I had a Quorn cottage pie last night. I said to someone, when I bought it, that it just had to be better than the Sainsbury’s version – I couldn’t have been more wrong.
It was the most appalling crap. A minuscule layer – and that’s being generous – of Quorn mince, in a vaguely savoury gravy with a few peas and bits of carrot, and a couple of shreds of something that might have been anything but was hopefully onion, was totally dominated by a slab of the worst kind of industrial mashed potato, with the texture of congealing wallpaper paste. The taste, too, pretty much. Serial killers on death row deserve better food than this.
According to the pack info, the mash contains butter, milk, white pepper, salt and flavouring. What sort of bloody flavouring to spuds need, for pity’s sake? Anyway, whatever it is, it doesn’t work!
It’s common knowledge – certainly among foodies – that if you “mash” spuds in a food processor, you get glue. On an industrial scale – assuming it wasn’t made from potato powder – it’s probably worse, because you just know the spuds will be the cheapest available not, say, Maris Piper, or King Edwards. If I fed food this bad to a dog, it’d probably bite me, and I’d deserve it too.
Any budding veggie encountering this slop would probably send out for a meat-feast pizza, and abandon the idea completely.
Food like this can do nothing but harm to the cause of vegetarianism, not to mention the poor bugger who eats it and, a decade into the 21st century there can be no possible excuse. However, at £2.79 for what was at least 90% extremely low-grade mashed potato, it certainly does no harm at all to Marlow Foods’ balance sheet.
And, two hours after eating it, I felt absolutely awful, and continued to feel pukey until I finally gave up and went to bed at 01.00. (Next day isn’t a great deal better, either!)
So – a friendly word of advice – avoid this shit like the plague.
Oh, and Sainsbury’s cottage pie is way better.
Ron my friend
I am afraid you picked the chink in Quorn’s armour, Cottage Pie is truly awful, just as you have had the misfortune to discover.
I myself love Quorn but i tend to avoid the ready meals and go for the Chicken Style Pieces and Steak Strips, even the Quorn Mince is fine if used in a Chilli or Bolognese
I also recommend the Quorn Sausages and Mini Scotch Eggs, guess you just have to try the range and come to your own conclusions, if it wasn’t for Quorn i don’t think i could have attempted to be a veggie!
All the best, Ranald.
Oh, I know – I’m familiar with Quorm; I was a veggie for over 15 years. And there was a time, in the eighties, they made Quorn for the catering industry that was exactly like diced beef – so close you couldn’t tell the difference. Then, later, when the stuff hit the retail market, they had decided that beige would be a good colour! And you might not know this, but Quorn mince used to me extruded in little tiny log shapes which had a vile mouth feel. Now, I see the mince is very like soya mince in appearance, though a little softer in texture.
Try wrapping a couple of Quorn sausages – the ordinary ones – in cling film, pierce it and pop them in the microwave for – can’t remember – start at 20 seconds and see how you go. Sliced on a long diagonal, in a sandwich while still warm, the result wasvery like Spam.
Ron.