Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that Quorn recently veganized a couple of its popular products – spicy chicken burgers and chicken pieces. Vegans everywhere rejoiced. While many Quorn products in the US are vegan, for some reason it has taken the company a long time to come around in the UK.
Well here’s the good news – not only is Quorn introducing new vegan products, it actually has plans to make its ENTIRE range vegan! But here’s the bad news – it won’t happen right away. Apparently there is a shortage of potato protein (which replaces egg), so it could be a while now before we get a totally vegan range of Quorn goodies. Here’s a statement from the company:
Anyway, on to the actual product review. While I LOVE vegan fried chicken (it’s my one guilty pleasure… ok, one of a few), I’ve never been a fan of plain mock chicken. I prefer tofu honestly. So with that in mind, I thought I’d give the new Quorn pieces a try.
The instructions tell you to cook the pieces in a sauce – so if you want to make a stirfry or a less-saucy type dish, you’re out of luck*. (PS – notice the BIG green vegan label? Love.)
Lucky for me, I had some homemade curry sauce in the freezer, so I add the Quorn chicken to the sauce and simmered for 20 minutes with mushrooms. I then added some peas and coriander and served with brown rice and saag masala.
The pieces themselves were quite similar to chicken in texture and didn’t have too much flavor (but take on the flavor of the sauce very well). They also started to fall apart a little after 20 minutes but again, not anything to complain about as it just made it more tender.
In all, the dish came out quite well. My only complaint was that it felt a bit heavy in my stomach afterwards compared to say, tofu, but my husband loved it and has requested the dish since then. So I guess I’ll be buying it again!
Have you tried the new vegan Quorn pieces? What do you think?
*Since posting this, a few readers have said they have successfully cooked the pieces without a sauce – good to know!