October is National Vegetarian Month and we thought it would be a great time to share some of our favorite meatless substitute products that are our standbys. We’ve been vegetarian now for 9 years, and we still love some of the products that were brands that were our transition foods- the foods that were meant to replicate the meat taste to get us “off” of meat. The thing is, some of the brands do such a good job at being plant-based, that we just stick to them, and well, we’re not hating that, and you shouldn’t either. We feel good about the fact that we aren’t eating animals. Period.
Even if you use this list as a resource for a “Meatless Monday” option, we hope it can be useful to you.
Here are our favorite meat dupes by category:
Grilling burgers?
Beyond Burger vs. Impossible Burger – Listen, this is just going to be a toss-up in this household. Ger picks Beyond, and Shannon picks Impossible. If you’re going to grill burgers and you want to go meatless, you really can’t lose if you pick one of these.
Taco Tuesday!
Morningstar Farms gets this right every time. Their Crumbles are just amazing! We make our own taco seasoning, and add it to the cooked crumbles, then top this off with tomatoes, sour cream, and guacamole, and serve either in a tortilla shell or over tortilla chips to make a taco salad.
Did someone say hot dogs!?
Lightlife is a really good option, but just season these babies up the way we do. Gerry brushes olive oil on them before he grills them. I always saute onions and then we dress the dogs up with mustard. Yum! Another option that we do love though is the Tofurky Italian Sausages cooked up the same way.
Chicken tenders basket, please.
Chicken tenders are as versatile with dinner as pasta. By the way, those two go really great together. We always have Gardein Crispy Tenders in our freezer. We cook them and serve them up with veggies, with pasta, or even with fries, à la TGIFridays style. 😉 Put some barbecue sauce and/or honey mustard on the side, and you are good to go!
Fajita Margarita night!
One of our favorite meals is fajita-margarita night, and we couldn’t do it without No Evil Foods. Their Comrade Cluck makes our fajitas taste so yummy! We cook it up in a pan and mix it with onions and peppers, avocado, and oh goodness…. So good! We also love that No Evil Foods has eco-friendly packaging AND is in our home state of North Carolina.
Dupe Chicken Salad
Speaking of No Evil, we also use the Comrade Cluck to make an egg-cellent chicken salad dupe. We cook the Comrade Cluck just like we would chicken and prepare the chicken salad recipe the same way, just not using chicken. Take it to your next picnic and we promise people won’t even notice the difference.
Pulled Que, but don’t hurt the piggy.
Again, No Evil Foods with the winner here. Thanks to No Evil Foods, your next Southern barbecue doesn’t have to have the pig. Their Pit Boss is vegan, and plant-based, and they use a sauce that is meant to taste like pulled pork. We actually cook it and use our own barbecue sauce. Sometimes, we even cook it and put it on a loaded baked potato- a meal from my (Shannon) college Sticky Fingers days- just meat-free.
Breakfast, add the bacon
Again, Morningstar Farms is cooking up some bacon strips that aren’t hurting the piggies and we love it! We put these in the microwave for a couple of minutes, and voila! Sunday brunch now has bacon, and we feel great about it. Ger loves to add these to breakfast sandwiches during the week for a quick, out-the-door option.
Chicken nuggets
Ok, if you have kids, you cannot get around this. You have to have chicken nuggets and guess what!? Morningstar Farms wins again! We’ve tried Quorn and other options, but Morningstar just seems to get it right for us. Bonus- they have a few different flavors, in addition to the basic: Parmesan Garlic, and Barbecue. I LOVE cutting these up and putting them on my salad at lunch for some extra flavor and protein.
Gimme a deli sammich!
We thought we would never have a deli sandwich again until we tried the Tofurky Plant Based Deli Slices. Wow! These are really impressive! We have loved all of the flavors we have tried. We make wraps, and sandwiches, and we’ve even made snack crackers, and cheese balls with them. When recipes call for deli slices, we use these. There are a ton of recipes to make your own slices, and we’ve tried those, and our own doesn’t even compare to what Tofurky can do for flavor, so we stick with them.
As you can see, there are a ton of options for you, if you want to steer clear from eating meat. Obviously, we could get into all of the benefits there are for yourself and the planet, not to mention, the animals, by not eating the animals, but we hope that if you are reading this, you are starting to learn what those are. If you have any questions about other brands, just ask. We’ve tried them all. We don’t dislike them all; these are just our faves.
Disclosure: We only recommend products we would use ourselves and all opinions expressed here are our own. This post may contain affiliate links that are no additional cost to you. We may earn a small commission from them. All efforts are made to ensure that affiliate links are disclosed in accordance with the FTC.
I love these all!