Those nuggets are barely chicken anyways. If they can make a healthier, tastier nugget then that’s a win for everyone.
I bet they are not healthier.
They are not - they have super high sodium levels.
Ah perfect. Nuggets and fries are but mere vessels to deliver salt to my taste buds. This is a positive development.
Healthier, tastier and at the same price point, hopefully
Are they cheaper?
The panel of 1,150 American omnivores liked nuggets from Impossible Foods, MorningStar Farms, Quorn, Rebellyous Foods and Simulate the best
It wasn’t a single particular nugget, but an aggregate of vegan nuggets. And I can assure you, that Quorn and Morningstar are definitely cheaper than livestock chicken nuggets.
Really? They’re multiple times more here
Srsly? Wow. I’ve seen immposible go for around ten dollars, gardien for like 5, and then morning star and quorn for around 3. I don’t buy any of them because baking my own tofu ones is easy and I enooy cooking.
This is on the west coast US
In Australia they’re basically triple price. I can get 500g of Australian chicken nuggets for $3.50 or 280g of Quorn for $7
Share the tofu recipe? I’d probably beyond my skill as a cook, but I’m always interested to learn more.
It’s honestly not that tricky, just a little time intensive. My secret, not-so-secret trick for all tofu is to freeze it immediately, then dethaw day of with warm water/microwave on low/leaving on the counter all day/night. The freezing proces changes the texture in to something super tender!
Yeah around me they are at least double. Usually like 2.5-3x more expensive. It’s the only thing that stops me from getting them like constantly
They are CONSIDERABLY better. Especially with BBQ sauce!
I’m pretty sure that last sentence is about to get me kicked out of Texas
👢
Nuggies with BBQ is the only way my friend.
Not cheeper anyway. Less cheep. Dunno about the cost
Being real, I wish like hell vegan food makers would stop trying to be “better” than meat. Just make a damn good product, and even us meat eaters will get on board. Make good food, and it might be something that non vegans will eat instead of a meat product. But if they keep trying to “replace” meats, they’re competing in a game they can’t win.
I swear, despite not being vegan, I’ve tried a lot of the supposed meat/animal replacements, and they’re not a replacement. At best, they’re okay on their own as a thing. At worst, they’re horrible tasting with bad texture. And there’s so many great vegetable/plant foods that are so much better than the crappy fakes. Like, I get it, people cling to comfort and nostalgia foods, so if you aren’t raised on good plant based diets, you’ll miss animal based foods.
But, come on. Trying to shoe-horn things into a replacement and ending up with something meh that’s also unhealthy, or non sustainable? That’s just bad, period.
Now, I enjoy trolling vegans sometimes. It’s absurdly easy, and hilarious. But the idea behind it (vegan eating/living) isn’t bad. Reducing environmental harm, reducing cruelty, these are great goals. The way to doing that isn’t fake chicken nuggets out of a bag. It takes rethinking how each individual and family/household approaches food. The whole fake meat thing is just corporate bullshit trying to milk vegans and vegetarians for cash.
Sorry, I know outsider rants in niche communities tend to be disliked, but this subject is something I have a major problem with. And, ffs, I cook vegan meals for people I care about that are vegan, so I don’t even think I’m a true outsider on the matter of good vegan foods.
I’m not a vegan, but I’ve eaten at a few vegan restaurants that were highly rated. The delicious vegan food that you’re talking about already exists, but most people will never go to a vegan restaurant over a non-vegan one.
Yeah, it’s a hard ask for most people. I’m an adventurous eater, so I’ll usually try any new place at least once. And I have gone to a really great full vegan restaurant and loved it. It was my cousin’s birthday, and I was just not able to cook for him the way I usually do, so I asked him if he knew anywhere.
Anyway, it was me, him, his gf, and his mom. Nobody else in the family would go. Which, tbh, we don’t usually do restaurants for things like that, so that was part of it. But it definitely points to what you said. Most of my family is pretty chill about him being vegan, we try to make sure he’s fed at gatherings and the like, don’t give him grief. But asking any of them to show up there instead of my place, even with the money part covered, it just wasn’t happening.
And if you can get a vegan meal at the Burger Barn or Grills R Us, which is just as good as corpse, then it’s a lot easier for vegans and vegan-curious carnists
Dude. The whole “carnist” thing? Just don’t. It’s a bad look. It ain’t a religion, or if it is, then veganism is too, and that’s how I usually bait the hell out of the silly vegans when I’m trolling. Carnist is just another word that separates people into outsiders and insiders, which is a horrible thing to do.
But, yeah, I’m fully behind good plant based options at any of the usual meat-centric places. I’ve worked in fast food and short order places before. It costs next to nothing extra to have the options available, and it’s a great way to make sure customers that don’t really want to be there have a pleasant memory of your establishment. It would cost more at a higher end place to keep the supplies in stock, but I still think it would be worth it.
Most of those chains aren’t mixing their burgers fresh anyway. It’s usually prepackaged and/or frozen. There’s no good reason to not have the option there.
It’s all about selling the idea that you can do away with meat if you’re a meat lover. For a lot of them, that’s not going to happen by just saying “hey eat vegan food!”
But if you say “yo, taste this burger - whadayathink? I know right?!! Can you believe it’s not made out of cow?!” Then maybe, maybe, the dude will say “you know what? For my next bbq Imma use impossi-burgers - damn tasty those thingies!”
Man, one of the best burgers I ever had was vegan! Kelp based, with some binders and spices. Home made too, back in 89 or 90 by a guy my kinda gf knew. That was the first I had ever heard the word vegan lol.
