I for one don’t find it hard to understand why some vegetarians eat meat substitutes. I eat meat because I like the taste of several kinds and unlike many other things it generally agrees with my digestive system, not because it comes from animals.
As part of my diet program I’ve been trying different vegan options, most of which I’ve found at least tolerable and in some cases as good as “real” meat. Since I’ve always been a firm believer in the theory of “I’ll try anything twice (because it might be an acquired taste)” I would be willing to try vat-grown meat under the conditions stated.
I don’t really like food, but if it looks and tastes the same as something I already consume*, sure, what the heck.
*limited options, most of which is over-processed
PM received, thank you. I will try it.
This.
This recipe sounds intruiging. Though I’m not vegetarian I love mushrooms, and we have vegetarian friends, so I always have my eye out for a good vegetarian recipe in case we have them over for dinner. @Pardel-Lux, may I be PMed the recipe too? Or feel free to post it here; I don’t mind the slight hijack and some others may want to get it.
Slight hijack on request:
First, preheat the oven to 180 °C, preferably with convection.
Ingredients:
Homemade tomato sauce: 3 onions, 1-4 clove(s) of garlic, 2 jars of tomatoes (De Cecco’s Passata is best), thyme, rosemary, bay leaves, paprika (sweet or hot, depending on your taste, feel free to mix in a chili), salt and pepper.
Chop the onions, sauté in olive oil over low heat in a large shallow pan, after a few minutes add the minced garlic clove, then the spices and the tomato passata. Cover and simmer for a long time, stirring occasionally. Two hours is OK.
This makes a lot of sauce, I freeze about ½ to ¾.
Then:
500 g mushrooms, even better if you add a few slices of dried porcini, a dried morel and three or four dried shiitakes, but you don’t have to.
1-2 carrots add sweetness and bite, you can add them too, but don’t have to. If you have some leftover celery, you can use that too.
Cut the mushrooms into small pieces, about 1 to 0.5 cm (about 1/3 of an inch), the carrots and celery as well, but smaller, about 5 - 3 mm. Mix together, salt lightly, grind some pepper and sprinkle sparingly with freshly grated nutmeg, spread on one or two sheets of baking paper and put in the preheated oven. Do not use oil! Mix every five to ten minutes so that the mushrooms and carrots & celery dry out evenly. The drier the mushrooms, the faster they burn, I use a kitchen timer to keep avoid forgetting them in the oven for too long. Once the mushrooms are dry turn off the oven and keep the door closed.
If you use the dried mushrooms too, soak them in lukewarm water, then cut them into small pieces. After some time, boil them briefly, you can do that in the microwave, it’s easier. Then cut them into small pieces and reserve.
Once the sauce is ready cook the pasta according to package instructions. While the water is heating, mix the part of the sauce that you won’t freeze with the dry mushrooms and carrots, add the soaked mushrooms and the soaking water and boil briefly.
Mix pasta and sauce, tuck in.
Up to here everything is vegan: if you sprinkle Parmesan on top of it, it turns vegetarian.
Hijack over.
Thanks @ Pardel-Lux!
We’re just coming into morel season here in Michigan, so the timing is good…
My pleasure. I just think I have to point out that you have to dry and soak morels again, and then have to heat them up to eliminate a toxin they may contain, depending, it seems, on the particular species. I just use them as a condiment, not a real ingredient. Same with the boletus, but those are not poisonous at all.
I would preferentially eat lab-grown meat if it were available. I eat meat because I like it, but I consider it to be an immoral act given the state of factory farming.
Sure. Would happily give it a try and switch to it if it was pretty close.
If it tasted the same and was priced the same, I’d eat lab-grown meat exclusively. I don’t like the conditions that farm animals are in, either, but I’m not giving up meat.
I happily eat scrapple and haggis. Lab-grown meat doesn’t scare me.
Of course, if we switch away from animal meat there won’t be scrapple and haggis anymore - I don’t think those parts are a high priority to grow in the lab…
That’s a good point. I like making a delicious bone broth from leftover chicken carcasses. The things we make from the less desirable parts of the animal in order to be thrifty, but become favorite meals or recipe ingredients themselves, can probably be simulated but wouldn’t be quite the same. I guess it would be a small price to pay for not raising food animals in horrible conditions.
Oh, I’ve already eaten that a few times. I believe the brand name is, “Soylent Green”. 
I like meat. And i don’t eat fake meat. When i have vegans over to dinner i serve beans and roast veggies and other “real” food. But i can avoid fake meat at least in part because i do allow myself to eat real meat. I’d probably eat fake meat if i went vegetarian.
I’d certainly try vat-grown meat. I suspect that it will eventually be as good or better than “real” meat for relatively bland, uniform cuts, like chicken breast and tenderloin. And it will be fine for stuff that just needs to be “meaty”, like bolognese sauce. I don’t think it will ever replace chicken wings or a t-bone steak.
I like mushrooms, and have grown both culinary and psychoactive species. One odd thing though, if I have unlimited availability to culinary mushrooms, I soon tire of them. I could eat pizza every day, or spaghetti, or burgers, or fish. Only mushrooms seem to become “too much”.
(A few years ago I inoculated laundry baskets of sterilized straw with oyster mushroom spores. Perfect humidity under some rhododendrons led to a harvest of dozens of oysters every day for weeks.)
I will try to inoculate some straw too, sounds feasible and fun, but oyster mushrooms are about the second most boring mushrooms there are (the most boring being the mushrooms sold in supermarkets all over the world: portobello or any other name they give to the same champignon again and again: see Agaricus bisporus, particularly the “Names” section).
I miss the Lactarius deliciosus of my childhood, can’t find them in Germany.
Well, yeah, but…
We forage our woods for mushrooms. Never found a morel, but we have a spot where chanterelles pop up every year, and we always find some chicken of the woods and some dryad’s saddles.
Thanks @Pardel-Lux, that sounds delicious.
I make many veg meals, though I’m not fond of “meat substitute” because several of them give me bellyaches. But legumes are delicious.
What meat I do buy is ethically sourced by my co-op or direct from the farmer to me. I’ve gone to visit several of the sources to view the barns and pasture myself. I think it’s worth the price and effort.