It’s been a long time since we reviewed a veggie burger… in fact, it looks like it’s been almost a year! Thankfully, Gardein is giving us an opportunity to jump back on the veggie burger bandwagon with the Gardein Ultimate Plant-Based Burgers, which we’re checking out on this fine day.
So first up, we should talk about cooking. There are plenty of ways to cook up a veggie burger, and the box gives instructions for both the skillet and the grill. No, there are no microwave instructions for this one, but really, we don’t think this would turn out super great when heated that way. You need that whole pan-seared vibe to make it all work. For this review, we used a skillet and a little bit of grapeseed oil. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions straight off the back of the box, you can check out our package scans at the bottom of this review.)
And we have to say, this turned out to be a pretty impressive burger. A lot of veggie burgers end up with a grainy quality or mushy consistency, either of which is enough to send real burger enthusiasts scampering away. That’s not to say that we don’t like a fake-tasting veggie burger — for example, if you want a good avocado burger, sometimes a black been patty will outshine a beef patty.
But this burger is really shooting for the “meat-lovers” seal approval, and we’re almost willing to give it one. Almost. This burger has a really genuinely great consistency to it. It’s nice and juicy, and it has a firmness to it that we don’t usually see with plant-based meats. And if you cut it open, it’s just a little bit pink in the middle, which really threw us for a loop. This is a vegetarian burger, is it not?
The flavor is great too. While it does lack that beefy quality of red meat, this could almost pass for a turkey burger. And if you char it a bit on one side, Then load it up with toppings, we think you could probably convince someone. Of course, there is just a hint of a wheat flavor (not surprising, considering this is made from wheat gluten) and a seasoned sweetness, both of which are tells that this is no real meat product. Still, this ends up being suspiciously authentic in so many ways.
And let’s be honest here, the best way to eat this is with all the fixings, as shown above. If you do that, you’ll probably not even notice this isn’t made of meat. It’s a stealthy little veggie burger!
There are two patties per box, and each one will run you about 210 calories and 450 mg of sodium. That means you could probably eat both patties and be fine, but that depends on what you put on top of it, we suppose. If you go nuts with the condiments, you might have to dial it back to a single burger (like we did). But hey, you’re an adult; do whatever you want!
The Gardein Ultimate Plant-Based Veggie Burger feels like Gardein’s attempt to stem the flow of the Impossible burger craze. And by golly, they’re putting up some serious competition with this veggie burger. While it won’t fool those who really put this burger through its paces, it can be decorated enough that the average passerby could be convinced it was actually a turkey burger. As people who love turkey burgers, we’d say this is a real achievement that vegetarian burger enthusiasts should be celebrating.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for these frozen veggie burgers, check out our package scans below.
I bought a box of these to cook over a camping stove, and I don’t like them, at all. They have a weird rubber texture and taste mildly like pork. I let them thaw before cooking, so don’t know if that made a difference. They also didn’t particularly taste hot. I cooked them on both sides to the point where they appeared charred, and they still were barely warm. I don’t have this problem with the other fake burgers. I don’t know what the reasoning was for them to make them slightly pork flavored, but it’s not good.
I think too many of these things are released before they perfect them. Several of the Impossible things are way too garlicky and shouldn’t have been put out on the market until they did it properly. In particular the sausage in roll form like Jimmy Dean, and the chicken nuggets. Both are pretty awful.
These need to be reformulated. The ingredients look pretty standard issue, so not sure why these are kind of bad. Probably seasoning.
Fantastic Burger!!!…taste and texture was so awesome…I bought other brands and they tasted horrible…this is the first plant based burger that I give 10 STARS!!! THANK YOU FOR SUCH A GREAT PRODUCT!! These will be on my shopping list every weekend!!