Although I am a carnivore at heart, I must admit there are a few vegetarian burgers on the market which I really do enjoy on occasion for something a little different. I have found the taste and quality of vege burgers to be a mixed bag of pretty damn good to just plain awful. However, as I state on every food item I review, taste is subjective. What I find to be a delectable treat, you might think of as gross. And of course, the opposite could be the case with some of these foods.
On my Saturday grocery shopping excursion, I was actually searching for a different plant based meat substitute to sample and do a review on. I had just found the No Evil plant based products and made a selection for their Italian Sausage when the Worthington X Burgers caught my eye a few shelves below. I have been seeing their Facebook ads on my feed almost daily so I decided to give them a try for a review too. And who knows, I might just the X Burger enough to make them a regular staple on my weekly grocery list. I already buy Morningstar and Boca products fairly often, it can’t hurt to add more variety to my diet now can it?
I had zero preconceived notion whether the X Burger would be any good or not, my mind was entirely open to them being good, or not so good.
Pictured above is an X Burger fresh out of the box and still frozen, they tell you the burger can be cooked frozen or thawed. I do not know about you, but I felt this was not all that appealing in its appearance. The other thing I noticed about this burger was it had what smelled vaguely like dog food to me, I actually noticed a similar smell with the Beyond Burgers too, and still found them to taste pretty decent once they had been cooked.
Never the less, I moved forward with preparing it and kind of felt as if I was taking one for the team with its appearance and odor.
I browned the X Burger in a well seasoned cast iron skillet with a little olive oil.
As you can see, the X Burger does not even remotely appear to look like hamburger if that is important to you. This was not an issue for me, I have eaten some foods during my military career, Meals Ready to Eat (MRE), that were far less appetizing if you based the appeal solely on appearance.
Okay, this is a vege burger and I really have no expectations for it to really have a beef like taste or texture. I would actually prefer it have a flavor all it’s own as long as it is satisfying to my palate. For instance, I love Morningstar Southwest Black Bean Chili burgers which are very tasty without tasting anything like a beef burger. Having a beef flavor is not an issue for me, but for the fact with this burger, their packaging has an image of a cow next to their statement where the manufacturer refers to their “meaty goodness”. Is it wrong that I interpret this to mean the burger is beef like in taste and texture? Because the taste and texture is nothing close to that of ground beef. I will say the texture was firm, and easy to chew. However, the taste left a bit to be desired for me. The flavor was not horrible while I was consuming the burger, but it left me with an after taste that can only make me think of dog food. I found the after taste to be similar to how Alpo dog food smells. It may not smell horrible, but you know you do not want to eat it.
Ingredients:
Non-gmo Textured Soy Protein Concentrate, Palm Oil (sustainably Sourced), Non-gmo Soy Protein Isolate, Soy Oil, Contains 2% Or Less Of Wheat Protein, Methylcellulose, Corn Starch, Natural Flavors, Yeast Extract, Dextrose, Salt, Vegetable Juice Powder, Beet Powder (for Color), Citric Acid, Ascorbic Acid
Nutritionally, these burgers are wholesome and healthy enough, but I personally will not buy them again. But, as I said above, you might like them even though I did not care for these burgers. At $6.49 US for two burgers, I had higher expectations. The only plus side to these burgers in my personal opinion was the 21 grams of protein. And with that protein coming from soy, you will be getting a full profile of the nine essential amino acids which are crucial to building and maintaining lean muscle mass. Try them for yourself though, you might find the Worthington Burger to be much better than I did.