Product Comparison Review: Soy Veggie Bacon; Can Bacon Be Faked?
Fake bacon is generally precooked. It can be used like real bacon to complete a traditional recipe and transform it into a vegetarian or vegan dish, or to enhance a salad or sandwich or breakfast meal or even as a key ingredient to something more exotic. So, if you are vegetarian or just don’t eat red meat or pork, this soy alternative to bacon can give you the taste and texture you desire or crave when you feel like you want bacon, but not really real bacon.
Morningstar Farms�® Veggie Breakfast Bacon Strips
Morningstar Farms Veggie Bacon strips are sold frozen. They are made primarily from Egg whites, soybean oil, textured soy protein concentrate, modified corn starch, wheat gluten, natural and artificial flavors from non-meat sources. You can view the complete list of ingredients on the Morningstar Farms Web site at
http://www.morningstarfarms.com/
These veggie bacon strips are 44% lower in fat than real bacon and the company says they have a “hearty smoked flavor of bacon” They are fully cooked and they come in strips, like bacon and the instructions say to thaw strips enough to separate before cooking. You can cook them in the oven skillet, or microwave by following the package instructions.
Taste Texture And Flavor Analysis
The first time I ever tried Morningstar Farms Veggie Bacon Strips I was shocked. I could not get over how much it looked like bacon, right down to the irregular contrast of color to “represent” bacon fat. The look is 2 colors, the color of bacon and the white color of fat. Amazing how they achieved a copycat bacon look. I was impressed. I chose to cook the bacon oven style. Using a light colored pan (I have noticed that darker pans sometimes speed up burning of delicately baked products so I didn’t want to take a chance on burning this fake bacon), I baked the fake bacon. While the bacon was cooking, it has a slight smell of bacon, but pleasant, not the kind of overwhelming smell of real bacon which grosses some people out. I was determined to have a fake BLT (Bacon Lettuce Tomato), so I broke out the toaster and began toasting the wheat bread and slicing the tomato and lettuce and had the mayonnaise ready. I checked the oven and the fake bacon began getting crispy. I turned over the slices with tongs and got them crispy on both sides. When it looked ready I removed from the oven and built my BLT. The Morningstar Farms people impressed me, this fake BLT was awesome and from a vegetarian frame of mind, BETTER than bacon because it wasn’t greasy, there was no mess and no splattering, it cooked fast and the taste was an EXCELLENT imitation of bacon. So good I could just eat them plain and feel like I was eating bacon that didn’t need to be disguised. Over time I tried the other cooking methods, but to this day, I prefer using the oven method. The baked method simply made the bacon crispiest and cooked consistently every time. You need to be careful to monitor the oven, because if you cook it too long, it will burn. Unlike the package directions, I have never thawed before use. The strips seem to peel apart fine, even frozen. Additionally, this package is enough to make at least 4 BLT sandwiches, so you can just wrap the unused portion you don’t cook, in a Ziploc bag and keep it frozen until ready to use. Morningstar Farms Veggie Bacon is so good I really don’t know how they can improve it!
Light Life Smart Bacon
Light Life Smart Bacon comes smartly packaged and unlike the Morningstar Farms fake bacon, this soy bacon substitute is vegan (it contains no diary ingredients). The main ingredients are they say Water, Soy Protein Isolate, Wheat Gluten, Soybean Oil, Textured Soy Protein Concentrate and you can visit their website to see the complete list of ingredients.
http://www.lightlife.com/bacona.html
This product is LOW FAT and CHOLESTEROL FREE.
Taste Texture And Flavor Analysis
The Smart Bacon sort of looked like bacon, but not too much other than color and the fact that it was thin strips. It is sold in the refrigerator section of the grocery store. It can be cooked a number of ways, but I don’t care how you cook it, it just didn’t fool me into thinking it was bacon. The taste wasn’t like bacon, and I didn’t feel the texture was either. I couldn’t be fooled into eating a pretend BLT and I couldn’t be fooled into thinking I was eating bacon by any stretch of the imagination. It didn’t taste bad, not at all, it just didn’t taste like bacon. I just consider it a soy product and if someone was looking for a protein source, there are far better things to choose from and I think they can just skip the fake bacon altogether if Light Life Smart bacon was all they had. I would rather eat plain tofu than this product. I would rather just eat vegetables. Of course what this product has going for it is Vegan. Anyone who has ever been a vegan knows how restricted choices are when it comes to packaged or processed anything, so maybe from a vegan frame of mind, this product would be okay, but from a vegetarian frame of mind, a person who has far more food choices, this Light Life Smart bacon is a poor bacon substitute and tastes mediocre. I have seen bacon bit type products in the salad dressing aisle that are Not made with real bacon and no meat products and they tasted more like bacon, so a vegan could conceivably find fake bacon bits in a jar and have a better tasting fake BLT than using Smart Bacon.
Light Life Fakin’ Bacon Strips
Well, who would have thought it? Light Life has another fake bacon product! Organic Tempeh transformed into fake Bacon. Interesting. Light Life says this is “The original tempeh “bacon”, Fakin’ Bacon puts the “B” back into BLT’s. It is also great crumbled on a salad or baked potato. I have not seen any other companies that made tempeh bacon, but one thing I do know is Light Life is good at making tempeh, so I can believe they are the original. The ingredients are as follows:
Ingredients
Made from organic soy tempeh (cultured organic soybeans, water, organic brown rice), water, organic soy sauce (water, organic soybeans, organic wheat, salt), organic vinegar, organic evaporated cane juice, spices, beet powder, organic onion powder, natural vegetable flavor, salt, natural hickory flavor, yeast extract.
CONTAINS: SOY, WHEAT.
http://www.lightlife.com/smokey.html
Taste Texture And Flavor Analysis
Tempeh, by nature is not a thin strip like bacon, so in terms of look, the look was a thick chunky slice of fake bacon. The strips were longer than the previous two products reviewed and this was also sold in the refrigerator section where the Tempeh was sold. The coloring looked good and although it didn’t look a lot like bacon, this product looked like it had potential because it had an appetizing appearance with both texture and color. Again, like the previous two products reviewed, this fake bacon cook be cooked a number of ways. I preferred the frying pan method for this and used tongs to flip the strips. They browned nicely. Two strips are more than enough to build a fake BLT because the pieces are long and thick. The taste was a wonderful hickory taste and that’s what I enjoyed most. Did it remind me of bacon? No, not really. However it made a tasty sandwich in terms of a fake meat product, it was loaded with flavor and had great texture and even though I would never regard this as fake bacon, I would buy it again simply because it is a tasty vegetarian product that is versatile and makes a good heart sandwich or can be eaten alone as heated tempeh with some sliced raw vegetables.
Summary
All soy veggie bacon products are not created equal. All soy veggie bacon products do not do a good job in faking bacon. The Morningstar Farms Veggie Bacon strips are the best there is on the market and I highly recommend it. The Light Life Fakin’ Bacon Strips, are a high quality product and a great tasting product with a unique hickory flavor, and even if it doesn’t fool me into thinking it is bacon, it is a product worth buying as a soy alternative to meat. Enjoy!
