If the people making meat substitutes could focus on getting the right combination of vitamins, minerals and other necessary-for-life nutrients into their products that would be awesome.
Anyway, despite the lack of those, I have been experimenting with said meat substitutes to try to recreate some of my most enjoyable meals, meat free.
It’s neeeeearly spring, still cold but with the first hints of green coming through, so a hearty but not too dense traditional but meatless cassoulet seemed to be the thing for last night’s dinner.
The subs:
Chicken: Vegetarian Butcher Impeckable Chicken Breast
Bacon: This Isn’t Bacon Lardons
Sausage: Cauldron Lincolnshire Sausages
The sausages we have had for several years now, and they really are the only thing preventing it all from being completely vegan. Cauldron had to walk back a vegan launch a while back because their ‘new and improved’ version was universally hated.
The bacon is relatively new to me – usually I sub either halloumi or anchovies where bacon is needed but sometimes you need a lardon style thing. The ‘This Isn’t’ range is pretty good.
The chicken is the real focus of my latest experiments. I’ve tried it in a few dishes over the last year or so and it’s holding up pretty well, figuratively and literally. It always tastes a little bit tinny to me but not enough to put me off. I have found it can handle being poached for a long time without losing its structure and that does take some of the tinniness out of it.
Like a lot of meat substitutes it struggles to take on flavour through marinading – although I have an upcoming experiment with soaking first that I’m keen to try.
What I wanted to find out last night was: ‘will it shred’?
Now you might not think of shredded chicken for a cassoulet but, in meaty times past, a good cassoulet would have been cooking for several hours and, inevitably, some of the chicken would have fallen off the bones, or just disintegrated nicely into the stew.
Knowing that the Impeckable chicken would not fall apart, I needed to help it on its way.
So, I browned the bacon, the chunks of sausage and the (whole) chicken breasts, and then took them out of the pan while I made the base. Once ready, I lobbed the bacon and sausage back in, chopped up ¾ of the chicken into chunks and set about the last ¼ with two forks.
Shredding success! The Impeckable chicken shredded like a dream.
Chucked that back into the pan, added a packet of Merchant Gourmet 5 Bean Medley (going for ease and speed rather than a several-hour dried-bean marathon) and let it all bubble away until it was done.
Verdict: Excellent. I will be making this again and again. I think the only thing I would aim to improve would be more flavour that would ordinarily come from Toulouse sausages and that’s an easy fix.
But the shredding is where I really wanted to succeed. I’m on a mission to make some authentic-as-possible crispy duck pancakes and the key to that is an exceptional shredded duck sub. I’ve tried jackfruit – too soggy, and tofu – too smooth (even with freezing).
If I can get the duck flavour into the Impeckable chicken properly, I think it will be ducking perfect.
Watch this space.