Best of 5: vegetarian meats

Mmmm... delicious fish, black pudding, scotch egg, frankfurters and bacon. OR ARE THEY?

Fish (Making Waves’s Vegetarian Breaded Fish style steaks)
Ok I’m gonna come right out and say it. I love these. So there.
The breadcrumb-coated blocks are intended to be fried – for about four minutes each side. This I did. The crumb crisps up nicely and the centre is slightly fishy, but mostly like slightly mushy inside-of-breaded-fried-item – just like regular low-grade fish fingers. You can tell it’s not fish by the texture, but it does a pretty good fishcake impersonation, fulfilling the most important aspects of that food: it’s proteinous, salty, crunchy and moist and goddammit I like it. Rating: 4/5

Black pudding (V Pud)
Hmn - this doesn't look terribly like black pudding at first - oh yes, it's dark red, but it's also densely fibrous. However, the slices turn nearly black on frying for a few minutes on each side, and it makes a pretty good stab at the flavour. The pepper's there, and the seasoning's spot on. But the 'blood' bit needs to be softer (a line calculated to gross out any vegetarians reading). Still, although they're not kidding anyone, I'm surprised at how well they've managed. Rating: 3/5

Frankfurters (Quorn)
Like most Quorn, these are basically like meat but the texture's too smooth and rubbery, and there are none of those delicious little reservoirs of fat that make real meat such a juicy experience (hang on in there, vegetarians, this is all for your benefit). These franks have the advantage of mimicking a foodstuff that barely deserves the name anyway. They're edible. As you'd expect, not juicy, but hammy and rubbery, like real dogs but with an odd bacony taste. Rating: 2/5

Scotch egg (Veg Out)
This is Not Nice. If you salted some uncooked wholemeal bread dough and plastered it round an egg, you would have a fair imitation. It’s a sullen and thankless snack. Being hung over, this should have gone down a treat. Instead, I’ll have to grit my teeth even harder and slosh even more isotonic drinks down just to get over the experience. Rating: 1/2 /5

Bacon (Quorn)
I'm seriously surprised, but this is quite good. It's very smokey and a trifle moist, and it even browns slightly in the pan. Of course, it looks about as much like bacon as a pig looks like a mushroom, but that's preferable to drawn-on fat streaks. They've clearly pumped this full of salt water, like actual bacon, and eaten raw, it tastes like ham. Downside? It has a slightly bitter aftertaste and, of course, the Wrong Texture. Rating: 3 1/2 /5

Winner: Go FISH!

Comments

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Vegetarian fish? Hmm, now I want to try this...