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Not exceptional out of the box, but it lends itself to some possibilities.

First impression is that someone mislabeled some plumber’s putty.  Once the package is opened, hopefully without major or minor injuries, this rightfully makes Play-Doh a children’s toy.  With a density and stickiness off the scale, it wasn’t clear whether this would cook up into volcanic rock or food.

To ease your concerns, it cooked up into a pretty reasonable sausage substitute.   For meat eaters in the audience, this will not replace a Hardee’s, or even a McDonald’s, sausage biscuit.  It’s sort of surprising many meat substitute products don’t add more flavor components to their recipes.  One of the key ingredients in almost any sausage recipe is rubbed sage.  However the sage taste here was at most a hint.  There’s a touch of what some people will probably consider an off-taste.  I’m going to blame that on the nature of the textured soy product which is used for many meat substitutes.  Once again, adding some additional flavor components to the sausage would help hide that taste even more.

The cooked texture was chewy, similar to real pork sausage.  It browned up nicely in some oil.  Like most meat substitutes, it tended to suck up the oil in the frying pan.  You may want to add another tablespoon of oil as cooking progresses.

The calorie count is amazingly low.  Half the package was made into 3 good-sized patties (see picture), which is about the suggested serving size of 2 ounces.  However, once browned in some oil, the oil is going to raise that calorie count.  The other half was made  into sausage gravy.  That’s where this product shows the most potential.  The gravy affords the opportunity to add the missing flavor to the sausage.  I didn’t totally succeed on the first try.  Further experiments will be left to you.  Sausage gravy and biscuit recipe to follow.  I picked this up from Trader Joe’s refrigerated meat shelves.  It will off to the right with other non-meat products.   LightLife claims this product is certified vegan (vegan.org).

Calories  60 per 2 ounces   Price  $2.69

Tags: calories, food, meat substitute, price, review, reviews, tj, tj's, trader joe's, vegan, vegetarian

This entry was posted on 09/05/2011 at 21:59 and is filed under Recipes, food, cooking and related items, Trader Joe's, Vegetarian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.