source yourself.

Looking at the recipes a lot look very good but I would tweak every single one to my tastes so having the ingredients sent would be pointless, I'd either have stuff I don't need or stuff I need but don't have. Which completely defeats the purpose. If I wanted "someone else's food I [mostly] can't modify" I would get takeout. I guess that's why these services don't appeal to me, for me cooking means I'm in complete control. Recipes are suggestions.

In case anyone was thinking of signing up for this, I found a 50% off first week promo link. You could probably find one googling, but it was like the third result I tried. This page might have a referral deal or something in it but the link was http://promotions.kinja.com/fresh-ingredient-recipe-delivery...

I guess the lesson here is not to discuss and give helpful links for companies in the same space as a YC company. Oh well.

Omelets are actually hard for a non experienced cook since it is SOOOO easy to overcook eggs and omelets specifically require a bit of intuition (at least for me).

Yeah! I meant that it's a great thing to practice on because the difference between a good omelette and a bad one is so vast, starting with the same exact ingredients. And eggs are cheap to practice on.

Most of cooking is about mastering a few fundamental skills and developing a feel for how food reacts to heat. Better to ruin your first dozen omelettes (and similar simple dishes) and build up your base of experience than try to autotune your way through these elaborate dinners.

Great point! Didn't think of it from that angle!!

However - I don't think these services are trying to teach you how to cook any more than boxed mac and cheese is. They are for the "I want to have a home cooked meal but I don't want to make it." types.

Speaking of eggs, I didn't know what I was doing wrong with them for a long time, they weren't bad by any means, just everyone else did them better. Then I was having a conversation with my mom about how she makes better eggs than me. She told me "eggs are done before they are done." Now I cook eggs like a champ.

I completely agree with you. But I think a number of the recipes (at least the ones I tried) actually had tricky bits that required a little experience. I can see how it would frustrate people who were complete beginners.

My own egg epiphany was "cook them on the lowest heat you can, until you think the waiting will make you insane."

But you also make an excellent point—ask your mom (or some other person in your life who cooks well)!

The big problem I had with omelets was egg-to-pan ratio; all the timing problems I had went away when I bought a small nonstick pan just for eggs. Three beaten eggs to one pan, fold when the edges look dry, reasonably bulletproof.

Using my original (larger) pan, the eggs cooked through so quickly that I had a very narrow window to hit.

I think the most important bit of advice on this thread though is: plan to throw a couple away. Eggs are very cheap. An easy way to get hung up cooking is to assume you only get one shot.

That's exactly what I meant by intuition! Once you've done successful omelets you just know the proper egg/pan ratio that works for you without even consciously thinking about it.

I've made a few cheese omelets of my own and they were great. I have no cooking experience and almost never cook beyond overeasy eggs or grilled cheese.

When cooking omelettes, I usually add a little water to the pan and steam the eggs after flipping and adding the veggies and cheese. The water would then moisten the eggs, making it hard to over-cook them.

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