Although Faux-meat.com was designed to test and review plant-based meat substitute products that were not directly cuisine-related, Trader Joe’s Korean Beefless Bulgogi is just too good not to rave about!
I was spending time today researching diversity in a plant-based eating pattern, with current suggestions of trying to eat at least 20 different plants in a week for a healthier microbiome. Some people may wonder: How do I get 30 different plants in a week? Stir-fries and buddha bowls are an optimal way to pull together those six to eight vegetables, grains, and aromatics, and although I have made my fair share of stir-fries without a meat substitute, the Beefless Bulgogi is an excellent meat substitute that works great in a stir-fry, or honestly by itself!
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Faux-meat.com Evaluation
Visual
Wow, looks like marinated flank steak. The pieces are about 1/3 inch thick. The color is spot-on “meat” that looks cooked and brown, with nice variations of browning. The pieces are not flat like some seitan and do have some striations and crinkles. The cut is slightly irregular as you might expect with a meat strip used for stir-fries. Since they are marinated and frozen, there is very little if any sauce and no sauce packet so all the flavor is the beefless strip.
Tactile
The pieces are nice and floppy yet have a bit of a perfectly elastic, fibery feeling of beef. They don’t feel they will immediately fall apart with little effort.
Cooking – how did they hold up?
Per the packaging:
Per the packaging, Korean Beefless Bulgogi cooks from frozen in 3-7 minutes, depending on your chosen method. You can air fry, oven bake, pan-fry, or microwave. The product is cooked, you just need to decide if you want a little more browning. I opted for the wok since I was already wokking up some onions, carrots, celery, garlic, sugar peas, asparagus, and cut and sweated zucchini. I tossed in the bulgogi after the aromatics and celery, browned them a bit for more visual color, then added in the rest of the more fragile vegetables toward the end. Add a little cornstarch and non-beef broth, a tad of smoked soy sauce and you are done with lunch in less than 30 minutes.
Taste and Texture
Yikes. The marinaded bulgogi was soft yet chewy. It pulled like beef. If you didn’t know any better, you honestly can’t tell it’s not beef. The beefless bulgogi is basically a stellar seitan product taken to a higher level. With that said, they don’t meet all my five stars of excellent for nutrition but, again, it’s so good, it makes six other vegetables and some grain feel like a win.
Ingredients:
Having learned to make several different types of seitan in my vegan chef certification class in 2022, I find the number of natural ingredients quite amazing. Pear Puree? Apple Puree? Ginger? Cocoa Powder? If you haven’t made seitan, it’s quite the eye opener on how these companies are trying to make
Water, Sauce (Sugar, Water, Soy Sauce, Soybeans, Salt), Pear Puree, Onion, Garlic, Apple Puree, Caramelized Sugar (Sugar, Water) Modified Cornstarch, Ginger, Green Onion Extract, (Water, Green Onions, maltodextrin, Salt, Pectinase), Dextrin, Black Pepper, Guar Gum, Xanthan Gum, Textured Soy Protein, (soy protein isolate, rice flour, wheat gluten, cocoa powder), soybean oil.
Nutritional expectations (for me):
>12 grams of Protein Bulgogi – 16 grams per serving
< 9 grams of Fat Bulgogi – 11 grams, a bit high, so definitely watch the added fat in your dish
< 500 grams of Sodium Bulgogi– 580 grams per serving – again, watch the added sodium in your dish
Any fiber – bonus points!!! Bulgogi– 5 grams of fiber.
I really think these beefless bulgogis will go great on anything in the Asian family of cuisines, – soups, noodles, buddha bowls, sandwiches, crispy salads, lettuce wraps, etc. But hey, why not do some cool fusion dishes – think beyond the bulgogi? You could also just use a little bulgogi to fool the eye and backfill the protein with soybeans, lentils, etc.
These beefless bulgogi are probably not for the whole foods, plant-based, no fat, no salt, and no sugar groups out there. But for full-on vegans and for those of us who eat 85% or more on a plant-based eating pattern, or who need a “transition food” to wean off meat every day, these are certainly a treat and a delicious way to get a bit more protein, enjoy cooking, and practice and play with some of the new delicious meat substitute food in the freezer section.
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