sloydahs

Sloydahs!

Just practicing my Aussie accent, there.

As I eat my way through the remains of the Monday meal (I made a ton, so there are lots of leftovers, even after the boss took home the rest of the galbi, mac and cheese, and apple pie for his family to munch on), I'm turning my attention to burger alternatives. Today, I made sliders with the Unlimeat veggie patties, plus I made two shrimp burgers. The shrimp burgers stole the show: they looked burned but tasted great, being a mixture of chopped-up shrimp, egg, Greek yogurt, and panko bread crumbs (with Old Bay seasoning!). Not keto or Newcastle by any means, but like last week, this week has been shot in terms of diet and exercise. I'm going to have to do something radical starting tomorrow or the weekend.

I admit I was curious about the Unlimeat patties, which came in a two-pack. I haven't read the labels closely, so I don't know what they're made of (aside from vegan-friendly material). I also don't know what makes them look red, but I can say that they didn't look browned by the time I was done cooking them (as you'll see below). They smelled and tasted better than those awful Beyond Meat patties, at least: there was no nauseating pet-food smell. Would I eat them again? I might, but in the knowledge that these don't taste a thing like meat. They're their own thing, marketed as a meat substitute but really just a good old veggie burger.

Straight out of the freezer; the label is going for that Beyond Meat vibe:

The Unlimeat instructions said the patties needed to be thawed before they could be cooked, so I stuck them in my microwave and put on the "thaw" function. Meanwhile, I made shrimp-burger patties and started frying them up:

As you'll see in a bit, the shrimp burgers came out looking burned (thanks to the egg mixed into them), but they tasted great. Meanwhile, below, you see the Unlimeat cooking away:

Here's a shrimp burger topped with my July 4th cole slaw. The slaw has turned purple thanks to the red cabbage, whose color soaked into everything else like a dark-blue shirt ruining your laundry. As you see, the burger patty looks thoroughly burned, but that didn't matter:

Below is a shot of one of the Unlimeat burgers. It reminded me of a burger-sized puck of spam, but it tasted nothing like spam:

I decided not to go buy burger buns since I still had a mess of slider buns from Costco. It's nice using slider buns, though: I prefer a burger where the meat pokes out. Burgers dominated by their buns are sad and lame:

I need to perfect my shrimp-burger game, but today was a good start. A lot of people, when they make shrimp burgers, will pulverize the shrimp instead of doing a rough chop the way I did this morning. They then form thin patties that they cover in the standard deep-fry layers of flour, egg, and panko, after which they deep-fry the patties like hash browns. I might do that next time. What I did was closer to how people make, say, salmon burgers, or how certain people make crab cakes (the only good thing to come out of Maryland).

The Unlimeat was passably okay—not great by any means, but edible. I'm still on the lookout for meatless meat that tastes more like meat, in the spirit of the Plant Whopper I'd eaten last year. The Plant Whopper was good enough for me to want to eat it again; today's Unlimeat was edible, but not very exciting. I wonder what might happen if I cooked it with some liquid smoke. I'm in no hurry to find out, frankly.

Here endeth the most recent adventure in beefless eating.