Morningstar Italian Herb Chik Patties

This week, something with fond associations in my mind. Can it live up to my expectations? Let's find out. I'm going to test out Morningstar Italian Herb Chik Patties.

Now, when I say fond associations, I have to go all the way back to living in the dorms at college. After the first, oh, couple weeks there, the exciting food choices weren't so exciting, and I settled into a routine of mostly breakfast cereal and chicken patties. Of course, hangover Sunday was greasy chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese, but that's a whole other story. The chicken patties at my dining hall were delightfully reliable. Not spectacular, by any means, but I could count on them being tasty and available when other choices didn't seem too tasty. So I ate a lot of them, back in the day. I hoped that these could live up to my memory of my dorm years.

I opted for the cooking option most likely to result in deliciousness - the oven. Yes, it takes a really long time, but when you want something with a crispy breaded exterior, there's really no other choice. After the designated time on the box, the patty was not quite hot enough, so I kept in in there a bit longer, until it was fully crispy. I ended up going about 7 minutes longer than the upper recommended time, but with chicken patties, the crunch is key. Finally it was ready to taste.

First of all, it looked great, and it smelled great. I opted to just eat it plain, rather than on a bun, just to get the full effect. I was not disappointed. This patty had a nice herby flavor, as promised, and a mildly chicken-y flavor, which isn't too tough to do, since chicken doesn't have a terribly pronounced flavor to begin with. I was really pleased with this.

I think this patty would be great on a bun, or on top of some spaghetti with some mozzarella cheese and marinara sauce, or on a Caesar salad. Or, like I had it, just plain on a plate, like the old days.

The experience:
Texture - Nicely crispy, eventually, with a pleasing chewy middle
Flavor - Very much like a chicken patty with Italian flavors - no complaints here

Final grade for this attempt: A+

Morningstar Veggie Corn Dogs

Something weird I've noticed over the years of writing this blog is that fake meat hot dogs seem to be universally bad while fake meat corn dogs are actually pretty good. I'd heard some really good things about Morningstar Farms Veggie Corn Dogs but for a long time they were discontinued. Apparently they're back!

I cooked these up two different ways, just to be thorough. First up, the oven, which is the method they recommend. Also the slowest possible way to get a corn dog into your mouth. So, into the oven for 20 minutes they went. Much much later, they came out, all hot and crunchy. Also cracked all the way up one side. Not the prettiest corn dogs around, but whatever. Time to give them a taste! Unfortunately, these were not that great. The corn bread part was okay, but the dog inside was…unpleasant. I made it through about a half of this corn dog before I just didn't want to eat it anymore. It wasn't horrible, but if I'm going to eat something, I want to enjoy it, and I wasn't enjoying this. Just not worth it. My German exchange student ate one of these, and declared it fine, but he's never actually eaten a real-meat corn dog, so he doesn't know what he's missing out on.

Next cooking method - the microwave. This is so rarely a good idea - I just figured since I didn't want to actually eat another one, I should see if the microwave could, against all odds, improve the situation. And it turns out, it does not. It still cracked up one side, but now, instead of having a crispy exterior, it was tough and chewy, and still tasted not great. And now my microwave smelled super strongly of funky hot dog. Bad situation all around. The only up side was that it tasted slightly better from the microwave than it did from the oven, but the benefit was totally outweighed by the ruined texture. Don't microwave these, trust me. And while you're at it, don't buy these - there are better corn dogs out there.

The experience:
Texture - from the oven, crispy on the outside, cheap-hot-dog-y on the inside; from the microwave, tough and chewy all the way through
Flavor - the corn bread part wasn't bad, but the mediocre hot dog inside ruined it for me

Final grade for this attempt: C

Gardein Ultimate Beefless Burger

Here comes another veggie burger! This time, it's Gardein Ultimate Beefless Burger. Sounds exciting!

As usual, I cooked it up in a skillet with a touch of oil. Not much to say about this part. I flipped it a couple times, to evenly brown it. I don't remember it having those attractive grill marks they show on the package, though. Hmm.

