It’s been a while since we reviewed a pack of frozen veggie burgers — it’s been about four months, if our recollection is correct. The last veggie burgers we reviewed were the Gardein Ultimate Plant-Based Burgers, which we said were “Gardein’s attempt to stem the flow of the Impossible burger craze.” And what we found was a burger that met the high expectations set by that phrase.
So today we’re excited to be checking out another burger from this same line, the Gardein Ultimate Falafel Burger. This one is a bit different from the last burger we reviewed, as instead of going for an authentic meaty flavor, this one is delivering Mediterranean vibes.
The package gives you several different ways to cook this. There’s the stovetop method (which is recommended), then there are also instructions for the microwave, conventional oven, and grill. We’re reviewing this burger in February — we’re definitely not going to go outside and fire up the grill — so we decided to check out the stovetop method. And let’s be real, we probably would have done this even if it were July. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions for these burgers, scroll to the bottom of this review and check out our package scans.)
We should point out here that we normally don’t read other reviews before we write our own, but we made an exception here. We checked out some of the customer reviews on Gardein’s website. We’re glad we did, because people seem to take issue with the package’s cooking methods, saying that the stovetop method in particular will lead to an overcooked mess. So we altered our cooking method a bit, thawing these in the microwave for a minute before cooking them on low heat on the stovetop, then putting them back in the microwave to melt the cheese (which is not included; we added that ourselves).
But even with a few complaints about cooking method, and one complaint about these not being gluten-free (which is honestly a legitimate complaint), the reviews do seem pretty positive overall.
But you’re not here to read about what customers think of the Gardein Ultimate Veggie Burgers; you’re here to read what the Freezer Meal Frenzy staff thinks about them. So what are our opinions?
Well, first off, we were quite surprised at the yellow color of the patty — we weren’t expecting that (though we probably should have been; this is a pretty common way for falafel to look). The flavor, though, is pretty good. These burgers do have a very garlicy flavor to them, but that’s definitely not a bad thing if you know to expect it. The consistency is crumbly, like falafel, rather than meaty, so these are definitely not designed to try to be a faux meat product.
Of course, we added plenty of fixings to these. We used wheat buns, then added mayo, lettuce, and swiss cheese. We would love to try these with cucumber sauce and sprouts, but we didn’t have either of those on hand at the time of this review.
One package contains two veggie burgers (individually wrapped), and each burger comes with 250 calories and 430 mg of sodium. While those numbers seem reasonably low, both of them will skyrocket once you start experimenting with various sauces and cheeses.
The Gardein Ultimate Falafel Burger is very good. This doesn’t surprise us, because Gardein knows what they’re doing and their Ultimate line has been quite impressive. While this burger doesn’t attempt to appeal to carnivores, it does offer something that’s really tasty — something we’d like to experiment with a bit more in the future.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for these frozen veggie burgers, check out our package scans below.
