A few weeks ago, I was invited to taste Quorn for the first time at a media event at Staple & Fancy. I am a huge fan of all of Ethan Stowell restaurants, especially Staple & Fancy and How to Cook a Wolf. It was in the private dining room called The Cellar.
I have to admit, I was really curious about trying Quorn because I eat quite a few meatless meals a week on a daily basis. I recently found out that Quorn foods just launched in the US and can be found in many grocery stores.
The product is made of Mycoprotein. Quorn is known as fungal protein, is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “the albuminoid which is the principal constituent of the protoplasm of the cell.” “Myco” is from the Greek word for “fungus” (from Wikipedia). To read more about it on Wikipedia, click here.
In most of the dishes, you could not tell it wasn’t actually real meat. The meat sauce actually tastes like ground beef especially alongside the hand-made pasta. It is actually pretty amazing that you can get this flavor without meat. There was a also a mock chicken dish that tasted very close to chicken. I have to say that the ground beef was my favorite but the chicken was a nice substitute too. We also tried chicken nuggets and Quorn nuggets and it was hard to differentiate between them ( very close in taste) though I wouldn’t eat chicken nuggets anyway.
It is nice to know that there is an option if you are not eating meat, that has a flavor that is close to meat flavor. As somebody who is lactose-intolerant, I have tried every type of “fake” cheese and I have not found a brand that actually tastes like real cheese, I wish there were other options. I do still eat cheese with a lactose pill but it would be nice to be able to just swap a slice of cheese for something with a good flavor.
The event was orchestrated by the folks at Quorn along with Traca, from Seattle Tall Poppy, and they brought some amazing people together to break bread and try Quorn.
franticfoodie.wordpress.com 