Well a lot of people who are vegan or vegetarian like the taste and textures, just not the actual fact that an animal has to be killed to eat it. At the end of the day if having closer imitations makes them happy then more power to them! Why get offended at someone else’s tastes?
I wonder if we should include chicken nuggets and seafood extender or crab sticks in the same category. It’s only a short step from being something it is not.
Ham flavoured baked beans, ham flavouring no ham!
Oyster Sauce, no oysters apparently! (edit, **They do contain extract of Oyster, thanks @grahroll)
Little boys, aka cheerios, no children and lots of stuff that is not meat derived! Worse if you believed my gran and her view of how the butcher cleaned the shop floor?
We take great pride apparently in misrepresenting what is in our food products and giving them faux labels.
If it seems like a new idea, Mock Turtle Soup was big in the USA and England from the mid 18th Century. No turtle within a thousand miles of the cook!
Campbells even made a canned version. Calf’s head and horn soup with brains, and forcemeat might be a more apt description.
Given history and tradition, I’m not so sure any one of us can be strict on what we prepare, how it is presented or how it is described.
Who could say no to a big bowl of bacon ice cream?
edit note - **Oyster Extract
Traditional Oyster sauce is, made from oysters. It’s a mixture of caramelized oyster juices (a byproduct of cooking oysters in water for a prolonged period of time), salt, sugar, and sometimes soy sauce that is thickened with cornstarch . What you end up with inside the bottle is a dark, syrupy sauce that resembles whatever the love child of soy sauce and barbecue sauce would look like.
The oyster sauces we buy always have oyster extract as part of the ingredient list, I guess there are ones that don’t but none of ours so far have not had oyster extract in them.
I agree. Traditionally the sauce and extract is similar to making and using a stock from chicken or roast vegetables to make a soup. Only you then leave the chicken or vegetables out of the stock and rely on the flavour extracted as you would for a clear broth.
The modern commercial version of oyster sauce reverses this cooking technique for obviious reasons.
Oyster sauces today are usually made with a base of sugar and salt and thickened with corn starch. Oyster extracts or essences are then used to give flavour to the base sauce. Other ingredients, such as soy sauce and MSG, may also be added to deepen the flavour and add colour.
It could be that humans are omnivores (and the digestive system has evolved to handle meat and vegetable based diets), and there is a psychological desire to have something which look like meat. Tricking the body into thinking it is meat may give one the psychological fix needed for food enjoyment.
Don’t know, but it could be possible …it could be something which is programmed into our DNA, just like other animals which are borne and know exactly what foods to eat and not eat.
One has to remember that non-meat food products are highly processed and contain a lot of additives/ingredients which are not present in the meat product. If one takes mince for example, the difference in ingredients shows the level of processing…
On the contrary! My mother makes a killer vegetable based pasta sauce which most people don’t even realise is vegetable based. (Works great on little kids )
I can’t eat a lot of red meat or processed meat because I have a VERY sensitive stomach, and meat protein is one of the things that will cause me pain and burning for hours. As much as I love and crave a good steak burger, it just isn’t worth it (burger buns are off the menu too )
I like the concept of fake meat products, because a lot of the time I can make my brain believe I’m eating the burger I psychologically crave whilst not upsetting my stomach at the same time.
I had to have it with massive modifications, but the Rebel Whopper at maccas is fantastic. I’m also a fan of soy bacon, and I’ve tried a few plant based sausages that haven’t been bad.
Usually I just eat fish, chicken, tofu or legumes, but its nice for a treat to pretend I’m having some beef or pork