Chef Reviews Plant-Based Steak, Bacon, Chicken Breast and More
Wellness
Speaker 1: It doesn't say, you know, don't eat it raw. We'll give, we'll give it a little shot now and see how it is. You know, definitely a little spongy. Hi everybody. My name is Steven Chavez. I'm a chef instructor with ice culinary here in Pasadena, kind of my specialty for the last year has been in the health supportive program. So today we're gonna be tasting plant-based alternative meats. Let's get into it and let's see how they taste.
Speaker 1: [00:00:30] First. We have proto style. Plant-based deli slices made with gluten from wheat. This is Huray foods and, uh, this looks like bacon. It looks really fatty. That's what that is is coconut oil. Coconut oil is really solid rice flour, tapioca starch, umami season. Good to see you mommy in there, soy free, gluten free and vegan. This one better chew, original shredded steak, and they show it in [00:01:00] use in tacos. Looks like you kinda heat it up. Kind of like, uh, like ground meat. This one is made up mostly soybeans, canal oil, nutritional yeast, nutritional yeast is used like salt. So you'll get a lot of flavor from nutritional yeast, light life, plant-based chicken breasts. This one is made up of chick P flour, coconut oil, pee protein, and a quite a few other things. Most of them seem to be, uh, gelling agents, a lot of gums, a lot of, uh, cellulose, a lot of algenate, but made with P protein. [00:01:30] So it looks like this one is, uh, gluten free. Um, although it doesn't specify it on the outside, which is a little interesting. Then our last one, holy moly, look at this two pounds worth of a plant-based roast, which stuffed as well, serve the Portini mushroom gravy. This one has a ton of ingredients. It's a lot of seasonings, a lot of different flour, wheat, flour, and P flour. So there are our plant-based meat [00:02:00] alternatives. We're gonna give these a try.
Speaker 1: This one. Won't need to cook this one. I think I'm just gonna heat it up in a pot with our, our, uh, Huray foods bacon. I'm gonna, I'm gonna put that in a panel. We'll do a little saute of those. Like I would, uh, with regular bacon plant-based chicken. Also put that in a pan. We'll do just like a nice, uh, saute of a breast. Like we normally do that. And then with our, our celebration roast, I think, uh, according to the directions, it, it says to take it and put it in a, in a, uh, pot and put that in there, out of [00:02:30] the water, cover it up and then cook it there. Um, but it also gives an option to do a slice. So I think for today's, uh, today's example is gonna take a slice off of that. I'll just cook it in a pan, kind of looks like bacon, you know, out of the package, it's a little broken up, so it doesn't hold together.
Speaker 1: Like a, like an actual piece of bacon. You can see it's kind of broken. Okay. So this is our, uh, plant based chicken breast. It's incredibly pressed. It looks very much like Plato says cook on [00:03:00] medium heat with no additional fat needed. This solid coconut oil will melt super quick, even on medium heat. I'm noticing that this is burning really easily. So I'm gonna try this, uh, bacon again with a little bit of fat. It already looks different. It's starting to ruffle or kind of waffle up like bacon does. And that's what very little fat added. It's really sticky. It's a lot of starch. So on the low heat, my bacon seems to be crisping up. Pretty good. So I'm gonna go ahead. Now. I'm gonna take off my bacon [00:03:30] and I'm just gonna put that on a paper towel. Oh my gosh. This stuff just Sears really quick. So let's try our press chicken breast again. It's interesting that it calls for a temperature of 1 65. That's something that you would use for, you know, actual chicken. You would cook it to 1 65 most plant-based items more like 1 25 to 1 35 or so. So we'll check that and flip that about every three minutes or so let's cook up a little bit of this, uh, [00:04:00] steak, huh?
Speaker 1: One thing I do notice about these products because they don't have natural moisture in them, the way that, uh, animal product would, they tend to dry out in the pan really, really quick, as you can see, it's totally dry on the bottom now. So here's our shredded meat.
Speaker 1: These products tend to really cringe on the outside, so you have to babysit them. I know I'm multitasking right now. I'm doing multiple things at one time, [00:04:30] but you know, when you're cooking at home, you'll do the exact same thing. I'm a professional. I've been doing this for a long time and I'm still finding myself having to check this a little bit more often. You can see it as a nice kind of crunchy out outside. Um, it doesn't appear to be greasy, but it definitely doesn't seem to be too juicy as well. We're gonna go ahead and check our thermometer, make sure it's 1 65.
