Again, no animals were harmed in the making of this GDL dish. I used Morning Star Farms Meal Starters Grillers’ Recipe Crumbles, which is just like ground beef only meat-free. I’ve used these “veggie crumbles” in tacos and vegetarian chili and you would never know the difference. However, thanks to last night’s cooking experiment I have now learned that there is one place where these crumbles do fail in comparison to the real McCoy… and that’s in meatballs.
Super disappointing. I had one frozen jar of marinara sauce left and a bag of veggie crumbles. With GDL’s Meatballs in Tomato Sauce I was one recipe away from clearing out half of my freezer (three-fourths if I polish off the bottle of vodka in there with the meal).
I stirred together the breadcrumbs, parsley, eggs, milk, cheese and crumbles and started to form the bite-sized balls. But the crumbles don’t bond together like real meat. They just, well… crumbled. So I added another egg for some extra glue and was able to form somewhat of a soy sphere. That is until it hit the skillet. Out of the entire mixture, which is supposed to make about 3 dozen meatballs, I was left with 6 balls and some browned crumbly bits.
Since everything gets combined with the marinara sauce to let the flavors blend, I decided who cares what form they are in- flavor is flavor, right? So I dumped the sauce on top of everything and brought it to a boil. After 5 minutes, I poured everything over some al dente penne, topped with more Parmesan and called it dinner.
The dish came out more like a chunky, meaty sauce. Full of flavor and texture. Although next time I may just bypass the crumbles altogether and pick up the ready-made vegan “meat” balls, last night I felt extreme pride seeing my three little “meat” balls perfectly perched on top.
No comments:
Post a Comment