Tofu and mushrooms are known as the most popular meat substitutes. These two ingredients have been the go-to replacements for meat-free eaters for decades for good reason: these make excellent and delicious substitutes.
However, did you know that there are other meat substitutes you can try? Here are some meat substitutes that give tokwa and mushrooms a rest:
Tempeh
Tempeh is a food product that is also made from soybeans. However, the treatment of these beans is quite different from when making tofu. Tempeh is made with fermented cooked soybeans and a natural fungus. This edible fungus enables the soybeans to bind and to create what are essentially soybean cakes. It should be noted that sometimes other beans are and can be used, too.
The taste is obviously very nutty. The texture is also definitely different since the beans are left whole and can be seen in a cross-section of the cakes. These cakes however make it easy to cut up into cubes and use in any number of ways. These cakes can even be crumbled up to mimic ground meat and then pressed together again to make burgers.
Seitan
Remember the Tik Tok trend that made chicken out of flour? That is seitan, a method of combining wheat flour and water (plus seasonings as desired) to make a mixture that allegedly tasted like chicken and had the texture of it, too. It's also known as wheat gluten since this is what creates the texture.
This is nothing like bread since the resulting dough is not made to rise. Instead, it's kneaded so that you develop gluten. This is then rested and kneaded again before being boiled. The dough can be twisted before cooking to create the "strands" that look like cooked chicken breast. Afterward, it can be fried to develop the golden brown color that you expect from fried chicken, hence the nickname "flour chicken".
This makes for a great-tasting meat substitute, especially if you're not gluten sensitive.
Other Beans and Legumes
It's true. You can make beans apart from soybeans as your super affordable meat substitute. Just like tokwa and tempeh are made from soybeans, you can use beans and legumes as a meat substitute, especially if you're making a stew or soups that use ground meat. What can you use? Here are just a few examples:
- • lentils
- • chickpeas
- • white beans
- • kidney beans
- • monggo or mung beans
You can even use mashed beans as a kind of binder in place for eggs in lumpia and other ground meat recipes. While these will definitely not taste or feel like meat, you won't have to worry about feeling unsatisfied or hungry afterward.
You can try any of these meat substitutes when cooking at home as well as the plant-based options available in the supermarket. However, if you're still on the fence about whether these plant-based food is really for you, why not try these fast food options you can have delivered instead:
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