Question about meatless ground beef.

[Chan790]

10. A recommendation but not a brand.

I've had a lot of success with TVP/TSF. It's the "meaty" chunks in most mass-produced vegetarian chili. It comes in bags of granules and they basically absorb the liquid they're cooked in to rehydrate. Also, they have a vague meaty taste but they're mostly flavorless so they taste like whatever you cook them in. Also, they're cheap, usually sold in loose bins or by the bag.

They weren't invented as a vegetarian meat substitute, they were invented to reduce the amount of ground meat used in commercial food prep. They have the same texture as meaty bits so their use allowed companies like Hormel to use less meat without making their foods less "chunky". Nobody notices when they use them with meat unless they read the label because they cook them with the meat and thus...they taste exactly like the meat. Now, we're seeing them used even more in commercial food prep because they're healthier than meat bits so their inclusion makes the nutrition labels look better in terms of things like cholesterol, calories and saturated fats. (I can't really object to that because less meat by-volume means less animals slaughtered for food.)