veggie burgers: one more shot

Once more unto the breach, dear friends. Umpteenth time's a charm, maybe.

I randomly saw these vegan patties (and a package of "vegan mince") at the SSG Food Market, so I bought them on impulse. Would they be any better than the other crap I've tried?

Here's the gussied-up view of what the patties are supposed to look like:

The boldface font says: "Instead of Meat." Not very imaginative, but it's to the point.

A peek into the package shows something gray—no attempt at simulating the red color of raw meat (unlike the above package photo). This could be a good sign, or it could be a bad sign:

only 3 patties in the box

When I opened the package up and got my first whiff of the patties, I was prepared for a disgusting, cat-food-like blast of odor, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the odor... was not that. It wasn't meat-like, except only vaguely. There was a slight undercurrent of school-cafeteria mystery-meat hamburger, which struck me as a good sign after the Beyond Meat debacle. Took me back to simpler days.

I didn't see any prep instructions on the box for these patties (maybe I missed them), but I've cooked enough of these things to know you go with medium to medium-high heat for 3-4 minutes per side. I initially aimed for 4 minutes per side, but when I checked the patties near the 3-minute mark, they were already ready for flipping.

That's oil that I laid down, not oil rendering out of the patties.

I used Havarti cheese and regular burger buns, neither of which is vegan. Feeling lazy while at the store, I bought a cheap salad mix so I wouldn't need to prep the leafy greens myself. Bought some uninspiring tomatoes, too, as well as my usual jar of sliced pickles. The pickles, when I smelled and tasted them, seemed very off, so they've been thrown away. I let the Havarti melt on top of the patties at the very end of cooking, and below is what one of the prepped and plated burgers looks like:

And here, in this final pic, are all three burgers, done up and ready to eat. I'm strangely proud of the burger sauce, a concoction of mine made a while back. It's a combination of mayonnaise, brown donggaseu sauce, and sriracha in a roughly 1:1:1 ratio. And it's awesome.

So, like Hans Landa, I imagine you're asking, "Verdict?"

These were easily the best vegan patties I've ever had, not counting the Burger King Plant Whopper patties by that Australian company, v2food. I didn't love the fake-meat patties (because I'm a carnivore), but I definitely liked them, and I'd eat them again. They tasted fine, and their texture had enough resistance to at least echo meat. The patties' diameter was also appropriate for the buns I'd bought—no bready overhang (and vegan patties, not being meat, don't shrink when cooked). While I still plan to make my own recipe-based plant burgers, I now know that I can buy this vegan product in a pinch if I'm ever in the mood for something different. If you're a more hardcore carnivore, you might not understand this urge, but that's okay: you stay in your lane, and I'll stay in mine. I'd certainly never foist these products on anyone else, and I'm in no danger of going over to the dark side and embracing the vegan way. As carnivores like to say: "My food eats your food."