Of course, the communal nature of a BBQ means your not-products can be in danger of being infected by the fats and flavours of the not-so-not-products that surround them. This means you can enjoy the taste sensations enjoyed by the normal person, yet still take the moral high-ground of the vegetarian! Win-win!

Not-chicken wings

A BBQ had been organised whilst on a weekend away at the Gold Coast. In preparation I had set out in search of something that wasn’t not-sausages. And I found something that was in almost every way not not-sausages: Not-chicken wings.

It was like striking vegetarian gold – out of the millions of products for sale in the shop the wings were the weirdest, the coolest, and the only product not passed it’s used-by date. Conspicuous in it’s ridiculousness – the bag of wings had me giggling for hours after the purchase.

Prepare your own!

An ingenious plan was implemented to increase the already crazy-goodliness of the wings: marinate them. There just aren’t enough marinated not-products around. Here’s how you go about making your own:

To prepare the wings for the impending BBQ, pour a generous amount of Generic Brand™ Marinate-Stuff Sauce® in to a stylish and available container. Tumble the wings lotto-ball-ishly in the sauce until they are covered evenly.

Seal the container ominously with an impenetrable covering of Glad Wrap, and leave the whole shebang to marinate. Maybe in the fridge. I don’t remember now.

After a suitable period of time, let’s say 5 hours 23 minutes, the wings can be freed from the fridge in preparation for BBQing. By this time they should look something like this:

But maybe with more solar-flare.

Wing Cooking

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how to cook a BBQ, but you do need to remember that as not-products are made from cardboard they only need to be “heated through”. Just try to leave them as long as you can to soak up some of the animal fat from the chops.

Summary

Like Chicken Feen, it’s a bit unfair to compare Marinated Chicken Wings to the other not-products reviewed so far. But I will.

Taste : -7- This is the overall taste – the wings, plus the marinade, plus that cheese cube and carrot cube and white lettuce salad you see. I can’t remember exactly what it all tasted like. But it didn’t make me sick, and that’s good for a not-product.

Texture : -9- Good stuff here. Really something to get your teeth into. That’s what you want in a BBQ product. The marinade stuff gave them a kind of “skin” which certainly added to the experience.

Similarity to the original : -4- Nah, chicken wings are all bone-y and sinew-y. These things were just gluten.

Overall

I’m going to go ahead and give Marinated Chicken Wings a 7 on the TVP-o-meter. Not the best score so far in this series. To be fair, it is always good to have something ludicrous to chuck on the barbie and they certainly made a pleasant change from the standard not-sausage – it’s just unfortunate that although it is a food product, the highlight was seeing them in the bag on the shelf.

Imagine, just imagine, you discovered the most awesomely best thing in the known universe. And then, on that very same day, in that very same shop, you discovered the equally most awesome thing in the known universe. And THEN, imagine realising that if you combined those two most best things together, that the blinding goodness of mixed elements would multiply together to create a result of such intense and astonishing goodness as to render all other things in the known universe to be pretty crappy in comparison.

Well, I did that.

Discovery One. CLAW OF PHOENIX

Discovery one was sitting right there in a pile of other random not-meat products, trying its best not to look as ludicrous as it obviously is. “Vegetarian Chicken Feen” it pronounced in large capital letters. A pack of liquid suspended, intricately detailed, gelatinous chicken feet were contained within. Although I needed no further reason to purchase the “feen”, I also noted that this not-product was made of “konjac powder”. I didn’t know what that was, but it surely wasn’t TVP or gluten – which could only be a good thing.

I grabbed by precious bag of “CLAW OF PHOENIX – Have no the cholesterol, Low calories, High fibre quality!” and rushed toward the checkout. But little did I know that before I would purchase my feen, a small box of flour from Indonesia would change my life forever…

Discovery Two: Kroger’s Kentucky Seasoned Flour

I don’t know if it was that little chef guy, the crispy chicken or the “Special K” inspired logo that was particularly eye-catching, but it was a design ploy by Krogers that worked well. I immediately snatched up the box: Kroger® Kentucky All Purpose Seasoned Flour. It must take a brave company to blatantly violate so many copyrights, yet still bother registering their name as a trademark. And they didn’t cite their sources for their claims of winning the “Best Award Food”. Neither of those issues bothered me much, as it had just dawned on me the relationship of the two products I was now clutching in my hands….

Discovery Three: Discoveries One and Two.

The process only took a second. Fake chicken feet + Fake Kentucky Fried Chicken Seasoning = Something that I couldn’t possibly comprehend from such a close distance. It was obvious and dazzling. It was tantalising and scary. I needed a lie down.

After a nap, I looked up the feen’s main ingredient, Konjac powder. Konjac turns out to be a kind of yam. I’ve had it a lot in the form of konyaku from Japan. I opened the package and removed the feen. They are a sickening texture – all squishy and gristly.

Following the instructions on the side of Kroger’s Kentucky, I de-yolked a couple of eggs and whipped up the whites.