Let's get to why you're here: the tasting! We eat first with our eyes - this looks like a very burger-y burger. I wouldn't feel terribly self-conscious if I were one of those people who bring veggie burgers to a barbecue with meat-eaters. Once on a bun, I gave it a thorough tasting. First bite was a little weird - sort of meat-like but with an off-flavor that I couldn't immediately identify. Then I placed it. When I was in Europe way back when, this is what fast-food burgers tasted like. Something about the beef they use (probably higher quality than we get here in the states) had a different flavor to it, and this veggie burger tasted like that. After I figured that out, I gave it another taste and decided that, if I were not a meat-eater, I could get behind this burger. It's pretty darn good.

The experience:
Texture - nicely chewy, like one would expect a burger to be
Flavor - like European fast food burgers

Final grade for this attempt: A

Trader Joe's Veggie Burger

Another year, another veggie burger. This time, Trader Joe's Veggie Burger. Man, I kind of can't wait until I finish testing all existing veggie burgers. Okay, enough whining, let's get to the reviewing.

The first problem I ran into was that, while cooking this, it totally started falling apart.  This did not bode well for a patty. Once I got it onto a bun, things did not improve. It was really mushy, which is not a texture I strive for in my burgers. The catch was that the flavor was actually pretty decent. I didn't mind scooping it up and eating it.

So I started wondering: what could this be marketed as, if not a burger? When I removed the patty-expectations from my mind, this wasn't too bad to eat - maybe served crumbled on a salad? Or in a casserole? I don't know, but I'll do some experimenting with my extra patties to see if I can render them more palatable, and get back to you.

The experience:
Texture - very mushy - bad as a patty, potentially good as… something else
Flavor - kind of a stuffing-y flavor - sort of generically veggie-ish, but pleasant

Final grade for this attempt: B- (for now)

Fun with pie charts!

It's the end-of-the-year graph-a-palooza! Also, today is my birthday, so I can do whatever I want! Yay!

I just wanted to see what kind of overall conclusions I could draw from this massive pool of data, and include a bunch of pie charts. So here we go:

First of all, I separated all the reviews into vegan and non-vegan, just to see if I rated any one category higher than any others:

Clearly, the non-vegan products are performing better overall. I also broke it down by the meat it was attempting to imitate:

I find it interesting that pork has the most A grades and the most C grades - also the most F grades.

Should we break it down further?

So... lots of data here. Non-vegan beef seems to be the best bet, with vegan poultry being the worst, unless you're willing to accept an A or a B, in which case vegan pork is the worst. But, to be fair, that category contained some of the worst products I tested - the hot dogs. *shudder*

And that's it for my graphs. I hope you enjoyed them, as well as my total phoning it in this week. But again... holidays, birthday, end-of-year-stuff... you know how it is. I'll be back with new scathing or glowing reviews of exciting new fake meat.

If anyone has anything they'd like me to test out or add to the website in the upcoming year, please let me know, otherwise I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. See you all in 2012!

Boca Grilled Vegetable Burger

Okay, I admit - I've had these in my freezer for a long time. Someone else ate one a while back, but I hadn't gotten to them until very recently. So here they come: Boca Grilled Vegetable Burger.

As per my usual veggie burger strategy, I popped it into a skillet with some oil. Flipped it once, got it nicely browned on each side, and threw it onto a bun.

The verdict? Well, after I got past the mild freezer-flavor, all I could really taste was bell pepper. According to the website, there's a ton of stuff in here, but I couldn't pick anything else out. And, thinking back to the person who had tried them way back when, she wasn't terribly enthusiastic about them either. So I don't think the extra time in the freezer affected them TOO much.

The texture was sort of the standard Boca burger texture, which was fairly chewy and burger-like, which is good, but several other examples of their burgers are just better, so I don't think I can really recommend this one in particular.

The experience:
Texture - nicely chewy
Flavor - kind of bell pepper-y but not much else

Final grade for this attempt: C-

Tofurky Italian Sausage Pizza

This week, I'm checking out a frozen pizza: Tofurky Italian Sausage Pizza. This pizza has Daiya-brand fake cheese on it, so I was very curious to see if it could replicate the non-vegan pizza experience.

