Vegan “meat”?
Albeit, a bit of an oxymoron, however, some of these new vegan meat substitutes are GREAT and some are well… better left in the freezer. That’s why I’m here, to help you decipher which to buy and which to save your hard earned money (some of these will run you almost 6-7$ for 4 servings of so!)
I discovered Beyond Meat on vacation with my boyfriend. We stayed in a cozy AirBnB and decided to cook most of our meals to save money and eat healthier. He prefers to eat vegan, and I have also been trying to reduce my meat intake, so we purchased the Beyond Meat Beyond Beef crumbles and the “chicken” strips. — I was going to post a review of the “chicken” strips, which, were so awful, they were barely edible, but I saw the company has recently discontinued them. I’m almost annoyed I spent money on them.
BEFORE you judge me, I eat meat and I eat meatless. I have found amazing vegan alternatives that I actually prefer over meat. So this review is ENTIRELY unbiased.
However… Beyond Meat is Beyond terrible. For both products we purchased, my boyfriend (who eats way more vegan products than I do) picked around the meat. I sauteed the beyond beef crumbles in oil as instructed, and I did not overcook. We combined them with Amy’s refried beans and Whole Foods taco shells with salsa. A cute taco night, right?
More like a taco night fail. We ended up eating tacos with salsa and refried beans. The meat was chewy, dense, and rubbery. I set some aside and added some stir fry sauce to have with vegetables and found myself picking around the chewy, rubbery, bland “meat” and just eating the vegetables.
The verdict? AVOID. At least avoid these two. Will update you guys and gals as I buy more meatless products but I’m not exactly thrilled about trying the other products Beyond Meat has to offer.
1 star. (0 stars for the “chicken”).
I have not yet tried the Beyond Meat Beyond Beef Crumbles Beefy, but I did try this month (June 2019) the Beyond Meat Beyond Beef Crumbles Feisty. My experience with the latter was that they were dry, rubbery in texture, stiff and too chewy, as well as bland – when I prepared a sample of them according to the package instructions. However I later
sampled some more of them from the bag, but this time I soaked them in water for about an hour before heating them.
Soaking them loosened them and gave them a normal chewing experience, like that of chewing meat. I then put them in the skillet (along with the water so as not to loose the flavoring) and had them simmer so the water would gently evaporate without cooking the ‘meat’ further. After the water evaporated, I added some oil, heated them for a few minutes at Medium. Doing these steps made them taste better. Then I browned them such that they got crispy on the outside, and that made them taste even better. Thus doing all of these steps caused them to taste considerably better. They tasted a little like beef but still somewhat bland, just not as much bland. Maybe doing the above steps on the Beefy version of the crumbles would make them taste considerably better also.
Dawn has a review at
https://quicknhealthymeals.com/beyond-meat-reviews-a-review-of-beyond-meat-beef-crumbles/ in which she said the Beefy version tasted “bland and tasteless” and has an “unpleasant rubbery texture” but that the Feisty ones “tastes great!” Perhaps for the crumbles, some batches come out with poor quality and others with great quality. Maybe the quality control needs to be improved on the crumbles, or maybe some of the ones in the stores are improved ones and maybe others in the stores are earlier editions with problems. I notice that the picture on the package I bought looks somewhat different than the one on Beyond’s website, thus maybe some packages have a newer version of the product.
I tried their Beyond Burger (the version before the “More meatier than before” that is due in stores starting this week). That product tasted good, maybe even very good, when I cooked it at home and it tasted very much like real meat, but to me it did not taste like beef.
I also ate both versions of their sausages and to me they taste great.
To me they taste like real pork sausages – even perfect – and better tasting than real pork sausages.