We Tried Tesco’s New Vegan Range And Had Two Favourites

Tesco recently launched a huge wave of new vegan products, but which ones were our favourites?

We decided to jump straight in and try the new vegan meat slices and the bakes as they were the most exciting out of all the new range.

The Cold Meat Slices

Amongst the 32 product line-up were seven plant-based meat slices, perfect for sandwiches (or eating straight from the packet, which is definitely not what we did…honest!). All the Wicked Kitchen slices are £2.50, and the Plant Chef ones are £1.50 – which makes you really understand the difference between the two sub-brands: one is premium, and the other is a No Frills sort of thing. Here is the line-up:

• Crumbed “Ham” Slices
• “Chicken” Slices
• Peppered “Beef” Slices
• Salted “Beef” Slices
• Plant Chef “Chicken” Slices (£1.50)
• Plant Chef “Ham” Slices (£1.50)
• Pepperoni Slices

 

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Out of all the slices, we loved the ‘chicken’ ones by Wicked Kitchen the most. I mean, the whole range is aesthetically pleasing if you miss cold meat deli slices from back in the non-vegan days, but the ‘chicken’ slices back up the look with the flavour out of all the choices available.

Our second favourite out of all the deli slices was the ‘beef’ varieties. It’s so nice to have a choice between ‘salted’ or ‘peppered’, with many people likening the salted ‘beef’ to the extremely popular Marks & Spencer Salted Beef Roll – which is a hell of a claim!

The Bakes

These bakes are like the foods you never knew you needed until now. What we mean by that is that they are so devilish in nature, and far from being one of your five a day, but now we know they are here, it’s hard not to buy one. And let’s face it, at £1.30 they are competition for Greggs. If they start doing these already warmed up in-store, our diet is bang in trouble.

 

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The new bakes come in two savoury varieties and two sweet.

• Cherry Pie Slice
• Pineapple & Coconut Slice
• Jackfruit & Pepperoni Bake (and Applewood cheese)
• Cheese & Onion Bake (with Follow Your Heart cheese)

Out of the savouries, you know what, damn it’s a hard choice. The cheese & onion bake doesn’t look appetising inside, but it tastes really nice, like an old-school cheese & onion pasty.

The Jackfruit Pepperoni was surprising because, although the inside has more pizazz than the cheese one, it doesn’t have anything that resembles pepperoni. Then you take a bite, and the flavour of pepperoni is definitely there.

The sweet bakes are so reminiscent of something that an American fast-food outlet would serve up, which isn’t a bad thing. These pastry slices aren’t saying that they are wholesome, they are just sweet bakes with A LOT of calories.

As you can see by the inside of the bakes, they are oozing with cherry or tropical syrup…it’s actually mesmerising to see all the delicious, shiny goo splurging out.

We loved them both, but that cherry slice takes some beating. Just make sure you leave them to cool for a good while after getting them out of the oven, otherwise your mouth will take a good apple-pie-at-McDonald’s-scolding (if you know, you know).

Our Faves

If you have read this far, then you will know that the Wicked Kitchen ‘Chicken’ Slices and the Cherry Pie Slice stand out as the best looking, as well as the best tasting, out of the new vegan range. And as we have your attention, we just wanted to say how marvellous it is to see so many new and exciting vegan products launched at a major supermarket recently.

We get the feeling that the likes of Derek Sarno and Wicked Kitchen have a hell of a task on their hands, ultimately to match every non-vegan product with a vegan product in-store, and to keep the prices down at the same time. Rather them than us!