Recently I had to completely cut meat out of my diet for a bit. So I took the opportunity to try a few of the meat alternatives available on the market. Having never tried any fake meat, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Here’s what my taste buds thought of the experiment…

I’ll admit, cutting meat out of my life wasn’t exactly difficult. I’ve never been a heavy meat eater. I’ve never found it that appealing (maybe it’s my blood type). And overabundance of meat production is taxing to the environment anyway, and often times can be cruel (at least in the way the majority of meat is raised). As such, eating less meat is generally better all the way around, so I’ve always tried to limit how much meat I eat.

The meat that I do eat tends to be wild venison or poultry (smaller meat is more sustainable). And it’s from local farms belonging to people I know. Farms that I’ve actually visited in person, and seen that the animals are being raised very well. And even then I just don’t eat much meat. So it was pretty easy to cut out, but I thought I’d give some of the alternatives a go, just to see how they measured up.

I steered clear of the “Impossible” and “Beyond” meats, as they use technology to get their foods to mimic the taste of meat. I’m not exactly hep on eating computer engineered foods, thanks. So I decided to stick with something a bit more healthy. I chose to go the tofu route.

I Tried Tofu Turkey

The first thing I tried was oven roasted Tofurky. Before purchasing I did a little research, and found that tofu is pretty healthy. So chalk up one up to the fake meat benefits.

Down sides are that it doesn’t provide a good source of iron (though that can be easily remedied by eating veggies high in iron). And it also doesn’t provide B12 (so I guess that’s a good excuse to drink more kombucha 😉 )

So, onto the actual eating. When I first pulled it out of the package I really was not impressed by the texture. It looked rubbery, and I was sure I wouldn’t like it. But I had come this far, no turning back. So I threw it on my sandwich, sure I’d never be able finish it.

Never Judge A Book By Its Cover

As the old saying goes, never judge a book by its cover, because looks can be deceiving. Despite its unappealing appearance, I must say, I was pleasantly surprised by the flavor. It tasted remarkably like turkey. It was not of course an exact match, but it was extremely tasty and not rubbery at all. In fact, the texture was exactly like a slice of turkey.

And as an added bonus, Tofurky has none of the fat lines going through it that real meat does. To be honest, I’ve found I actually prefer it to “real turkey” slices. I’ll probably never eat real turkey again.

Hickory Smoked

High on my success with the oven roasted Tofurky, I decided to try the hickory smoked Tofurky next. It did not make my taste buds quite as happy as the the oven roasted had. The hickory smoked was good initially, but I found it had kind of a funny aftertaste. So I decided to pass on eating anymore sandwiches with that.

However, I did find that it is pretty fabulous when it’s heated. So as a heated sandwich, the smokey flavor comes through very tastily, without any of the aftertaste.

Fried Bologna

The third and final fake meat I tried during my little experiment was Lightlife bologna. I’ve never really eaten bologna as a sandwich meat. In my family we always fried it in a frying pan (hey, don’t knock it ’til ya try it; it’s delicious). So I got a pack of the Lightlife bologna in hopes of making some fried bologna.

Well, it turns out it really doesn’t fry that well. While real bologna crisps up nicely, but remains soft enough to eat, the plant-based bologna just got crispy. It was kind of like a hard tortilla texture, except that if you tried to break or bite a piece off it was very difficult. Needless to say, I won’t be trying that again.

Now to be fair, it might be fine as a regular cold sandwich bologna, but I’ve never been a cold bologna sandwich person. So I can’t speak for that. However, the texture definitely mimics real bologna…at least until you fry it.

Fake Meat Scores

So my fake meat score on a scale of 1-5:
Hot or Cold Oven Roasted Tofurkey = 5
Hot Hickory Smoked Tofurkey = 4
Cold Hickory Smoked Tofurkey = 3
Fried Lightlife Bologna = 1

Have you tried meat alternatives? What’s your favorite?

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