Dinner Adventures... Quorn off the Cob

A few days ago I was browsing the fridge for dinner options ( I agreed to cook for my room mate as well) and I decided to use my favorite new anti-meat product Quorn.

I think I may have mentioned these before, and if I haven't then really I should have. Quorn is a meat substitute made from fungus, yes fungus. Mushroom are fungi, however according to the people at Quorn, there are over 600,000 types of fungi. A quick little bit of research indicates that Quorn has been a top seller in the UK and was only recently introduced to the States.

It's made of Mycoprotien, which is a specific type of fungus. The website describes it here:
"Mycoprotein is the main ingredient in all Quorn products. It's made from a member of the fungi family, which includes mushrooms and truffles, and is a high-quality meat-free protein that's naturally low in fat with very few calories."

My room mate bought the Quorn 'chicken' nuggets, which I tried once, and so I bought the 'chicken' tenders, which are supposed to emulate bits of grilled chicken. I have tried a pretty sizable amount of imitation meat products, having grown up in a half vegetarian household, but I think that by far Quorn takes the cake over all of them. The first time I tried it, I literally did a food double-take because I could not believe it wasn't real. Unfortunately, it's also pretty expensive, which is why I've only bought one package so far.

So, now what to do with the Quorn. I pulled some things out of the pantry and off the shelves and wound up browning up the Quorn tenders in a pan with some onions, adding peppers ( the rest of which I roasted and they came out fabulously!) and topping off with a can of tomatoes. It wasn't quite as liquidy as I wanted so I supplemented with a little bit of tomato sauce and a tiny bit of stir fry sauce.

I'd also recently purchased a package of rice vermicelli noodle sticks to try ( I've been getting curious about the gluten free craze going on... but that's for another post). Although the dish was not remotely Asian, I wanted to see how the noodles would mix with my creation. The noodles cook up in just a few minutes and with the help of a little oil they mixed in pretty nicely to the Quorn dish.

Once I tried the dish, I realized that I had made my own version of a dish my mom used to make and that was one of my favorites growing up- Spaghetti squash and veal ( or fake meat). The rice noodles have a similar texture to the squash and her dish also had a tomato base with pepper and of course a protein source. So now I have my own version. I got a big thumbs up from my room mate as well.

I have yet to see too many stores carrying the Quorn products, but hopefully it will become more popular, and perhaps a little cheaper? There are Quorn burgers, Quorn turkey and all sorts of other goodies to try. As with other meat substitutes ( including soy) there isn't a lot of information about what ingesting this type of product can do long term. There have been claims of allergies etc. but so far I haven't found anything serious. Some controversy is surrounding the product because it markets itself as mushroom based, and the Advertising Standards Authority contested that while it is fungus based, it is not mushroom based.

Quorn actually was first released in the UK in 1996 and in the US in 2002. It was originally developed to combat the predicted shortage of food and of protein in the average person's diet. The name comes from a town in the UK.