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June 14, 2017

It’s not Italian sausage.  BUT, for a meatless meat (yes it’s labeled vegan), it has the texture, if not exactly the taste, of a meat.  The texture is the biggest problem with many meatless meats. They, or we, can always work on how it tastes.  In its own right, it’s fairly good tasting, but on the bland side.

Pan-fried, the outside actually browned some, adding to the flavor. The texture is pretty good for a meat substitute, chewable, firm and not mushy – very close to a real sausage.  Since there’s no casing on the sausage, the initial pop-crunch of breaking through the casing is missing.   It should hold up well if you want  to surround it in a bun.  There’s a bit of heat in the mouth from the sausage, but nothing close to a hot Italian sausage.  While cooking, there’s a nice aroma coming from the pan. The taste is neutral, with an earthy tomato taste from sun-dried tomatoes.  Missing of course is the flavor from the pork in a traditional Italian sausage.  But also missing, and this is true of some of the meat sausages, are fennel seeds.

Because the fat from a meat sausage is missing, they tend to start to stick to the pan some.  So keep some oil in the pan and rotate the sausage gently to keep the bottom side well oiled.  Gentle is key as some of the outside starts to flake away with rough handling.  I used a kitchen tongs to turn them.  Outside on the grill these precautions may be more important.

They’re eatable by themselves and don’t taste bad.  However, if you’re a meat eater, they won’t satisfy you as an Italian sausage, neither a sweet nor hot Italian sausage.  The seasoning in the sausage is just not right for an Italian sausage.  I also used these in a sausage, peppers and onion dish with a jarred tomato sauce.  The extra flavor from the other ingredients helped carry the sausage and made for a tasty dish.  In general, except for the very hungry, most people will probably feel the need for some kind of sauce or condiment with these.

Nutritionally this food is a powerhouse.  With 30g of protein, only 8g of carbohydrates and 14g of fat from plant-based oils, per sausage link (100g), it would be difficult to argue against this product.  That adds up to 280 calories.  The only negative I can see is the 620mg of sodium per sausage.  Some of that is from added salt, which still doesn’t make the flavor pop.  Unfortunately many other foods also have similar amounts of salt which is an unfortunate general trend.

Like the original Tofurky Roast, the texture and flavor are good, but just not the same as a real meat. When judged for what it is, this is a good and reasonably good tasting meat substitute for those who either want to avoid all animal-based food or who want to decrease their consumption of meat.  The product is labeled vegan.  These are not exclusive to Trader Joe’s and are generally available at other major markets.  Here’s the Tofurky website which has a store locator.

Price  $3.49 – package of 4 sausages     Calories  280 per sausage (100g)

Tags: calories, food, italian sausage, nutrition, price, review, snacks, tofurky, trader joe, vegan

This entry was posted on 06/14/2017 at 08:28 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.