|
It was the mid-1990s: I was just out of high school, working at a record store (remember those?) and playing drums in a punk rock band when I decided to go vegetarian.
Back in those days, the options for meat-like protein for culinarily challenged young vegetarian scoundrels like me were scant — and often not very good. Yves’ line of veggie dogs and sliced “meats” were pretty much the only game in town. Their products didn’t taste exactly like meat, but some of the stuff was decent enough — others, well, not so much.
After decades occupying a small corner of grocery store produce sections, Hain-Celestial Canada recently announced it’d be winding down its Yves brand, and that the faux-meat products would disappear from shelves entirely early this winter.
Advertisement
 Why this ad?
And while I’m no longer veg, and don’t regularly eat many of their products anymore, I’m a bit crestfallen about the pending disappearance of the Yves Original Veggie Ground Round (and slightly less so about their veggie bacons, which are decent in a BLT).
My partner is vegetarian, and at home my diet is about 90 per cent meatless. She’s a far better cook than I am — she handles most meal planning and cooking, while I’m the prep and clean-up guy — but I do have one signature dish I make regularly, which I’ve mentioned in Dish before.
My “world famous” vegetarian chili (not named by me, but hey, I’ll take it), the lone dish we ever make in our Instant Pot, is a version of this Kitchen Treaty recipe. I modified the recipe by replacing one of the cans of black beans with a half package of sautéed Yves Veggie Ground Round. (There are other modifications too, but saying any more would be giving away too much!)
The Yves Veggie Ground Round also makes appearances around these parts in enchilada casseroles, shepherd’s pie and make-your-own-burrito nights. In trying to find a replacement for the Yves stuff, I recently made another brand of faux ground round for burrito night and… it was not a hit. (“It tastes like soy,” said my teenaged son, not typically a picky eater and a kid who inhales pretty much anything set in front of him.)
Yves has long been outpaced and out-innovated by other faux-meat brands. Field Roast, for example, makes some killer veggie dogs … but they’re American. The Yves brand, meanwhile, still tastes like it did in the ‘90s — and there just aren’t enough condiments in the world to cover up that decidedly retro veggie meat taste.
But no one seems to have done as good a job on the faux ground beef front as Yves. The impending departure of the brand means I’ll be stockpiling and freezing packages of the stuff between now and the end of the year.
It also means that unless I can find an as-good-or-better substitution, my world-famous chili’s days are numbered.
|
