For those of you who eat imitation meat products, which do you like best? I recently started cooking for myself for the first time in my life, and I’ve found that some of the fake meats are really tasty, and a lot better than they were when I first tried them five years ago. My local grocery store has five brands:
Lightlife. I’ve only tried the burgers, and for some reason they always burn when I try to fry them. But other than that, they have a good texture, pretty similar to real burgers. This company also makes other imitation products, including a ground beef substitute that looks like it would go well in tacos and such.
Veggie Patch. Their burgers aren’t really supposed to look or taste like real burgers. You can actually taste pieces of carrot and celery in them. Kind of weird.
Gardenburger. Tastes like earing a slab of soggy mushrooms, which isn’t surprising since it is a slab of soggy mushrooms. Should be avoided, unless you happen to like soggy mushrooms.
Morningstar Farms. I’ve tried to fake chicken nuggets and chicken patties and they really do taste like chicken. I think it’s the best imitation meat I’ve ever had. I just made “chicken” burritos tonight and they were really good.
At best, Gardenburgers are barely adequate. The shiitake mushroom ones are more tolerable than the other flavors. They should be regarded as a last resort though.
Boca burgers are excellent. The roasted vegetable ones have the most texture and flavor. Most of their other products are also good, but avoid their breakfast sausages. Those things are bizarre.
You just can’t go wrong with Morningstar. I’d rate their burgers a shade below Boca’s, but their crumbles, bacon, sausages, buffalo wings, nuggets, etc. are all great.
There’s a British brand called Quorn which is good, but hard to find over here. Open Harvest and some other health food stores carry it.
Its protein is derived from the fungus Fusarium venenatum, yes. So what? Do you get squeamish about yeast or mushrooms?
There’s a pretty good Newsweek article about some of the media buzz around Quorn a couple of years ago. (Scroll down past the “Page Not Found” notice and the broken ads to read the main text. The original is posted on the author’s site, but I’m having trouble linking to it.) I agree with the author; Quorn tastes great and has a great texture. People eat things that are a lot more disgusting.
The complaint (PDF link) filed by the Centre for Science in the Public Interest which caused most of the uproar is rather amusing. They seem to be shocked (shocked!) that people have been tricked into eating fungus instead of a good honest plant like mushrooms. They are apparently ignorant of the fact that mushrooms are fungi. Not all fungi are mushrooms, but again, so what?
Not really. For the record, I have tried that product and it simply did not agree with me (on a gastric level). This was before I knew what it was made from. YMMV.
It’s not really fair to compare the products that are meant to be very different things. Morningstar Farms products and Quorn are analogues. They’re meant to make you think that you’re eating meat, with comparable tastes and textures. Gardenburgers and Veggie Farms and the like are substitutes. They’re not meant to be meat like, they’re meant to replace meat in your diet while offering the protein that you’d otherwise miss. Judging them on their meatishness is missing the point, and judging them against analogues is comparing apples and oranges.
It’s been so long since I’ve eaten animal flesh I have no idea anymore how it compares to the fake meat products.
I like Boca chicken patties and the nuggets. The vegan burgers are good but I don’t like the other varieties.
Morningstar is good but tends to be more expensive than Boca, but sometimes I’ll pick up some buffalo wings or some corn dogs.
Lightlife is great, and Yves is also very good for sandwich slices.
Quorn leaves me cold. I don’t like the texture or the flavor of it, although I have had it a few times in stuff like stirfry where it’s picked up enough of the surrounding flavors that I don’t mind it.
Kellogg had or has a brand called Worthington. I think I’m the only person who liked it. Worthington was not the healthy-style fake meat products. Worthington was stuff like fake pork sausage in a can. A lot of it actually was pretty gross, but they did a salisbury steak in a can with some sort of gravy-like substance that was so good. I used to buy the store out of it whenever I saw it because usually the cans were so dusty they obviously weren’t moving. Get a steak with some gravy on it, slap it on a bun with a slice of American process cheese food, microwave it for about a minute and mmm-Mmm! That’s good eatin’! Or in the alternative, eat 'em straight out of the can. Worthington also did a hamburger substitute called, simply, BURGER. Again, in a can, looked just like cat food. I used to sometimes just buy a can of it and eat it for lunch at my desk while various and sundry cow-orkers made gagging sounds in my general direction. Screw 'em, they had no idea what they were missing.