Not much to say about the preparation - popped it into the oven, straight onto the rack for maximum crispiness, and out it came. One thing I should say is that this pizza is pretty small. The nutrition information says that a serving size is 1/3 of the pizza, and while that was an okay amount, the teenage boy and twenty-nine-and-a-half-year-old dude I was sharing this pizza with were both still very hungry after eating their third of a pizza. So plan for that, and if you're feeding several hungry people, maybe get two of these.

Okay, the results. Let's start at the bottom with the crust. This was a VERY thin crust. More of a cracker than a pizza crust. It had a good flavor, and a nice crispy texture, but it was definitely very thin. Next, well, I can't really break up the toppings into fake-meat/cheese/veggies because they all sort of blended together. I could definitely taste the tiny shards of Italian sausage, and they added a nice spicy flavor to the pizza.

As far as I could tell, the cheese was actually underneath all the toppings, because I couldn't actually see any of it, and that's usually fine. The texture of the cheese, though, was a little weird. Now, I'm used to pizza with the stretchy cheese experience - you know, where you take a bite and the cheese stretches out, connecting the pizza to your mouth before it finally breaks and slaps you in the chin with hot pizza sauce. Yeah, that sounds awful, but it's part of the experience. This definitely didn't have that, and I wasn't really expecting it to. But I think I was expecting a more chewy cheese - this was sort of a gooey, creamy paste. Perhaps when mixed with the sauce, it got weird. It wasn't a terrible experience, but not one I generally associate with pizza.

As far as the rest of the toppings, there sure were a lot of veggies. Dare I say… too many? It was just edge-to-edge veggies - barely even any crust to hang on to on the outside, which isn't always a bad thing, but it made it a little tricky to eat.

All in all, this was like eating a crispy cracker, with some sort of creamy spread, and a sausage-flavored veggie salsa. Not quite what my brain associates with pizza, but I really don't know what else you would call this, so I'll keep calling it pizza. As far as frozen pizzas go, this is quite a tasty experience, but the cheese left something to be desired for me.

The experience:
Texture - crispy crust, (oddly) creamy cheese, slightly chewy sausage crumbs, and lots of small-dice veggies
Flavor - tasted like a veggie pizza with a hint of sausage

Final grade for this attempt: A-

Yves Veggie Tuna Steak in Sesame Ginger Sauce

Okay, time for some more veggie seafood. You all ready? It's another Yves product: Yves Veggie Tuna Steak in Sesame Ginger Sauce. Once again, I apologize for Yves and their insistence in using Facebook instead of updating their website with actual information. I assure you, there's a post on there somewhere about this product, but it's just a picture with comments.

I complained about the shape of the box when I reviewed the Veggie Shrimp, so I'm not going to get into it - just know that it is stupid.

Before I discuss the cooking experience, I want to touch on the aesthetics for a second. I assume they were going for an ultra-realistic appearance with the "skin" sort of thing, but it looked really creepy. Sort of iridescent green-black, and I found myself wishing it weren't there. Who leaves skin on their tuna steak, anyway? I just did a google image search for tuna steak - four pages in, no steaks with skin on them. Just skip it, Yves. Looks better without it.

So, the first thing I did with these was to heat some oil in a small skillet, as directed. I don't remember how long it said to cook these, but they browned SUPER fast. Way faster than the directions said they would, but as I've learned before, sometimes I cook things over a too-high flame, probably due to my impatience. So, once these were evenly browned on all sides, I poured the sauce over them. Now, I must stress this: BE CAREFUL when doing this. There is a lot of water in this sauce, and when you mix it with even the small amount of hot oil in the skillet, it splatters EVERYWHERE. I ended up throwing a lid on the pan just so that I didn't get splashed with piping hot sesame-ginger sauce. So yeah - just… be careful with it.

Now for the tasting. Before I dumped the sauce over everything, I pulled out one of the strips of fake tuna, just to get an idea of what we were working with before I drenched it in sauce. It didn't have a very fishy taste - it was pretty mild. It did get fishier-tasting as it sat a few minutes after cooking, so if you're looking for that, you might want to wait a few minutes before eating it. The texture was pretty weird. The best way I can describe it was sort of like bread pudding. It was a little spongy and squishy, but not in a chewy way. It was very soft, and almost dissolved in my mouth. This wasn't an awful experience, but if you prefer your fake meat to be a little more toothsome, this might not be for you.