Speaker 1: It's definitely well over 1 65. So we'll go ahead and, uh, put that on our plate, this side [00:05:00] very flat. So it got a nice even cooking on that side and this side, because it's curved, it got a Cing in one spot, but we didn't get a whole lot of color on the other side. Okay. So it comes with a powdered gravy and that looks like a roast. Okay. Uh, interesting. Look, it looks like a, what you would see in a traditional ULA. It looks like it has, you know, what would be maybe a meat around the outside with a little bit of stuffing in the center while my slices [00:05:30] are gonna be cooking. I'm also gonna go ahead and make the gravy, seeing there's bits of mushrooms in here too. So that's kind of nice that little addition of fat when you're cooking a plant-based product is a good thing. Let's give these a little Sr all these plant based products because they have a lot of dry ingredients in them and starches. They seem to dry out a lot and it seems to really suck up the oil. The Pan's already dry. Again, my gravy is just starting to thicken up here. Pick my slice here. That's just a little bit prettier, got a little bit more char on that. We'll put that out here like that.
Speaker 1: [00:06:00] You can see it has those nice little mushroom bits in it. Let's take a taste. Shall we? This is our proto style deli meat. It was good. That's a little on the dry side. The flavor is really great. The seasonings excellent. The spice is really excellent. Something like that'd be great on a bagel or on a sandwich. I like it. I could definitely endorse this one. So let's, uh, take a taste of our shredded steak. Looks a little dry. I think if I were [00:06:30] using this for tacos or if I was using this in any other application like that, I think I'd like to, you know, maybe add a little bit more moisture to this. It does eat a little tad, um, dry, a little bit spongy, but that's kind of to be expected with a, uh, plant-based meat alternative. So, um, I'd definitely give this one a thumbs up. It tastes good. So next we have our plant-based bacon texture. Isn't exactly like bacon, [00:07:00] but it's, uh, crispy. Doesn't quite come through as a natural, uh, meat flavor, but it definitely has that liquid smoke flavor. The texture is a little bit more like a chip than it is like bacon. I can't say it's any better or worse than Turkey bacon. If you're looking for a plant-based bacon alternative. Pretty good. Just be careful about how you cook it. So next we're gonna taste our, uh, plant-based chicken breast. I'm not expecting [00:07:30] it to be much more than a, a large size chicken nugget.
Speaker 1: The seasoning is very much like chicken I'm, uh, frankly surprised texture is a little tough. It's a little chewy. It's not juicy. I think this would definitely be a preparation. That would be great. Um, almost like you have it here on the package, if you had a little bit of a sauce to go over the top, a little hard, [00:08:00] uh, a little cookie, like on the outside, but, um, flavor-wise surprisingly good. Finally, today we are going to taste our celebration roast. It definitely has the flavor of a roast. The gravy is a little bit on the salty side. Um, so maybe adapted to loop that down just a little bit or use maybe a little bit less. Let's take a little taste of the, the meat by itself without the gravy, want to get the middle. So I get that stuffing in there as well. It really looks like, [00:08:30] uh, like if I had stuffing and compressed that together, that's really kind of what it tastes like. It has the taste of, of, uh, stepping besides that traditional plant based meat texture. That seems to be near impossible to get away with. It's pretty tasty. I'm curious to see how it would be in the full roast preparation to then slice. It might be a little bit more moist because we do cook it with some water in the pan for my plant-based [00:09:00] friends. I would've no problem serving this for them for any, uh, holiday or special occasion.
Speaker 2: You know what? This would be really nice if around the me. Yeah, there you go. There you go. Our brain's totally think cause you need something kind of sweet and fresh and bright to kind of break up that like darks smokey, like mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah, I think out of all of 'em the ends, my top two, me too.
Speaker 1: The roast is really good.
Speaker 2: I really enjoy. I would eat definitely.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Hundred percent. Yeah. So to kind [00:09:30] of sum things up here, there are plenty of plant based options out there for alternatives to traditional meat. We can have ourselves, a beautiful sandwich with, uh, our sliced meat. We can have tacos or sloppy Joe with our shredded steak. I can make almost anything with bacon. Then we have our chicken. If you had one person that was plant based and the rest of the family were, uh, carnivores, then we could add in a plant-based alternative [00:10:00] chicken or for a special occasion, there is the celebration roast. The thing you need to be aware of is any other allergen, several of them have wheat or gluten soy and soy products. So whatever your specific preference is, make sure that you read the labels really well and decide what's in there all in all. There's some great alternatives out there. So this is, uh, chef Steven Chavez from, uh, ice culinary here in Pasadena. And, uh, thanks for watching.
