Richmond Meat-Free -No Beef Mince- is it too realistic for Veggies? (@NLi10)

I'm a big fan of trying out the new options for meat reduction in the veggie section - and today we picked up this - a huge block of mince!

But wait - it's meat free - hurrah! Why did they have to make it so realistic?  Fortunately it doesn't have the horrible meat smell you get when you open a mince box. Does have the disgusting little sheet of paper though.

It has multiple textures, and looks like it contains some seasoning too. 

Is this good for you?  I know beef mince shrinks massively when you cook it (at least the water-filled cheaper stuff).

And while it does contain soya and wheat which excludes a few people, it is indeed vegan.  The red is beetroot which is cool, and it does have some seasoning.  looks like the white bits are coconut oil too.

Looks too real....

Super deluxe pasta & sauce too.

Looks fairly authentic - actually more in-tact than my student days mince - more like butchers mince.

And it's really sucked in the sauce which is something the quorn often fails to do (unless you know the trick of buying it frozen and putting the sauce on while it's still frozen).

And it looks like a fairly authentic Italian meat and long pasta dish!  Granted I could try a bit harder with the sauce and garnishing here, but I wanted to try it 'naked'.

It's pretty good as it turns out - very saucy and rich in flavour.  The resident veggie was happy that the texture wasn't that of meat (the Quorn mince is more meat-like than this) but the flavours and textures worked really well and I'm convinced that we will be having this again.  Maybe the whole box was a bit much for two - but I ate like a king so it was quite nice.

I'm still dreading trying the bacon from the same range...