I lost track of the guy, so I never got the recipe, but I’ve tried to get close a few times, and never quite matched it.
if they keep trying to “replace” meats, they’re competing in a game they can’t win
Except they literally won, lol.
we have evolved to enjoy the flavours of meat. and cooked meat. making a delicious product means copying some of these elements. it seems that these nuggets play on that and expand on that.
stop hurting animals
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This is true for people who already are vegans. My sister tries to use less meat, and when she wants to cook something where she used chicken before, she buts the “vegan chicken” and so on. I love trying new and maybe weird stuff, but people with 40 year old habits are not gonne buy cube shaped mystery things that are sometimes more expensive than the meaty counterpart.
Probably has more to do with spices than the chicken vs non-chicken. There are some incredible vegan-meat stuff out there because the spice game is 10/10. And I’m down for it.
Chicken smells awful to me, especially what they use for typical nuggets, plus I never really enjoyed those gross gristle bits.
Cooked, raw, or all of it? I like chicken but now I’m wondering if I like the smell of all the things we typically put on the chicken vs the chicken itself.
I eat meat but I go Qurorn nuggets when I buy frozen to eat less meat but also because they genuinely taste better than chicken goop.
I still think chicken tenders taste better and I have no real issue eating chicken goo but it comes down to three/four things. Price, taste, healthiness, less suffering.
There is ways to get people to eat less meat and it think it starts with some meals being vegan or having some meals that are 50% less meat and then 50% mushrooms/veggies.
There’s cauliflower “chicken” nuggets my girlfriend and I get often. They’re WAY better than chicken.
That sounds good. With meat-alternative products I find they are incredibly polarized. Like they are either incredibly amazing, or they are nearly inedible
Tried looking them up for you, sadly it seems they’re not carried anymore. But they were called “Buffalo-Style Wings” by Target’s brand: Good and Gather.
This is them.
Thanks, I’ll keep my eye out for something similar
They do cauliflower Buffalo wings near my place. They’re fucking delicious and just taught me the chicken is merely a substrate for the hot sauce and dip to live on. Plus no bones
Yeah that’s something I learned too. While meats can and do have their own distinct flavor, seasoning does most of the heavy lifting.
I haven’t stopped eating meat entirely but just practicing seasoning use has opened my pantry up to do many more foods.
From the article “Though the taste of the average plant-based product “is meaningfully behind” the animal version, one notable non-nugget exception was a blended burger.”
They aren’t saying that plant-based foods are tastier than meat ones. Only that there’s more of a desire for them from people because of them being plant-based.
It literally says that the only thing that people didn’t completely think was inferior to meat was something blended with meat lol… Besides some nuggets, apparently.
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Aldi had some plant based nuggs for a bit that were by far the best nuggets I’ve had as an adult. Never seen them again though, sadly.
Cheap chicken nuggets are trash anyways. If you’re buying cheap chicken nuggets, you may as well do yourself the favor of getting the ones made of tofu instead of chicken paste.
It’s the breading and the deep friedness that makes it good.
This is my entire take on most veg meat replacements. I won’t use substitutes in place of higher quality meat, but if I could I’d replace every single instance of low quality meat in my diet with some tofu/cauliflower/tempeh/whatever substitute.
It’s like, I get the nostalgia of shitty chicken nuggets, but 0% chance of biting into a piece of gristle? Sign me up
Quorn is way better than tofu or what I assume is some form of seitan you get with some of these. It really is way better flavor and texture than even decent quality chicken nuggets.
I wish I could still get Qorn nuggets locally. They’re so damn good, like how good chicken nuggets tasted as a child. Honestly way better in every regard than an actual nuggie.
Qorn products aren’t vegan, FYI.
Some of them are these days. Maybe 1/3 of the product line.
Well hold on there, they do have a wide range of vegan products as well. Here’s a quick Google to get a list of their vegan offerings:
https://www.veganfoodandliving.com/features/is-quorn-vegan-products/
What are the highly processed ingredients?
Make them free for all. Solve hunger and reduce carbon emissions.
Our nuggies comrades.
Nuggets solving the climate crisis would be the perfect ending to the clown-era of humanity
Nice. It was bound to happen eventually.
I remember buying some nuggets with a green filling and they were one of my favourite things to just pop in the toaster oven and eat while watching TV. I don’t recall what brand they were but I can easily see how they could be perceived as tastier than regular nuggets. The problem is whether or not they’re more affordable than chicken.
Edit: Veggie Patch Spinach Nuggets, I believe they were discontinued.
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Is that because normal chicken nuggets are so over processed now that they’re more easily defeated in taste tests?
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had “fake” chicken nuggets and they’re absolutely fine. I’d have them any time vs regular.
It’s probably more that fake chicken in general has been really good for a while now, you’d be hard pressed to know it’s not real chicken if you weren’t told beforehand. My local shop puts most meat-free stuff all in one corner together, but meat-free chicken nuggets get to go on display next to the real stuff in the freezer section.
Red meat is the difficult stuff, most fakes aren’t great and it’s almost always easy to tell it’s not real meat. When I feel like sausages I usually go for Richmond meat-free ones, I do like them but it’s very obvious it’s not pork. They have recently released cocktail sausages I love, though!
Has fake chicken gotten significantly better in recent years? A couple years ago I dated a vegetarian and while fake chicken was perfectly fine and I liked it, it was still a very different taste to chicken.
It’s interesting that it’s the taste that threw you off, usually texture is the bigger one for me. Chicken flavour primarily comes from the fat rather than the meat so I always assumed that was the easy part to replicate. We’ve had wildly popular meat-free chicken flavoured products for decades and that was just to make a cheaper product before meat-free was popular, it could just be that I’m too used to artificial chicken flavours. It’s relatively easy to find meat-free chicken (or beef) stock these days too.
