Chili does seem like a good vehicle for plant based protein. There's alot of non meat options that I like, but almost none are "meat replacements."
Just let it be it's own thing FFS. What's terrible as a ""burger"" might be delicious in chili.
100% agree. There is tons of delicious vegetarian/vegan food, but vegetarian/vegan substitutions of traditionally meat based dishes range from terrible to just okay.
Carb replacement dishes have the same problem. Spaghetti Squash is delicious when cooked as a vegetable, but throwing Ragu on it and pretending it is pasta is just sad.
This is a good take. You can't replace a steak with plant based, but we eat a lot of meat in things where it doesn't matter as filler. Most ground beef recipes can be replaced easily with plant based alternatives with no difference. I know I feel less bloated after eating something with soy crumbles over ground beef.
I just want to take the pepsi challenge on this, if you think your meat-free chilli tastes better PM me that recipe. I'll give it a honest (omnivore) review.
Just replace your ground beef with imitation meat ground, the texture works so much better, while not effecting the flavor, you just dont need to drain it like the normal meat.
I'd rather just use more beans than imitation meat because beans are already plenty tasty. That said, I'm not likely to make a meatless chili unless I'm having to feed someone who doesn't eat meat.
This. Don't build vegan meals with meat replacements. Build vegan meals that never had or wanted meat. Cheaper, better for you, and made with ingredients you can get at the shitty neighborhood grocer. My partner and I started doing meat free Fridays for Lent as we're both recovering Catholics, and we decided it was a fun challenge to keep it up and try to do it with all raw ingredients. I've learned a ton about south Asian and east Asian cooking, eaten a lot of truly excellent veg* food, saved buckets of money and now I have a healthy respect for beans and lentils.
I made the best pulled pork Sandwich last weekend using Chicken-of-the-woods mushroom in place of the pork.
I shredded the mushroom, dry sauteed until the tips began to brown. I added just a splash of oil, cumin, paprika, and oregano. Once the aromatics started smelling great I put in a light amount barbecue sauce for the last couple of moments. Then onto a toasted bun with some fried onions. Delicious!
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The government doesn't want you to know this but the food in the woods is free, you can just take it home.
I'd buy that. I've had amazing vegan and vegetarian chilis from cans, but never anything of the same quality from something with meat.
INB4
Look at my teeth! I am a carnivorous HUNTER! I stalk the dangerous plains of... Albertsons... with a sharp knife I
forged?bought! at Wal-Mart so I canrundrive home and enjoy memes. Eating meat is my natural state!
Humans are omnivores by default and we're not even that good apparently at digesting grains or beans. Tell me more about how veganism is your natural state.
veganism is your natural state.
Oh it's not. But I feel like you are missing my point by assuming I think it is? As a concept, "natural" overrated, meaningless and not worth striving for. Both of us wear shoes, most people wear glasses and the majority of us travel by car. None of that is "natural", but if you are gonna cite that as a reason to eat meat then why not also go walk through the woods barefoot and nearsighted as well? Nothing about our modern medicine system is natural (but it makes us live longer), traveling to the moon isn't natural, heck the two of us talking over the internet isn't natural (but a net connection brings us both radically more knowledge than we would've had generations ago). Very little of our lives are so, why should this be a metric to care about?
Say whatever you like about digesting grains, not only do you definitely still eat beans and bread. But if you want to look at the science, there is strong evidence that veganism correlated to longer life, less disease and increased overall health while meat is a known carcinogen. And this totally ignored the environmental and ethical reasons for veganism, those exist.
But at the end of the day everyone should be way more concerned about scientific data, reason and logic than something as nebulous as living "naturally".
Nobody is asking the really important questions here. What brand or what have you of meat crumbles are you using? I've experimented with Beef! Not or whatever but mostly for a cheap bulker for ground beef
If you don't use extra lean ground beef for chili, and then don't drain it well during cooking, the fat and grease will tend to separate the rest of the sauce and give it a weird oily texture. The plant based stuff doesn't have that grease so it's harder to fuck up. If prepared right the real meat still tastes better. You also have to heavily season it during cooking.
Some of the best chili I ever had was actually made using seasoned ground turkey. Because that's naturally a lean meat.
Skill issue.
Its not about the skill lmao, I've cooked shit tons or chili, with turkey, chicken thighs, ground beef from a local farm, ground beef fresh ground at the butcher daily extea lean. Before i went veg i was close to getting a meat grinder for my kitchen aid, but i started using imitation ground cause it was on sale and it blew all the other proteins out of the water. And I decided to cut meat out for a month to challenge my self as a home cook and haven't cooked with it in almost 8 months, just because i dont miss it. and if i do plant based chorizo or a plant based ground scratches that craving. Plant based nuggies are also fire.
Agreed, lol. For me, it's hamburgers. I've made hundreds (thousands?) over the years but I'm still very hit-and-miss at it. Sometimes they turn out good, and other times they turn out rubbery or undercooked. Everything else I can cook with pretty good consistency, but burgers are my kryptonite.
Never messed up a Beyond Burger or Impossible Burger though, lol. Those are pretty idiot-proof, at least.
