And no, I really can’t say they’re worth the $8.99 asking price, folks.
By: Jimbo X
The year 2019 is going to be remembered for a lot of things. All those fast food chicken sandwiches. Donald Trump getting impeached. The Joker. That one white college girl in New York getting murdered by like, three, black middle school kids, but everybody in the media being too afraid to say anything about it because … you know. But in hindsight, perhaps the most significant mass commercialization trend of the year that was involved the sudden influx of faux-protein foodstuffs, which have inundated everything from Burger King to Hardee’s to KFC to Dunkin’ fuckin’ Donuts.
Of course, brands like Boca Burger and Morningstar Farms have been around for years, and I’ve been reviewing grandiloquent vegetarian-friendly roasts that taste like giant Franco-American meatballs for at least a good decade now. But this was definitely the year that the meat-substitute market EXPLODED in the States, thanks primarily to the inroads made by two brands: Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat.
Today, we’ll be focusing exclusively on the latter in the equation. The El Segundo, Calif.-based company rolled out a veritable armada of faux-meat products earlier this summer, running the gamut from pseudo-hamburger patties to miniature make-believe sausage patties to our primary topic today, vegan-consumable wieners. Indeed, unsatisfied with just rolling out ONE brand of artificial hot dog, they actually rolled out three different permutations, including no less than two different Italian sausages.
The first time I saw the products on store shelves, I was kinda’ taken aback. For one thing, the packaging looked very out of place wedged in-between all of the usual Johnsonville bratwurst flavors, primarily due to its soft drink-carrier-like, heavy-cardboard container. And oh yeah — instead of looking like normal hot dog links, the sumbitches looked like these pale pink turd logs that aren’t even rounded off on the ends, with northern and southern meat poles that instead look like the haridos of Dragon Ball Z characters.
Quite frankly, they didn’t look all that appetizing to me, especially lined up side-by-side with those delicious, delicious Earl Campbell Red Hots. Mmm-mmm, now that’s some goddamn red-blooded American eatin’ right there, for sure. Even more preposterous, those godless California communists making this shit had the audacity to charge $8.99 for a four-pack, when you could get the real stuff for just $2.99. Indeed, for the cost of just quatro Beyond Meat Brats, I could’ve bought TWENTY Beddar with Cheddar smoked sausages — needless to say, from a cost-intensive perspective, these things are about as sensible as spending a $100 on a $50 bill.
Alas, my morbid curisoity just got the best of me, and I decided what the hell/damn/shit/fuck — I had $10 to burn, and if nothing else, if I could squeeze a 2,000-word photo essay out of it, I reckon that justified the entirely needless consumer investment on the front-end.
Alright, before we hop into the flavor of the product, let’s talk about the aesthetics of the Beyond Meat Beyond Brat (henceforward referred to as the BMBB, which I know sounds like a really weird bondage subculture acronym, but just hang with me here, folks.)
Despite costing $8.99 (be forewarned, I’m going to KEEP reminding you of that throughout this article), the packaging looks, well cheap. I mean, the container looks more like something you’d pick up at Aldi than Whole Foods, and the overall marketing buzz speak on the package sticker feels really uninspired and unexciting. It lets you know upfront that it’s got 16 grams of “plant protein” in it — more on what that entails in just a few, kids — and touts itself for having 38 percent less fan than the leading pork sausage brand, without telling us who said leading pork sausage brand is. And man, is that 38 percent number really specific — like, couldn’t they have spent a little bit more time genetically engineering this shit in a test tube somewhere to bump it up to a far more advertising-friendly 40 percent or something?
There is a LOT of text on the product’s back sticker, and I’d love to go in-depth with all of the caveats just to be a completionist/autist. Alas, our time is at a premium here, so I’ll just try and hit the high points and move along as briskly as I can, starting with the nutritional facts.
So one pseudo-brat link has 190 calories, which isn’t that much lower than your average “real” bratwurst. While it does have a pretty high protein quotient with 16 grams, it also packs on the sodium — a full 500 milligram, to be accurate, so eating all four of the links contained herein would easily supply you with a full day’s worth of recommended salt intake. Oh, and the links are pretty big on saturated fat, too, with each not dog (get it?) bringing five grams to the table/plate/bun/what-have-you.
Now, you’re probably wondering the same thing I was as soon as I saw these things — “if they ain’t made out of pork, chicken and beef, what ARE they made out of ?” Well, per the ingredients role call, the primary constituents of said products are — in order of importance, apparently — water, pea protein isolate, refined coconut oil and sunflower oil, with just a smidge of negligibles like faba bean protein, calcium alginate casing, and my personal favorite, methylcellulose, which, for the record, is both non-digestible in humans and biochemically designed to give you the intentional shits. Oh, and since peas are legumes and all, Beyond Meat is careful to inform would-be consumers with peanut allergies to proceed with caution, since the product could kill them and shit if they’re not careful.
Probably my favorite thing about the package is all of the puffery on display here, with the bratwursts appointing themselves as “the future of protein,” complete with a punny reference to Sasquatch and icons for pretty much every social media platform imaginable, alongside a handful of corporate-approved hashtags.
Of course, since this stuff ain’t real meat, you can prepare it in all sorts of different ways — just as long as you do so within three days of opening the package, and you better not goddamn refreeze it, or else. While I opted to skillet da fuq out of mine, Beyond Meat also recommends preparing the genetically modified foodstuffs on a grill or griddle, but ONLY if you get ‘em to an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, how you’re supposed to KNOW that, of course, is left to your own devices — I guess those fine folks in el Segundo just assume everybody’s going to have a meat thermometer handy for this kinda’ stuff. Naturally, the strongly advise AGAINST boiling the not dogs or microwaving them. And I guess that means they’re DOUBLY against boiling these sumbitches in a microwave, which is something I’ve been doing to “normal” wieners since I was, like, six years old.
