As a household we have always meal planned with meat being a factor in our diets but over the last 2 months I have been proactive with actually looking at what we are eating and have been reading the nutritional information on our foods.
Part of this healthy lifestyle change has been me being really eager to reduce our fat content and instead try and increase the protein in our diets instead. But I was immensely worried that making this change would throw our meat eating family into turmoil so instead of making our household a meat free home, I decided to just make a few tweaks and introduce some Quorn substitutes into the odd meal here and there to see if in fact I would be scuppered and found out about my Quorn alternatives.
If you are unaware of the Quorn brand let me fill you in on what makes this meat free brand such a great option, Mycoprotein – A super high protein and it is contained in their products making them higher protein and lower fat than its meat packed counterpart along with it being high fibre and low and saturated fats.
I started making the switch eating a few Quorn products over the last 2 months but this week I decided to try some products out with the kids so see if they picked up on the fact they were meat free.
I had planned on a picnic in the garden with the kids but as with UK weather it was against us so instead we took to the house for a snack style lunch instead.
I decided that I would replace all the food I was offering the kids, except the party sausage rolls, I had planned on using Quorn sausage rolls but my local supermarket was out of stock so instead I kept our original meat version and just swapped everything else.
Jacob didn’t seem to even notice that his food was meat free and wolfed down the lot without a care in the world.
Joshua was my main concern as he can be super picky with his food but the nuggets went down well, he noticed they were not our normal nuggets but he said these were nicer than our normal nuggets.
For me I was blown away with the picnic eggs, these are one of my favourites for picnics and I doubted I would take to them but in honesty the flavours were so much like my original meat versions and it was only the texture that was a teeny tiny bit different, being slightly more dense than normal. However I have to say if I had tried these and didnt know they were meat free I would have just presumed they were a different brand to my meat versions .. so thats good going Quorn!
One of my biggest tests however with the family was Ollie, he is a massive meat lover and so I decided to make one of this favourites, Lasagne. Normally I cook them packed with lean mince, however the one at the weekend I made with Quorn mince and I added in some pepper, onion, garlic and peas to boost the kids veg intake (something they have been avoiding this last few weeks)
Joshua and Ollie both loved it and I needn’t have been worried as Ollie said her preferred the Quorn lasagne to my normal one and is looking forward to trying out more of it in our homemade recipes!
Overall The Oliver’s have loved the swaps we have made and many of them are here to stay … Watch this space however as I am going to try more meat free alternatives and try more recipes with it included.
Disclaimer: Quorn sent us a few vouchers to receive products for this post. However I had intended to make some swaps anyway so I did purchase extra products myself
Leave a Reply