I am glad it works for your tastes, however, I also still reserve the right to say that everyone's tastes are different and your tastes do not inherently make you superior (as your post seems to feel like). All Im saying is that I have yet to find a "meat replacement" that I actually prefer, and that every bad meat dish I've had has only been a result of crap preparation.
I've seen videos but never tried myself. But if you use something large and freezing (like a big thing of ice) you can skim the top with it and the grease grabs into the ice.
Mmmh, I can see it. Solidifies the grease right onto the ice. That's smart.
I usually just pull the crumbles out and pat them into a towel to get the excess.
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I'm going to eat a burger tonight and think about this post the whole time.
If animals aren't meant to be eaten then why are they made out of food?
Animals are delicious, but so are alot of vegetarian foods too. To try new things i made Saturday vegetarian food day, and ive made some fuckin' tasty veggies. Fuck veggie burgers or shit like that, but like a pizza with a fuck ton of different vegetables is amazing.
you're made out of food. how would you like it if someone slaughtered you and ate you?
i'm just fuckin' with you, I eat meat. but this brings up another topic, if we eat the rich, is it carbon neutral?
What if I told you you can both enjoy meat alternatives and meat, that they aren't mutually exclusive?
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You're right, the alternatives are stupid and even dangerous. 390mg of salt in a Beyond burger, compared to about 90 in a real hamburger. And the pretend chicken is even worse.
Come for the fake meat, stay for the hypernatremia.
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If animals aren't meant to be eaten then why are they made out of food?
We need to replace that reasoning with something more precise, abeit less funny:
If animals aren't meant to be eaten, then why can my body digest their meat?
Why can your body digest new born babies and dogs? Why can your body sexually violate them? Dumb take. You dont derive ethics from what your body is physically capable of doing.
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Nice straw man argument you got yourself there.
I was clearly referring to the digestive system, which is the part of the body that processes food, but as I used the word "body" you found something to latch onto and went off a tangent talking about raping animals and babies (babies specifically, Jesus fucking Christ, what's on your mind, man?).
My point is that our "body" is able to sustain itself on a diet that includes animal meat, out body has evolved to be able to process it.
I never said that we should eat our pets or everything made out of meat. Besides, while I don't share their views, there are cultures where eating dogs or practising cannibalism is common.
My point is that our “body” is able to sustain itself on a diet that includes animal meat, out body has evolved to be able to process it. Including babies and dogs.
Your point is stupid and absolutely includes babies and dogs. You can digest those beings just fine.
Besides, while I don’t share their views, there are cultures where eating dogs or practicing cannibalism is common.
'I'm not normalizing eating babies,' proceeds to normalize eating babies
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This is an ad hominem fallacy:
"Your point is stupid"
Oh, an this too:
"Dumb take"
Also, nice try with the straw man fallacy again! You're really focused on including babies and dogs to invalidate my argument, when I never brought those up myself in the first place. Sure, I addressed them on my subsequent replies after you started with it.
We choose which meats or animals to eat. Just because our bodies can digest certain things doesn’t mean we should engage in unethical behavior. It’s called having self-control and moral principles, a detail you seem be consistently ignoring.
"I’m not normalizing eating babies,’ proceeds to normalize eating babies"
Will you stop, for a fucking second, with straw man bullshit? Or you won't, because that's your only bullshit resource? Tell me where, in this following fucking phrase did I use the word babies? I repeat: you are the who brought them up in the first place. If you're projecting on me your repressed thoughts of eating or fucking babies, that ain't my fault.
"Besides, while I don’t share their views, there are cultures where eating dogs or practicing cannibalism is common."
Cannibalism doesn't implicate eating babies, that's on you. Also, acknowledging the existence of a practice doesn't mean to normalize it.
Let's take out of the equation your fallacies for a moment: Beef, pork and chicken are part of my diet, because my body can digest and sustain on them. Why shouldn't I eat those?
Go back to school. Arguments lead to logical conclusions. Your point is stupid. You are worried about framing in discourse far more than the argument. Just use that brain power of yours to reformat the argument minus the framing you don't like. Such as, 'if anything digestible is morally permissable to digest, that would include babies, which you probably wouldn't morally permit, so perhaps you should find a more useful argument. Babies have meat too.' There, that better? You shouldn't eat animals (or 99.9999999% of them) because they are conscious - entailing varying degrees of thoughts, feelings, social dynamics, and the obvious capacity to suffer - many animals of which exhibit higher degrees of consciousness than a newborn human.
And jfc my dude you responded to the idea of babies being eaten with 'besides, some people are cannibals.' I didn't strawman. You actually said that.
If you still can't figure out how 'my body can digest stuff so its a-okay to eat literally anything digestible' is incredibly dumb even after I've told you where that logic leads then just don't participate in discourse at all and we'll help you get through life since you can't do it on your own. Are you done with the intellectualy dishonest semantics or no?
Your body can digest human flesh. Does that infromation make canablism acceptable?
Just because you can doesn't mean you nessecarily mean you should.
Stop putting fake meat in your food. It's expensive, farming and processing it is environmentally disastrous, and everyone insists it's just as good as or better than real meat but they're always sobbing a little bit when they say it. Either eat meat or don't.