#MeatlessMonday: More Fun with Gardein: Crispy Tenders

Crispy TendersGardein Crispy Tenders

Welcome back to another #MeatlessMonday.  For this week’s post, I thought I would again review a product from Gardein, who was nice enough to send me several coupons to try their product free of charge.

Now, the WellDone family is quite the connoisseur of vegan faux meat replacements, stemming back from the time that we were vegan or vegetarian.  Even though we have started to eat meat again, we still love faux meats because they taste good, but have far less fat and many fewer calories than the real thing.  That’s a good thing.

So, how did Gardein crispy tenders stack up?

The Good

When grading vegan faux meat products, I tend to grade them on two factors (also known as the BlogWellDone Vegan Meat Product Dual Index Rating System™…okay that’s not true.)  The first factor takes into account how tasty the vegan meat product is overall.  In other words, it measures the product on its own merits.  The second factor is how pleasing a non-vegetarian/vegan would find the product.

All in all, Gardein crispy tenders are probably my favorite vegan chicken nuggets on the market.  Gardein’s chick’n has a nice, sweet flavor like good white meat chicken and it has pretty good texture for not being the real thing.  Plus, the breading that has been deep fried on (yes, I said deep fried) and is slightly salty with a nice hint of pepper.  We cooked them in the oven according to package direction and they were decently crispy, especially for frozen chicken nuggets.  So in the overall factor, they do very, very well.

How do they do as a meal for non-vegan/vegetarians?  Of all the Gardein and Morning Star Farms and other frozen faux meats, the Gardein crispy tenders rate as my fave for non-vegetarians.  In fact, if you serve them with a dipping sauce, most of your carnivorous eaters will have no idea that there’s no meat in them there tenders.

If you’re looking for more recipes that use faux meat and are vegan-friendly, be sure to check out the wide variety of vegan recipes on https://janeunchained.com.

The Bad

Actually, there wasn’t that much bad about Gardein crispy tenders.  If anything, it might be the shape.  They’re too long to be nuggets and not long enough to be chick’n fingers.  Visually,  my son was more than able to tell that the crispy tenders weren’t his usual nuggets and this caused a whole slew of issues.  But that’s more my son’s issue than anything else.

In Conclusion

Buy them, they are good.  What, you were expecting something poetic?

In all seriousness, the Gardein chick’n tenders were really good and could be eaten by themselves, in quesadillas, in sandwich wraps, on salads, coated in buffalo sauce, however you like.  They are BlogWellDone approved!

So, yeah, in the end, give them a try.  They are perfect for this Meatless Monday or next week’s or the week after or the week after…

Photo from Gardein.com.

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