Quorn Chik'n Nuggets

Phew. It's been a busy couple weeks, what with Christmas, New Year's, and, as always, my birthday sandwiched in between. Didn't get to testing any new fake meat until lunch today. So here goes...

This week, we're checking out Quorn's Chik'n Nuggets. After the dismal performance of their Turk'y Roast I was a little hesitant, but I'd heard such good things about this brand, I wanted to give them another shot.

I baked them in the oven at 425 degrees, as indicated, for about 13 minutes, turning over halfway (because that's the secret to getting frozen nuggets crispy!), then pulled them out and laid them out attractively on a plate with a little dish of ketchup. I was feeling fancy today. They were marvelously crispy, which is an important selling factor for me. They looked like your average frozen chicken nugget, even down to the actual shapes people form nuggets into. Where do those shapes come from, anyway? It's not like any part of the chicken is shaped like that. Roughly a third were pretty circular, another third were more egg-shaped (hmm), and the final third I can only describe as vaguely boot-shaped. You know the ones I'm talking about, right? Well, if not, take a look next time you eat chicken nuggets. You'll see 'em.

Okay, but now to the important stuff. How do they taste? Well, that's hard to say. I tasted one plain, and although it was delightfully textured, it didn't have much in the way of flavor, aside from a very mild pepper flavor. I was kind of let down, actually. Then I tried one with ketchup. With the blandness of the nugget, there was nothing to interfere with the flavor of the ketchup. Basically, what we have here is a nicely textured sauce vehicle. I also wanted to comment on the appearance of the interior of the nugget. As you may or may not recall, a previous nugget review referred to a slightly stringy-looking interior. This nugget did not have the same problem. It actually looked like the inside of a standard chicken nugget, which, although not exactly appetizing, is, for me anyway, comfortably familiar. I'm pretty sure you could slip this product past a meat-eater, unless they were some sort of chicken nugget connoisseur or something. My only complaint is that they weren't really moist or anything - they were fairly dry, but that's what dipping sauces are for, right?

The experience:
Texture - slightly dry, but nicely crispy on the outside and reasonably meat-like (for chicken nuggets, anyway) on the inside.
Flavor - very bland on their own, but that only makes them more amenable to any kind of sauces you'd want to dip them in. No competition here.

Final grade for this attempt: A-