Gardein 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.

Gardein Chick’n Good Stuff

So for this #MeatlessMonday post, I thought I’d review Gardein‘s Chick’n Good Stuff.  The nice folks at Gardein were nice enough to send me some review coupons for their products.

I was really appreciative of them doing so, so much so that I didn’t even think about the fact that you can’t get Gardein in Kansas City (that I know of.)  So, on a trip to St. Louis, Mrs. WellDone was able to land the mother load of frozen Gardein products.  For this post, I will talk about the Chick’n Good Stuff and in future posts, we’ll talk about the “beef” tips and their “chicken” fingers (both of which were really good.

What is Chick ‘n Good Stuff?

Chick ‘n Good Stuff is basically everything you want in a vegan meal.  They take their garden/plant-based chicken and stuff it with marinara and vegan cheese.  The outside is breaded with a flavorful coating.  You bake, you eat, you enjoy.  End of story.

The Good

Of all the Gardein products I’ve tasted from Mrs. WellDone’s mother load, these are probably my favorite for one reason: the marinara.  Sure, everyone at Gardein just winced a little because I didn’t say the chicken, but that’s not a knock against the plant-based chicken at all.  I really did like how moist and tender it was.  But the marinara was like… amazing.  I would have eaten it all by itself.

Don’t get me wrong, Gardein makes a mean vegan chicken.  It has all of the texture and most of the taste of real chicken.  (Gardein chicken has a slight aftertaste that was less than chickeny, but that’s common to all plant-based chicken products.  It’s also a little harsh because I was paying careful attention to any difference between Gardein and real meat for this review since I think it’s important faux meat products get close to what they are emulating.)  So really Chick’n Good Stuff gets high marks in the flavor and the “I’d drive to St. Louis and buy it again even if it means buying less Match Meat category.”  Two thumbs up.

The Less Than Good

I’m not labeling this “the bad” by any means, but there was one part of the Gardein that was less good than the others: the vegan cheese.  Not that Gardein doesn’t get an A for effort, but as a non-vegan, I could tell it wasn’t real cheese.  It just didn’t feel right.

Is that fair of me to judge Gardein on?  Maybe not, but I rate vegan food on two scales:

1) Would I eat this as a vegan?  The answer is everyday.

2)Would I serve this to my non-vegan friends in order to get them to consider veganism?  This is where the Chick’n Good Stuff stumbles.  I probably would not because of the vegan cheese.  If I had non-vegan friends coming over, I’d make the Crispy Tenders instead because those were almost perfect copies of real chicken.

The Verdict

Buy and try them.  Even if you are not vegan, the marinara is good by itself and the whole experience is worth a try.

Picture from gardein.com