Next the chicken feen where dipped in the egg whites, and covered generously (yet evenly) in Kroger’s Kentucky Flour.

A plentiful amount of cooking oil was then heated to a point where it made that nice crackly-bubbly noise when you put stuff in it.

The tender chicken feen pieces were plunged into the scolding oil and rotated regularly until they turned a delightful golden-brown and looked pretty KFC-y.

A sprig of parsley was added as garnish for the photographs, then tossed away before the great eating of the feen.

Summary

Although unfair to judge KFC feen with the same yardstick as other fake meat products, due to its deep fried, super-alloy nature, I’ll do it anyway.

Taste : -9- The Kroger Kentucky All Purpose Seasoned Flour gives a stirling effort at replicating the eleven herbs and spices of its namesake. Together with the strange super-absorbent konjac-based chicken feet make a startling and delicious combination.

Texture : -10- Cruchy on the outside, tender on the inside. The glutinous konjac feet give you something to get your teeth into, and the deep fried faux chicken skin really tops it off nicely.

Similarity to the original : -9- This is judged on the similarity to Kentucky Fried Chicken, and not on the similarity to chicken feet. I imagine it would taste nothing like chicken feet, unless chicken feet taste like chicken.

Overall

Kentucky Fried Chicken Feet get 9.5/10 on the TVP-o-meter – gaining extra marks because I invented it, but losing half a point because they splashed oil on my new hoodie, rendering it unwearable.

Part Two: “Bake” – High Foods

I can’t help but to compare and contrast “Bake” with the first not-product review of the series Squid Chews. Both are chewy and cardboard-y meat-snack substitutes. Both have after-tastes of diet coke mixed with drain cleaner, and both leave you with a sense of disbelief that such a product could make it to market.

“Bake” however, really takes the concept of chewy fake meat products to a whole new level. It is a product in itself that refuses to tip its hat to any animal product before it. It carries a meat free moniker and makes no claim to be squid, pork, elephant, or “other” – In its own words it is simply a “series food for leisure time”.

The ingredients list for “Bake” certainly did look promising: Soya glair meat, sugar, salt, Monosodium glutamate, expanded powder, spice.

Wow! Soya glair meat, MSG and expanded powder… in one product! Who would have thought to combine them?! “Soya glair meat” is a fake meat term I was unfamiliar with and assumed it to be a translation error. But I looked up “glair” which apparently means “A viscous substance resembling egg white” or “A sizing or glaze made of egg white”. Both seem plausible.

It was also good to see a product un-afraid to use MSG, which saves me from having to dip everything in my own stash.

The first thing you will notice about “Bake” is its unusual consistency. It is very dry, and crackles in your mouth like that exploding candy you used to get. I can only assume that this is the “expanded powder” element of the mixture.

The overall experience is similar to Squid Chews, but drier, chewier and more bland – with a kick of chilli that lends it that particularly gruesome after-taste.

“Bake” has been “especially developed by a team of food specialists” and carries this stirring poem, that helps you forget you are gnawing on expanded powder and sugar:

May the breeze bring you The tenderness and warmth from me Far from each other we may be. Yet still you are here, At the bottom of my heat.

Summary

Taste : -6- A nice chilli element really redeems this product, and lifts the taste score up a few points.
Texture : -7- It has taken chewy-ness to ludicrous levels, then pulled back juuust a smidgen.
Similarity to the original : -10- Its shinning point – It IS the original. Doesn’t try to imitate any of god’s inferior creatures.

Overall

Although not very tasty, and a little bit disturbing, “Bake” manages to score 7.5/10 on the TVP-o-Meter for originality, MSG and effort. I personally won’t be trying it again, but that is only because I don’t know where it came from. It was just in the cupboard.

Part One: “Flavouring Rolled Squid”

Commodity: Flavouring Rolled Squid
Ingredients: texturized soy protein products
Additives: Sauce, Sugar, Flavour, Spice, less than 0.2% of sorbic acid.

That’s what the packaging proclaims, but I can assure you it delivers oh-so-much more. Flavouring Rolled Squid, or “Squid Chews” as they will be called here, presented themselves on the shelves of a local grocery shop next to the Panadol and flu tablets. As the Panadol were locked in an apparently unopenable cabinet, the Squid Chews were purchased in the hope that their textured soy protein powers might prove a suitable substitute for 500mg of Paracetamol.

And indeed, though the headache has long since subsided the Squid Chew’s unusual after-taste is still present. And I hazard to guess, won’t be going away anytime soon.

Summary
Taste : -7- Very sweet – Similar to the outside bits of Inari sushi, or cardboard with sugar.
Texture : -9- Beef jerky (at least, how I imagine beef jerky), or a bunch of small twigs – something to get your teeth into.
Similarity to the original : -?- Buggered if I know. Are there real Squid Chews?

Overall
Squid Chews, or Flavouring Rolled Squid, gets 8/10 on the TVP-o-Meter for it’s sheer chewiness coupled with it’s boldness to add so much sugar as to make it difficult to describe as savoury, but not so much as to be able to label it a desert.