Product Review: Light Life Gimme Lean Ground Beef Style
Light Life Gimme Lean Ground Beef Style is made from water, soy protein concentrate, tapioca starch, soy sauce (water, soybeans, wheat, salt), soy protein isolate, dried onion, wheat gluten, malt extract, beet powder, natural flavors (from vegetable sources), spices, vegetable gum. It contains No nitrites and No MSG. It is also Fat Free, has no cholesterol and is supposed to work for making meatballs, meat loaf, burgers, casseroles and just about any dish that can be made with real ground beef. It is certified Vegan too. It all sounds good and healthy.
Light Life Gimme Lean Ground Beef Style can be found in natural grocery stores and many mainstream grocery stores. It is packaged in plastic tied off at each end, similar to how real ground beef is sold. I have mostly seen it in the refrigerated section of stores where vegetarian products are, but some stores also sell it frozen.
Upon first inspection, the color of Light Life Gimme Lean Ground Beef Style looks to be the color of ground beef that has turned color. It is not bright red, but more of a brownish color. That is okay because it is soy, not real meat. Generally the dates I see on Light Life Gimme Lean Ground Beef Style are at least 1 to 2 months expiration date stamped on the package. This means you can have it in your refrigerator, unopened for a much longer period of time than ground beef. I was impressed with the texture of Light Life Gimme Lean Ground Beef Style because it stuck together. Unlike every other fake ground beef product I have tried, this is one brand that would actually be sticky enough to form a burger patty or mix as a meat loaf. It would be able to hold together. On the flip side, I found that the texture is so sticky, that when I tried to brown it in a frying pan, it was difficult to break into crumbles. Unlike real ground beef, I had to keep poking and poking and slicing with a spatula just to get the stuff to break up into smaller pieces. At the same time I didn’t want to be butchering up my nonstick skillet, so it was very annoying. I broke it up as best I could and even with my best effort the crumbles were not like crumbled ground beef, they were more like chunks. I could live with chunks, but what I can’t live with is bad flavor.
The beauty of fake ground beef is that it is supposed to give the meal texture. Fake ground beef generally doesn’t have a “flavor”, unless it is seasoned. The goal is that you season it based on your tastes and the recipe you are re creating. So, for example, if I were making meatless chili, I would make it exactly the way chili with ground beef would be made – – using the same seasonings or chili season packet, the tomato sauce, the red beans, etc. The fake ground beef theoretically picks up all the seasonings to make a great mock chili or meatless chili that simulates the real thing. Light Life Gimme Lean Ground Beef Style, unfortunately does have taste before it is seasoned. It is a soy after taste. It is unpleasant. Now, knowing this, I proceeded to season the heck out of it to see if I can mask that soy taste. I tried making meat loaf with Light Life Gimme Lean Ground Beef Style. I used onions and ketchup and eggs and garlic powder and black pepper and Italian style breadcrumbs. I even added some spicy barbecue sauce. I baked the fake loaf and it looked beautiful. (Adding the eggs, naturally now made the recipe vegetarian and no longer vegan.) Anyway, it had the texture and appearance and coloring of a real homemade meat loaf. It even got slightly hard around the edges of the pan like real meat loaf. I couldn’t wait to try it. Much to my disappointment, that even though I spiced the heck out of this fake meat loaf, I could still taste that unpleasant soy aftertaste. I was even tried pouring gravy on it to see if I could mask that soy flavor. Unfortunately Light Life Gimme Lean Ground Beef Style is just hard for me to enjoy because of the inherent soy flavor. It is a shame because it works great as texture and is superior in texture for a recipe that needs fake ground beef to stick together or be formed into a patty or meatball. And when it came to slicing this fake loaf, it sliced like perfection. Now not wanting to throw out this leftover meatloaf, I wrapped and refrigerated it to try on a cold sandwich the next day. I put ketchup on it and it tasted not bad. Not good, but not bad either.
But stay tuned, because my next reviews will tell you about some fabulous fake ground beef that really does taste great. Also, The Light Life Company does manage to pull off some great tasting vegetarian and vegan soy products with no soy aftertaste and I will be reviewing those as well.
Soy be it.
Light Life Gimme Lean Ground Beef Style
