Saturday, February 11, 2012

Review: MorningStar Farms Meal Starters Sausage-Style Recipe Crumbles

[Editor's Note:  This product has been discontinued.  DOH!]


I haven't exactly had the best luck with MorningStar Farms reviews on this blog.  While I've always found their vegetarian products to be mostly tasty, I've always found the cost/portion size of the products to be cost prohibitive and not something that I'd want to spend money on.  Being that my wallet is a glutton for punishment, I decided I'd try again using these MorningStar Farms Meal Starters Sausage-Style Recipe Crumbles (I can't find a good link on the website; looks like they may have discontinued this, so uh-oh).  I picked these up on sale (a key reason for my purchase) at Marsh for $2.99 since I had a $1.00 off coupon.

They say that one twelve ounce package of this is the equivalent to one pound of ground sausage, so when you look at the regular price, it's not really a ton different from the price of ground sausage at the supermarket.  When you factor in the coupon that I had, it becomes an even better deal.  FYI, each serving in the package contains 90 calories, so it's definitely "healthier" than sausage.  Costs aside, how did this one taste?



Well, before I get to the taste, let's take a look at its pre-cooked/frozen appearance as you can see in the photo above.  It certainly looks like sausage after it has been cooked, so at least they are on the right track.  The packaging of this one says that you can heat in the microwave or on the stove.  Being that this one is advertised as a meal starter as opposed to a meal itself, I was adding them into a mix of diced tomatoes and dried chopped onions for a hash-like concoction, so I chose the stove top option.


Here's the end result.  As you can see, it certainly passes the looks test as the little sausage bits in my mix do look like cooked ground sausage.  As for the taste, I can honestly say that it tasted like ground sausage as well and that was a nice surprise.  It wasn't as chewy as ground sausage (it was kind of soft), but it definitely had the nice semi-spicy kick that you would get from ground sausage and being that I didn't expect that, it was a welcome and flavorful surprise.  Honestly, it was difficult to distinguish that this was a vegetarian product and any time you can "trick" your audience like that, you have a winning product.

Buy It or Fly By It?  BUY IT.  This is the first MorningStar Farms product where I don't feel the cost is necessarily prohibitive because you can get more than one serving out of this package and when you compare the cost to how many servings you can get out of it, it is comparable to ground sausage without the calories/guilt.  The fact that it tastes pretty decent is definitely an added bonus as well.

BUY IT!!

8 comments:

  1. Good luck buying this....In their infinite wisdom, Morningstar Farms (aka Kellog) has decided to discontinue this terrific product. But guess what? They told me I could make my own by "adding spices", using their Grillers crumbles. Gee, thanks. I don't know which spices they added, and I liked the convenience of it already being done for me.

    They should discontinue their Egg McMorningstar and re-introduce Sausage Crumbles!

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  2. I agree, I am so mad they discontinued the sausage crumbles. I even got my kids to eat them, now I am stuck with the tasteless crumbles without seasoning!

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  3. Have you ever tried a "meat" breakfast sausage? I tried this to cut back and it tasted like eating pieces of sponge. It's probably one of the reasons it was discontinued.

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  4. This was by far one of the best Morngingstar products. I can't imagine getting the Grillers crumbles to even come close to the original Sausage-Style Crumbles. The textures are different and you would still have the underlying flavor of the Grillers. This is the one product that should have NEVER been discontinued.

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  5. Right. I am upset too. Much better than grillers, especially for pizza/spaghetti. I think I will start a petition to get it back. Can't even find any old product anywhere. They still use it in their new Lasangna so they must still make it.

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  6. http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/bring-back-morningstar-sausage-style-crumbles/

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    Replies
    1. I loved them too and so did my husband. I would sign a petition

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  7. This is a good alternative. I've also made tacos and sloppy joe's with the ground beef version (which tastes better than the crumbles). http://www.lightlife.com/Vegan-Food-Vegetarian-Diet/Gimme-Lean-Sausage.html

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