Meat Substitutes - Vegetarian Meat, Dairy, and Egg Analogues

Vegetarian Meat, Dairy, and Egg Analogues

Some vegetarian meat analogues are based on centuries-old recipes for seitan (wheat gluten), rice, mushrooms, legumes, tempeh, or pressed-tofu, with flavoring added to make the finished product taste like chicken, beef, lamb, ham, sausage, seafood, etc. Yuba and textured vegetable protein (TVP) are other soy-based meat analogues. The first is made by layering the thin skin which forms on top of boiled soy milk. the second is a dry bulk commodity derived from soy, soy concentrate.

Some more recent meat analogues include mycoprotein-based Quorn (which uses egg white as a binder, making it unsuitable for vegans), and modified defatted peanut flour and Valess (which is a sort of cheese, made from cow milk and seaweed).

Dairy analogues may be composed of processed rice, soy (tofu, soymilk, soy protein isolate), almond, cashew, gluten (such as with the first non-dairy creamers), nutritional yeast, or a combination of these, as well as flavoring to make it taste like milk, cheeses, yogurt, mayonnaise, ice cream, cream cheese, sour cream, whipped cream, buttermilk, rarebit, or butter. Many dairy analogues contain casein, which is extracted dried milk proteins, making them unsuitable for vegans.

Egg substitutes may be composed of tofu, tapioca starch, ground flax seed or similar products that recreate the leavening and binding effects of eggs in baked goods. Many people use fruit products such as mashed bananas or applesauce as egg analogues in baking.