Meat Free: Quorn Vegetarian Sausages

 

By Lee Yu Kit

Quorn meat-free products are now available in Malaysia. We take a look, cook and taste the vegetarian sausages

 The plant-based meat movement has gained mainstream popularity, especially with Impossible Foods’ and Beyond Meats’ realistic meat substitutes. Lockdowns under Covid19 seem to have increased the popularity of realistic plant-based ‘meats’, and even large food producers such as Nestle and Tyson foods have jumped onto the substitute meat bandwagon. 

Health concerns, the large environmental footprint of producing meat, as well as animal welfare have all been given as reasons for the upward trajectory in the consumption of plant-based meats, although, on a global level, meat consumption overall is higher than ever, largely driven by demand from developing countries.

Of the plant-based meats, UK-based Quorn has been around since 1985. It is widely available in over a dozen countries, including, recently, Malaysia.

 

Vegetable protein: Mycoprotein

Unlike most meat substitutes, which use soy and pea proteins, Quorn uses mycoprotein, which is derived and harvested from the fermentation of a fungus. Nutritionally, mycoprotein is naturally high in protein (11g per 100g) and fibre. It is low in saturated fats, carbohydrates, sugar and salt.  Additionally, it contains calcium, potassium, phosphorus and small amounts of other minerals such as zinc and selenium.

Notably, mycoprotein is a complete protein, containing all the essential amino acids, which is unusual in plant proteins.

A 1992 study linked the consumption of mycoprotein with lowered levels of LDL (“bad” cholesterol) and increased HDL cholesterol (“good” cholesterol).

Quorn also points out that the production of mycoprotein uses as much as 90% less land and water resources than in producing some animal proteins.

Quorn products are available in a range of forms, including sausages, nuggets, mince, burgers and fish fingers. You can check out their range at https://www.quorn.co.uk/products/all.

For those concerned about intolerance or allergies to Quorn products, the company addresses this in their website, https://www.quorn.co.uk/intolerance 

 

Cooking Quorn Sausages

I picked up a bag of at Quorn sausages at Jaya Grocer in The Starling.  At RM31.20 for 12 sausages, that’s quite a bit more than you’d expect to pay for commercial meat sausages.

The cooking instructions were simple: fry from frozen for about 15 minutes in a little oil, which I dutifully followed. Appearance wise, the sausages are short and stubby, and pale coloured when uncooked. The sausages are not vegan, using rehydrated free-range egg albumin as a binder, although vegan Quorn products are also available. Mycoprotein and albumin are the two major ingredients, with others being vegetable oils, rusk, onion, stabilisers, firming agents and flavouring.

In the pan, the sausages turned brown rather nicely as they heated up, with the heated parts browning more than the less heated parts, as with real sausages.  They certainly looked convincing. They smelled quite nice as well. Appearance wise, there was nothing to suggest that these weren’t ordinary meat sausages.  In the attached picture, the sausages are acquiring a nice brown colour in a frying pan.

 

Isn’t this a chicken sausage?

And how did they turn out? The look like regular sausages and when cooked, have a firm texture, revealing a slightly-pinkish cross section when cut. I had the sausages with fried onions, lettuce and tomato slices on bread. The sausages had a good mouthfeel and gave a good sense of satiety after eating.  You can see how the sausage looks when cooked, and served on bread with condiments in the attached picture.

In the taste test, they are most similar to chicken sausages, with the slight bounce and mild flavour of chicken sausages.  It was a good lunch meal, sausages with bread and vegetables.

It’s noteworthy that real chicken sausages can be expected to contain amounts of growth hormone and antibiotics fed to chickens, as well as some saturated fat. Sausages are usually made from the less commercially desirable parts of the animal, ground up with the addition of flavouring, colouring and preservatives, into a homogenous mince.

Although they contain no animal meat, Quorn sausages are, nevertheless, a highly-processed food, made to look and taste like chicken sausages. They’re not the best choice if you want to eat healthily – for that, go with minimally processed, whole foods – but if you fancy chicken sausages every now and then, and have reservations about eating animal meat, these would do the trick.