We have a huge appreciation for the Morningstar Farms brand here at Freezer Meal Frenzy. They do make some of our favorite veggie nuggets, after all. So when we see that they’re getting a little experimental with their offerings, we can’t help but get excited about it.
And boy are we excited today, because we’re finally tasting the Morningstar Farms Veggie Chik’n & Cheeze Taquito Bites, which are part of their Veggitizers line. This review was a long time coming, folks.
Obviously, before we taste these we’re going to have to cook them. The instructions give two different methods: the microwave or the oven. The oven method is what the package recommends, so that’s what we went with for our review. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions for both methods, check out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)
One thing we’ll point out right away is that our taquito bites got a little bit dry. They seemed perfect when we took them out of the oven the first time (to flip them over, as the instructions suggest doing), but when we took them out the final time, they were just a little bit drier than we’d like them to be. We wonder how these would turn out in the microwave, but unfortunately we cooked up our whole bag in the oven before we had the chance to try it.
We have to admit, the concept for this appetizer is a little strange. It takes a layer of breading — like you’d expect to find on, say, a mozzarella stick or a chicken nugget — and jams that full of taquito ingredients. So these are filled with a vegetarian-friendly meat product (a soy product that’s attempting to replace chicken), vegan cheese substitutes, and green chilis. All of this does taste surprisingly like a taquito when it comes together.
The meat substitute is actually quite good. It has a stringy quality to it and it remains nice and moist. We actually think you might be able to trick a meat-eater into thinking this is the real deal (if you’re really into that sort of trickery).
There are chunks of vegan cheddar and mozzarella, and we initially thought the cheddar substitute was corn. If you look at the image above, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that yellow piece is a kernel of corn. It’s actually the cheese. We didn’t exactly get a good taste of it, because it’s mixed into the filling, but we didn’t notice that it tasted fake at all.
Are these spicy at all? Well, no. We did notice a subtle hint of spiciness, like the ghost of a mild chili pepper had haunted these at one point in the distant past, but that was a fleeting thing. We really wouldn’t use a word like spicy to describe these (especially after having recently tried the Gardein Ultimate Plant-Based Buffalo Chick’n Wings).
The package recommends five pieces as a serving size, and our package had 14 pieces in it. If you stick with the recommended five pieces, you’ll be gulping down 200 calories and 550 mg of sodium. If you eat the full package in one sitting, you’ll be up to 590 calories and 1,630 mg of sodium. Note that these aren’t very big — smaller than your average mozzarella stick — so we don’t think you’ll struggle at all to eat the whole bag in a sitting.
The Morningstar Farms Veggie Chik’n & Cheeze Taquito Bites Veggitizers are a surprisingly good substitute for taquitos for folks who don’t want to eat real cheese or real meat. They’re pretty tasty, and we didn’t find all the substitution to diminish the flavor at all. We can definitely see ourselves picking up some more of these in the future.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen appetizer, check out our package scans below.
