Gentlemen! lets broaden our minds.
I am not a Vegan ... But sometimes, you need to broaden your horizon.
Recently a danish company have made their attempt at a vegan friendly meat substitute. it is called "Naturli´" which is danish for natural.
It was quite heavily promoted in the media (both social and traditional) up to the launch, and I read about it in one of the free papers that are distributed in the trains. The good thing is thats it is availbale in a lot of stores across the country so you dont need to live close to a big city to try it out
I am usually not a big fan of food thats tries to be something else than it is. If you want to go vegetarian or vegan, there are plenty of tasty recipes to choose from in e.g. the indian cuisine and even in the danish traditional cuisine if you care to look a little further back than the seventies and eighties (in my opinion an alltime low for gastronomy in denmark)
Despite this, I decided to give it a try. Nutritionally it is quite close to what it tries to impersonate, which is minced beef . I also bought a package of real minced beef with a comparable fat percentage app 10 % in the vegan version and 9-15 in the meat version.
To make it a fair comparison I started out with burgers. It is a recipe where there are a lot of other stuff that compliments the meat taste so I thought if it would be usable for anything this would be it.
I made 6 of each (we make fairly small burgers with app. 80 g of meat).
First impressions:
the Naturli´ looked a lot like meat in the box. The colour was slightly paler but close enough that you could mistake it for meat at first glance. When I got it out of the box it was quite different in texture though. The Naturli´ felt more like cookie dough and it had a sticky surface which made it more difficult to make paddies.
Once it was on the frying pan it was also a bit more difficult than meat. It stuck to the pan more, so i would advice to be generous with the oil(I am assuming people would use oil since butter is nonvegan).
Taste:
In a burger it is actually quite difficult to taste the difference. The ketchup and pickles will have a tendency to overpower the fairly subtle meat taste, and I guess you could probably fool someone to think it was meat. My kids said it tasted a bit like liverpate, and I agree it does have a taste similar to what we in danish call "indmad" i.e. liver heart kidneys etc. .
It does feel quite dry compared to meat, but maybe that is because I gave it too much. I like my meat red, and I fried it for app. the same amount of time as the meat i used (which is not very long at all) but maybe it should be even shorter.
the day after , for my breakfast, I reheated one of the paddies to go with my fried egg and again it taste more like liver than meat, but does give a fairly convincing impersonation of something from an animal. This second heating did result in it getting a bit black, and it was quite dry, but that might be my fault, and anyways a reheated meatburger would probably ot be that juicy either.
Conclusion:
Well. I am not a vegetarian , or vegan, and I dont have any plans in that direction either, so for me I suppose it is just a slightly less palatable alternative to meat, but for someone who wants to go vegan but really miss meat , it might be an ok alternative.
Also if you take low-quality meat (like what you sometimes get in a burger joint) and compare to this product, it might be quite similar, so if the meat you are missing is the meat from a macDonalds hamburger go ahead and exchange it for this :-)
For something like a butter-tender steak, there is a long way yet before it is comparable though.
Im EvilHippie, a compulsive creative and jack o' trades. If you want to know more about me, check out my introduction post here
If you like what you see, feel free to upvote, follow and resteem
or you can check out these recent posts
interesting, the appearance IS quite similar.
With the amount of meat alternatives that are popping up, the arguments for low-grade factory-production-style meat are dwindling hehe.
I'm not a vegan either, but I do intend to go in that direction when I manage to find/create a job and settle down in a somewhat stable situation.
There's probably a lot of progress that can be made, but I'm fairly confident that it'll happen sooner or later.
quick question: would you try insect-based or clean (AKA., artificial meat produced by bacteria) meat patties ?
I think they'd have quite an interesting taste for the first, and the second... we'll see if they can get the prices down XD
I think, in the long run, the high-quality meat will probably stay, well, meat-based. And the low quality, daily meat will become plant/insect/lab-grown alternatives, with factory-meat going near extinct in the market given the advances in cost reduction the other alternatives have.
I have already tried insects in different recipes and I think with the current technology it is probably a much more economically viable solution for meat alternatives. I would definitely try it if some bugbased meat came out.
Regarding the vatgrown meat, I dont think it is as cost efficient alternative at this time but it is probably the most promising for a believable alt- minced beef. I agree that as soon as largescale production becomes possibly the arguments for most low-quality meats becomes less usable. I also agree that the natural high quality products will probably not disappear for any foreseeable future.
I didn't even know there was an insect variety! I don't know if I would be brave enough to even try.
I have not seen a commercial meat alternative with insects yet but there is a growing movement for making insect based food. It is a very cheap way of producing protein. In some ways both cheaper and more environment friendly than , say , producing soy beans in Asia and transporting it to Europe. Isaw a start-up in the us who made cricket flour
I believe the first human consumption insect farm was started sometime in the end of 2017 in France, at least that was the plan.
I have to look into when they were planning to commercialization it, but I'm thinking it's probably this year.
I 've often thought about adding some vegetarian and vegan meals into my diet to force a more balanced approach to my eating. I love all types of food but eat far too much meat and items that are unhealthy for me. I was eating too much bacon so tried some Quorn rashers instead and they were a good alternative for me; I appreciate that wont be the case for everybody.
I think these alternatives are good whilst transitioning from one lifestyle to another. Beyond that my personal approach is to avoid substitutes and to dive straight in as the meals can be awesome without 'meatalikes'. They're probably good for mixed households though thinking about it.
I don't know if you guys have Gardein in Denmark but they have such tasty meal options I even tricked my daughter into thinking it was real meat. Hahahah I didn't mean to fool her, but I wanted her to try something new and she actually ends up asking for it on occasion. Just like the real thing!
I'm no vegan myself, but try to be mindful of my meat consumption due to its effects on the earth.
I havent seen it, but then I havent looked, I will see if i can find it, but quite a lot of brands that are well known in the states, are completely unknown in Europe, and vice versa
More than likely it is not. :sad face: but if it does make it there, do try!