As for the sauce, it was okay. I don't really like sesame or ginger, so the combo wasn't terribly appealing to me, but it blended well with the fake tuna, so I guess that's good. I also might have been slightly bitter about the fact that my kitchen was coated in it.

The experience:
Texture - spongy and soft - very delicate
Flavor - slightly fishy right out of the pan, more so later

Final grade for this attempt: C+

Candle Cafe Macaroni and Vegan Cheese

This week, something completely different. No fake meat involved here, but definitely fake something. It's Candle Cafe Macaroni and Vegan Cheese. Sorry for the generic non-helpful link. That's what they've got for now, but are promising to have more soon.

In any case, let's check this out, shall we? First thing I should say is that this smelled really good while it was cooking. I was pretty optimistic. I stirred it at the appropriate time, finished cooking, then got ready to eat it. However, the fake cheese was still pretty clumpy. I kept stirring, to try to break down the clumps into a nice creamy sauce, like in the picture, and it did help a little, but I never got quite the result I was hoping for. But whatever, moving on.

After my first bite, my poor mouth was a little confused. It felt like a super-rich, creamy cheese sauce, but it had almost no flavor. While no flavor is still better than bad flavor, I still wondered what I could do about this. Something I learned in culinary school is that if something smells great but tastes bland, sometimes it just needs a pinch of salt. So I sprinkled on a little bit, and that was a definite improvement. If someone had handed me this meal without telling me this was fake cheese, I would probably believe it was real cheese. Knowing that it was fake kind of biased things, but in all honesty, this was quite tasty. Kinda pricey, but worth it.

The experience:
Texture - very thick, rich, creamy sauce
Flavor - with a little extra salt (possibly just a palate thing - taste before you salt!) I could probably trick my brain into believing this was real cheese

Final grade for this attempt: A

Lightlife Smart Cutlets, Classic Marinara

This week, I'm testing out Lightlife Smart Cutlets, Classic Marinara. I usually try not to do two similar reviews back-to-back, but I'm feeling lazy this week and dug this out of my already-written folder. Next week, something different, I promise.

Now, I'm a big fan of Italian food. My grandmother was Italian, and I feel like, given some pasta, garlic, and tomatoes, I could be happy the rest of my life. So this is a pretty important product to get right, for me. Luckily, as long as there are garlic and tomatoes in here, there's a pretty good chance I won't hate it.

So let's get started. To prepare these, I just heated up a skillet with a tiny bit of oil in it, as directed, and plopped both cutlets from the package into the pan, squeezing the sauce on top of them. Right off the bat, my first impression was that the sauce was a little bit too thick, but adding a little water (or, dare i say it… red wine?) might have helped that. Also, there wasn't quite enough of it for me, but again, thinning it out would also increase the volume. If you were going to serve this over some pasta for a main course, you'd definitely want to add some extra sauce, but for a sandwich or something, this amount was probably good for most people.

Okay, so once it was heated up, I served them up onto a plate and gave them a taste. The sauce was good - not too sweet (which many tomato-sauce-makers have trouble with) and a nice, rich, tomato flavor. The cutlet was a little rubbery, but not too bad. With some pasta or on a sandwich this wouldn't be very noticeable, but I was eating it plain. Without the sauce, the cutlet itself did not have much flavor, but that's what the sauce was for, so I wasn't terribly concerned about that.

The package recommended melting some mozzarella cheese on top, and so I absolutely had to try that. Is there anything NOT made better with cheese on top? I sliced a few thin slices of mozzarella, laid them across my second cutlet, and popped it into the toaster oven for a couple minutes, just to get the cheese all melty. This looked awesome, and I was very excited. Unfortunately, the addition wasn't a life-changer. It was good, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't that much of an improvement. I may, in the interest of science, have loaded up a single bite with a fairly obscene amount of cheese, just to see if there was an amount that made it awesome, and there was an amount of cheese that accomplished this, but I do not think I will be sharing that amount here. Suffice it to say, I don't think I could eat an entire cutlet with that proportion of cheese all over it, and neither should you.

The experience:
Texture - slightly rubbery without any competing textures, but not that bad
Flavor - not much flavor alone, but worked well with the tomato sauce, which tasted pretty darn good

Final grade for this attempt: A-