We’ve been fans of the Gardein brand for a long time now. Their Fishless Fillets are fantastic, and those fillets got us really excited about the brand when we first tasted them back in 2019. Since then, we’ve reviewed a whole bunch of Gardein’s products, and we’re always willing to give their vegan-friendly frozen food a try.
So we’re pretty happy that Gardein seems to be leaning hard into their “Ultimate” line. While we haven’t been completely blown away by this line, we do appreciate the opportunity to try more of their food. So we’re really excited that today we get to review the Gardein Ultimate Plant-Based Chick’n Tenders.
Cooking these faux chicken tendies is pretty easy: Just preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, then stick the tendies in for 16 to 18 minutes. If you have an air fryer, you can cook them up that way, but we don’t have an air fryer here at Freezer Meal Frenzy. (To read the full cooking instructions straight off the bag, check out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)
These are pretty much a bigger version of the Ultimate Plant-Based Chick’n Nuggets. Instead of the nugget shape, you’ve got longer strips. That doesn’t change a lot, except it does mean you’ve got more uninterrupted “chick’n” in each piece. And Gardein’s faux chicken isn’t all that believable. It’s too “squishy” and it doesn’t taste super authentic. Now, that’s not necessarily a problem if you just want something vegan-friendly to dip in a good sauce, but for folks looking for a vegan-friendly alternative that’s super authentic, this ain’t it.
And speaking of sauce, we tried these with a smoky BBQ sauce and some ranch dressing. We have to admit, these sauces really took these tendies to the next level. The BBQ sauce was smoky enough to cover up the “fakeness” of the flavor, and we’d even say these become pretty dang incredible.
According to the package, two tenders is considered a serving. For reference, our bag contained nine tenders. If you stick with that amount, you’ll be consuming 230 calories and 630 mg of sodium. Keep in mind that this doesn’t include any dipping sauces you might choose to add.
The Gardein Ultimate Plant-Based Chick’n Tenders might not be super authentic, but they make for a halfway decent vegan-friendly alternative to chicken tendies. We enjoyed these quite a bit, despite how fake they might taste or feel, and we think you probably will too.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for these faux chicken tenders, check out the package scans below.