Morning Star makes veggie corn dogs. Which are great, and I loved 'til I went through a phase where I at them almost every day for three months and now can’t stand them. If you like corn dogs, definitely try them…
I’m not a vegetarian, I just happen to like tofu and other meatless products.
Morningstar items are great, especially the corndogs.
I don’t know how Lightlife tastes plain, but it seems to work well in sauces and stews. I regularly use the Lightlife ground “beef” for spaghetti and chili. I’ve served it to other omnivores who said they couldn’t tell the difference between it and real meat.
I find Boca “chicken” products gross. I tried the BBQ chicken and I had to throw it out - it was overly sweet and had a nasty slimy texture.
I think you’re confusing Quorn with tofu - Quorn comes in a variety of textures and tastes (IMO some very good, others less so) - tofu is edible lumps of nothing
One of my favorites is Meat of Wheat, which is seitan, usually frozen. The texture is so good, I like to sometimes make my after-thanksgiving chunky turkey sandwich with it. It is also very tasty marinaded in salsa and stir-fried to top a nice salad.
I also really like Veat chicken breast and nuggets (also made of seitan). The nuggets are great if I leave them frozen, coat them in batter, deep-fry 'em and put them in sweet and sour “chicken”. mmmm If you don’t leave them frozen, then the nuggets get fried too, changing the meat-like texture to a fried-bread texture.
I’m fairly indiscrimate about veggie burgers, but I do like the Morningstar Farms corn dogs and Garden Burger riblets.
I’m not a vegiterian but my nephew is so I keep an eye out for edible items. Tried teaching him to make vegitarian minestrone from scratch (ummmm). Not sure he was thrilled about taking up all afternoon for soup.
I concur that Morningstar makes some good stuff. I’ve sliced up the buffalo chicken and made soft taco’s out of them. The breafast patties are also good.
I haven’t found a store-bought “hamburger” patty that I thought was worth keeping down. Just ate a Burger King Vegiburger. ugh… My stomach is still turning over. The only vegiburger that I liked was made by a local company for resale in vending machines. They were WONDERFUL. Equal to most fast food burgers. I really hated to see my company change vendors because they were better than anything out of the machine.
Veggie burgers, of all kinds: I think the trouble here is that there are varieties, even within one brand, and one can suck and the other can be awesome.
Soy burgers: tend to look like meat, but are mostly soy. These can lack flavor, but since they are fairly nuetral, it’s what you do with it that detemines the taste. If you add some smoke flavor, or steak sauce as it cooks and dress it up with all the great burger toppings, they are good.
Veggie burgers (of the mostly mushroom type): This is something I don’t ‘get’. Most brands ofer varieties other than the original mushroomy ones. “Sante Fe” style, etc. This is where I spend my money-- on the veggie and garden burgers that have more to offer than the old original mushroom-leaden ones.
I can’t remember the brand, but I got some veggie Bratwursts recently that were great. I boiled them in beer with pickled onions and cayenne, and then ate them with more pickled onions and hot mustard, and hot damn they were good!
Only thing they were missing was fat, and that’s often a problem with fake meats: the manufacturers are trying to cater to health nuts, so they don’t load the stuff up with grease like they should, and so it comes out dry and flavorless. Similarly, they don’t cater to folks who like flavor, and so the sausages generally require a heaping dose of hot sauce before they’re palatable.
I think the Boca bratwurst are really good. Their Italian sausage isn’t as nice, though; I think they overdid the fennel and it leaves you with a licorice/anise aftertaste.
