Review: Quorn Vegan Hot & Spicy Burgers

Quorn Vegan Hot & Spicy Burgers

It's been a long time coming, but Quorn's first vegan products have hit the shelves in the UK. The company's first two vegan lines are some meat-free pieces (review soon) and these spicy chicken style burgers. The clamour to try them out is causing shortages for supermarkets stocking the range, so it's clear there is some pent up demand from vegans who want to find out what they've been missing for all these years.


Background


Quorn's arrival on the vegan scene is not without controversy. Mycoprotein was originally developed over 20 years ago as a protein source by Rank Hovis, to combat predictions of world hunger rather than as a vegetarian alternative to meat. That development included animal testing, as required by UK authorities at the time. Because of this, some vegans argue that Quorn Vegan isn't actually vegan.

Before we decided to do this review we had a look at the facts, and concluded that we were happy with Marlow Foods commitment not to carry out animal testing in future, and that 20 years have passed since the tests. We have amended our review policy to cover animal testing, which you can read in the About Us page at the top.

The Review


These chicken-style breaded burgers come four to a pack. They look a lot like those spicy bean burgers that most supermarkets sell, but apart from the breadcrumb coating and the spicy flavour, they have nothing in common. There isn't actually a 'chicken style' reference on the packs, but the white meaty texture of the burgers is closest to chicken.


The burgers come frozen, and need just 17 minutes in a hot fan oven to cook (19 minutes in a conventional oven).


You can eat these patties as part of a meal, or put them on a bun to make a chicken burger. The best way to experience the texture is to avoid the bun, and eat them straight up.

Quorn Vegan Chicken Burgers

That texture is far more convincing as a meat analogue, than anything we've ever reviewed before. The nature of mycoprotein's protein is in strands, very much like animal protein. These strands of mycoprotein are bound together with potato protein, and this gives Quorn an excellent meaty texture.

Like most vegan meats, there isn't as much fat to provide juiciness as in animal flesh, but Quorn is better than other meat alternatives in this respect too.


Quorn Vegan Chicken Burger

It does make a fine chicken burger, with a slice of Violife cheese and a dob of ketchup. Meaty, tasty and with a crispy breadcrumb coating, this is hard to beat.

Round Up


We're hoping to review the Quorn Vegan Meat-Free Pieces shortly, when we can actually get hold of them. These chicken-style burgers set a new standard for vegan burgers, and will certainly prove popular. We're hoping that Quorn will remove egg from the rest of their range of over 100 products, and this ubiquitous vegetarian brand will finally make vegan food accessible and widely available.

Alternatives to Quorn in the UK include Frys Family and VBites, who both make chicken-style burgers based on wheat protein (gluten).

You can buy the Quorn vegan range at Waitrose, Asda and from Ocado.


Veganoo Score: ★★★
Quorn Vegan - Hot & Spicy Burgers
~
The Good: Best faux chicken burger there is
The Not-so-Good: Hard to get hold of at the moment


Footnote: Ingredients
Here is the ingredients panel from the pack we reviewed.






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1 comment:

  1. We forgot to comment on the level of spiciness. They're a mild medium, rather than hot and spicy.

    ReplyDelete

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