Hello and welcome to my October 2020 Blue Apron Favorites! October was a great month for favorites and I’m very excited to share my top five for this month!
October meant fall was in full swing with focus on squash in a lot of our recipes – most notably, the spaghetti squash. I had never cooked a spaghetti squash prior to our meals in October because I was always a little intimidated, but Blue Apron gave me the push I needed!
October also meant a full year back with Blue Apron after having an off and on relationship over the years. It definitely made 2020 much easier to get through not having to think about so many meals to cook for dinner throughout the weeks.
If you’re new around here, my husband and I subscribe to the 3-meal plan and get a variety of meals from vegetarian and seafood, to pork, chicken and beef. We don’t discriminate, as long as the meals sound delicious!
Calabrian Shrimp & Spaghetti Squash
This Calabrian Shrimp and Spaghetti Squash dish was the first time we cooked with spaghetti squash. We were so pleasantly surprised! Not only is it tasty with just a little salt and pepper, it was an excellent substitute for pasta noodles. A healthy and delicious alternative!
The shrimp were prepared Calabrian style with Calabrian chile paste, lemon, shallots, and capers and we had a side of sautéed kale with parmesan cheese. The shrimp were also topped off with toasted panko breadcrumbs, which I think is a must to bring some texture to the softer ingredients in the dish. Such a winner!
Learning Experience: Boy is it hard to cut an uncooked spaghetti squash! I had to be very careful to split it before baking it as it was really difficult to cut – all while trying to avoid cutting some fingers off. Any tips for making it easier?
Chorizo Enchiladas
I love me a good enchilada dish! I also really love the ground pork chorizo that comes in our Blue Apron meals. The filling for our enchiladas consisted of the chorizo, white rice, and shishito peppers combined with tomato paste, sour cream, and a little seasoning. The enchiladas were topped off with Monterey Jack Cheese for baking, and sour cream for serving!
Our Variations
A lot of times, the enchilada filling gets sour cream mixed in and I always do the whole container they give us to make the filling extra creamier. We used our own sour cream to top (those little containers really aren’t filled with much). I also added a dollop of guacamole for good measure.
Indian-Style Butter Shrimp
Another spaghetti squash winner was this Indian-Style Butter Shrimp with Cilantro Spaghetti Squash. Wow, was this packed with flavor! Indian is one of our favorite cuisines so I’m not surprised we loved this one.
The shrimp were cooked up with butter, chutney, tomato paste, and fresh slices of poblano pepper, while the cooked spaghetti squash was tossed with a pre-packaged cilantro sauce. The poblanos added a nice crunch to the dish so it’s definitely important not to overcook those.
This was such a flavor bomb that I hope to recreate in the future!
Korean-Style Burgers
We have been really pleased with the Blue Apron burgers this past year with all the different varieties and combination of ingredients they come up with! The burger patties in this Korean-Style dish were mixed up with scallions, soy sauce, sugar and sesame oil – all of which infused great flavor to the burgers and added a good amount of moisture.
The burgers were finished with a gochujang “mayo” and cucumbers pickled in vinegar and oil, and served alongside a cabbage and carrot slaw.
Our Variations
We subbed sour cream for mayo (as we do for all our Blue Apron recipes) for the gochujang sauce, and also added some kimchi to make them extra Korean (I get my kimchi from Trader Joe’s).
Hoisin Pork Steam Buns
Last, but certainly not least, were these Hoisin Pork and Jalapeno Steam Buns! We were super excited for this meal as we haven’t had the chance to try any of the steam bun dishes yet. We absolutely love steam buns, and these were really good! They were simple and very easy to make.
For the pork filling, we sautéed ground pork with a sauce made of hoisin, tomato paste, sesame oil, sugar and soy sauce and freshly chopped ginger (I LOVE when we get to use fresh ginger in Asian dishes!). The buns were easy to steam, and were filled simply with the ground pork filling and fresh sliced jalapenos (I would probably do a quick pickle on the jalapenos next time with some rice vinegar to soften them). Also, the jalapenos should be sliced as thin as possible.
On the side, we had some easy blistered shishitos with ponzu sauce and some extra kimchi we added from our fridge. So good!
And those were my top five favorites from cooking with Blue Apron in October. Which one of these meals sounds most delicious to you?
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