Gardein has a new product that I tried last night. I used the technique of baking them in the oven and the consensus from my carnivores was that while they were very tasty, they weren’t fooled into thinking they were beef.
I personally think that part of the issue may have been in baking them frozen – as the package suggests. A lot of the pieces were frozen together in the package, and when I tried to pry them apart before baking, I may have torn off some of the coating that is probably intended to keep them crispy. As with a lot of the Gardein products, there simply isn’t enough sauce, so I always have to supplement with a sauce of my own design.
I made Gardein’s Szechaun Beefless Strips with fresh baby Vidalia onions, broccoli, and diced yellow peppers and served them with brown rice and a dynamite new version of twice-cooked Szechaun green beans with plenty of garlic and ginger that I will include in my next book. Gardein’s newest product is definitely worth a try – but I advise letting them thaw for an hour in the fridge to make sure that all the beefless strips are easy to separate and cook individually.