Of course, the products also get a seal of approval from Vegan.Org, which I can only assume is listed as a domestic terrorist organization on some FBI watchlist somewhere. Admittedly, there’s not a whole lot to say about the safe handling instructions box here, except for one thing I thought was really, really amusing: the fact that the pictograph next to the “cook thoroughly” item looks a LOT like a wheelbarrow. Also, I like how they tell you they’re totally OK with you just throwing away their shit if you leave it at room temperature for too long. Like, just how unsafe is it to eat uncooked calcium alginate casing, anyway?
And now, we turn to the not dogs themselves. While the lighting here makes the frozen wieners look like beige penises, I assure you that in real life, they actually look WAY more like dull pink penises, which is way more reassuring to me, for some reason. Still, the sheared off tip of the second one from the left definitely gives me some VERY uncomfortable John Wayne Bobbit vibes, for some reason …
Like I said earlier, I decided to pan fry these fuckers, and instead of getting too ritzy with the oils, I decide to just PAM grease the skillet like a sumbitch, throw the rock-hard, frozen not dogs in there, crank the stovetop all the way to “8” and play the waiting game. And good lord, did these things take FOREVER to brown — indeed, to get these things to a point where I was fairly sure I wasn’t going to get botulism, I had to marinate ‘em for, no lie, TWENTY-TWO MINUTES.
While the not dogs look decisively post-food in the package, once you cook ‘em for a bit, they do start to resemble — and smell like — REAL bratwursts. Like, you wouldn’t mistake it for a REAL bratwurst, but you’d definitely be curious about what was stirring up in the kitchen if your olfactory glands suddenly caught a whiff of it. Of course, these things being glorified tofu dogs, they’re going to soak up a LOT of the flavor of whatever oil you use, so be sure to use something greasy you don’t mind ingesting in large quantities here.
And as any bratwurst enthusiast worth his salt would be quick to tell you, your not dog ain’t worth a good goddamn without a REALLY good sauce to accompany it, and for my taste test with the BMBB I opted for a four ouncer of Inglehoffer’s Sweet Hot Mustard, which is pretty much the best marriage of spicy brown mustard and honey mustard you could ever imagine. And trust me, four ounces is MORE than enough to do the job on this one, especially if you’re going the low-carb route and eschewed the buns like I did.
So in terms of a calorie-count, this is a pretty solid meal. All four not dogs weigh in at 760 calories — plus or minus maybe 50 or 100 cals, depending on how much oil is absorbed — and the whole goddamn Inglehoeffer’s jar is just 230 calories. So, realistically, the entire meal here comes in at under 1,000 calories, plus it’s all filling and stuff. I mean, maybe not as filling as one of my patented power salads, but it’s certainly sating, nonetheless. Just something I figured all of you dieters might want to be aware of and whatnot.
And now, we arrive at the moment of truth: just what did these $8.99 pseudo-bratwursts ultimately taste like, and was it worth the hefty price tag in the grand scheme of things? Well, the short answers to both questions are, in order, pretty good and not really. But I guess I have to delve into the subject a little bit more for you to feel like you got your money’s worth, right?
Here’s the thing about these not dogs. The exterior of the vegan wieners do taste remarkably like real bratwursts, to the point that as soon as you stick them in your mouth you might actually think modern science has done the impossible. Alas, no matter how long you grill these fuckers, on the inside the plant guts never get fully activated, I guess, and the end result is this weird, way-too-chewy product that doesn’t really taste like a bratwurst or any hot dog I’ve ever eaten. Which is weird, because even the low-tier veggie dogs like the Smart Links from Lightlife have done pretty admirable jobs imitating the taste, texture and mouthfeel of real dogs. Unfortunately, these BMBB only really nail the first part of the trifecta, with the rest of the foodstuff tasting like this iffy bean curd fuckfest. Which, really, isn’t altogether unpleasant, just as long as you a.) use the right kind of frying oil and b.) have the right kind of sauce to complement the protein.
I do have to wonder if the products would’ve tasted any better — or more authentic — had a grilled them outside using the tried-and-true Worcestershire sauce/tinfoil bird-bath method. Come to think of it, had I used an extra virgin olive oil base, maybe the totalistic product would’ve been a smidge better, but hey, let’s don’t let “perfect” be the sodomizer of “good” here, how ‘bout it?
So, no, I can’t say I was all that pleased to piss away nearly $10 on a four-shot of BMBBs. Of course, that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the products to a certain extent, and I guess the fairly disappointing outcome could just as easily be blamed on my preparation as much as it was the raw ingredients. Frankly, I’ve had WAY better tofu dogs, kids, and even the frozen food stalwarts from MorningStar and Field Roast pretty much fuck these up the ass when it comes to quality and affordability.
Still, I’ll give these guys some dap for their sheer chutzpah, and who knows? Maybe after some more lab work, they’ll be able to figure out how to make a pseudo-kielbasa or faux-chorizo that LEGIT tastes like something you’d actually want to spend nine smackers on, plus applicable state and local taxes. But for the time being, old Jimbo is going to have to give these not dogs a half-hearted “thumbs down” rating — although I’m still gonna’ give Inglehoeffer’s mustard five stars across the board, just out of pure principle. I mean, they helped me put down all four of these sodium-imbued GMO-wursts down like it was nothing — and without aide of a tall, frosty beverage, no less. You mean to tell me a feat like that don’t warrant some praise, if not outright brand fellatio?
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