Pan-seared salmon with orange-jicama salad – Sun Basket Review #1

I think I might like this food delivery thing and now that I have tried Blue Apron, it’s time to try another service. This is my first experience with Sun Basket, a food delivery service.

Here’s a recap of the details of my Sun Basket plan:

Plan Type – 2 person (classic) – I chose the Paleo plan.
Recipes/Meals – 3 per week
Cost – $68.94 including shipping, plus any applicable taxes
*I had a $35 promo offer so I only paid $33.94.

$5.65 per person/ per meal. Not too shabby!

I placed the order on: Janury 28 and 10 days later, I received my food on February 7.

That’s my plan recap now it’s time to get to cookin’!

In case this is the first review of mine you are reading, take note that I am NOT a cook and I am not paid to do this review.

For my first recipe, I tried pan-seared salmon with orange-jicama salad.

But first, let’s look at how the contents arrived! Each bag contains all the contents you need for each recipe. The shrimp and salmon were underneath a piece of cardboard used to separate them from the rest of the food.

Sun Basket Box — The Sun Basket box arrives!

My first thought was that the insulation was going to take up a lot of space in the garbage bag (yes, things like this keep me awake at night), but Sun Basket sends you these little stickers to make your life easier when it comes to discarded the packaging material.

Nifty recycle stickers

Subtle Differences Between Blue Apron and Sun Basket

Next, the recipe cards which give a brief description of the recipe, the time it takes to prepare, calories, serving sizes and links to view the recipes on line and links to videos. I also received a little information sheet on how to handle herbs.

I noticed that there are a few differences between the Blue Apron cards and Sun Basket. For Blue Apron, they do provide nutritional information but not on each recipe card where Sun Basket provides all the nutritional information on the card. I also didn’t know that Blue Apron provides how-to videos until I happen to be checking out there site after I cooked. Sun Basket provides those links directly on each recipe card.

Also, what I found helpful was that Sun Basket tells you which tools you will need. However, for you wine lovers, Blue Apron provides a wine suggestion with your meal. I prefer margaritas or mojitos.

Ready to cook!

Here is my bag of goodies:

My first Sun Basket contents: Salmon, cauliflower, organge, lime, cilantro, mint leaves (not for Mojitos), jicama, scallions, fried shallots and sumac. Sumac. WTF is sumac? Never heard of it until this recipe and I LOVE it.

The recipe told me to chop up the cauliflower into corn-kernel sized pieces. I think I got pretty close. It was kinda easy since the florets sort of crumble apart. I chopped them up a bit more after I took this picture.

Chopped Cauliflower — Corn-kernel sized pieces of cauliflower.

I threw the chopped up cauliflower into the pan and mixed them with the fried shallots. This smelled SO good! I wasn’t familiar with sumac, I do know what shallots are.

Cauliflower and fried shallots — Cooking it up!

Chopping up the mint was my favorite part because it smelled really good. I almost stopped cooking and used the mint to make a mojito…but I practiced some self-control and continued cooking.

Mint Leaves — Mint leaves for the food, not for mojitos.

Is this mint fresh? I couldn’t really tell. It smelled sooooo good!

Chopped up jicama. Sort of. I haven’t had jicama in a long time…very good stuff.

The limes made my think of the mojitos again and margaritas.

Fresh limes — Limes – not for margaritas.

Next came the scallions, chopped cilantro and the orange. I mixed all those for the orange-jicama salad. I don’t know why I didn’t take a picture of the orange by itself. It was a fairly handsome orange.

After the salad is already and sprinkled with SUMAC, it’s time to cook the salmon.

Cooking salmon — To deskin or not to deskin…

I am always afraid to cook salmon because I never know if I have cooked it enough.

Here is the pan searing moment of my salmon.

I’m done! I regret that I didn’t take a final picture but I was so freakin hungry.

First Impressions

LOVE!

This meal was so delicious and I was able to get 3 servings from this 2-serving meal plan. Next time I make this dish, I am definitely going to double-up because every LOVED it. By the way, this recipe took 40 minutes to prepare and cook which matched the time estimate of 30-40 minutes on the card.

I discovered that I love sumac very much. The orange-jicama salad goes very well with the salmon.

Clean-Up Score:

1 sink full of dishes
One messy stove top because I splashed oil all over it while cooking the salmon

And now for the finale – clean up! Ignore the paint brushes. I do art with them. I promise you that they are not used for cooking.

The clean-up factor. This is important.

So far, this pan-seared salmon with orange-jicama salad from Sun Basket is my favorite!