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From long time favourites to newer contenders, these will be perfect for Veganuary and beyond

If you’re facing the prospect of a vegan January but have no idea where to start, meat substitutes are a reassuring springboard from which to dive into your new plant-based diet.

When you first try veganism, you’re often confronted with a sense of foreboding as to what a plate of food should even look like without a slab of meat on it. Like Joey Tribbiani wondering what all the furniture points towards when you don’t own a TV, it can be destabilising to no longer have a protein-packed centrepiece for each meal.

And although we’d advise that it’s good to start experimenting with vegetable-led cooking from the off, a meat alternative can help ease you along the way. For long-time vegans, meanwhile, substitutes can scratch any nostalgic itches that your brain is stubbornly holding onto, despite your conversion to an animal-free existence.

We ate and ate. Brands sent us a range of delectable goodies to try and we judged which were our favourites in each broad category. We’ve also featured some items that we’ve been enjoying for years, which are regularly on our shopping lists.

Our testers have been trying their best to live as vegan as possible since 2017, and they had some testing help from committed meat eaters too. We kept in mind that these items needed to suit a range of different kinds of vegans, with different levels of culinary skills. We also tried to feature a mixture of foods – everyday staples and occasional treats alike.

We made all the samples as stipulated in the cooking instructions, and added them to our normal weeknight meals where that made sense.

We consider ourselves to be refined vegans. What self-respecting home cook even needs a plant-based burger, when there are so many delicious vegetables on the planet? But after trying the Beyond Meat burger, the answer is us: we needed one all along, and we had no idea.

We’ve been avoiding the hype around this company for a number of years, but now we have been truly shamed. The great thing about Beyond Meat burgers is that they are made for people that remember what meat tastes like and how to prepare it. This can be a major barrier to those trying to cook for their plant-eating children, for instance, or attempting to prepare a barbecue spread for a group. Beyond Meat burgers, well, look and act like burgers, and when they’re in a bun alongside garnishes and salads, they are absolutely indistinguishable from meat.

And unlike some other very good options we’ve tried, they taste like pretty decent-quality patties too. The No Meat Company’s no bull quarter pounders (£2, Iceland.co.uk), for instance, get a shout-out for being the perfect facsimile of a burger you’d buy on your way to a football match. But Beyond Meat’s slabs of plant-based protein will ensure that while all the rest of the crew are eating farm-assured, butcher-bought patties, you won’t stick out like a sore thumb. They’re simply the best we’ve tried.

Okay, we admit it. There’s an argument to be made that tempeh shouldn’t really be considered a meat alternative at all. It has long been an everyday essential in Indonesia, and this fermented soybean product is used much like tofu in many Asian cuisines – a proteinious ingredient, sure, but not one intended to replace or replicate a particular animal product.

We’ve previously had it in Bali, normally fried to crispy wonderfulness in syrup or sugar, and served with a variety of vegetable sides. Even there, however, we never had it quite like this.

Tempeh Meades is the ingeniously named business by Benedict Meade – based in Bristol, of course – bringing homemade, unpasteurised tempeh to the UK. And the freshly fermented stuff has proved a revelation. We were sent a traditional soybean tempeh and a version with quinoa (£4.75, Tempehmeades.com) to try and used both kinds in a tikka-masala-inspired curry. Previously when we made this dish, we found that the spices and marinade didn’t take very well to our normal, Asian supermarket-bought tempeh. Tempeh Meades’s product, however, not only tasted incredible on its own (earthy, delicious) but really took on the flavours of the spices and vegan yogurt we doused it in, making it our most successful curry to date.

We found the tempeh to be super funky (like in the way cheese can be strong and smelly – not, we might add, because it likes to wear flares on the weekend). And we promise that if your tastebuds have been vegan for a while, you will be wowed by the complexity and depth of flavour on offer here.

We would really encourage anyone hopping on the vegan train to start their culinary journey at Benedict Meade’s door. It’s a wonderful place to start understanding just how interesting and exciting vegan food can be.

When we first became vegan, buying tofu involved going to a slightly odd-smelling health food shop. Thankfully, Tofoo has since stepped in as the premier provider of supermarket-based blocks.

Not only does it taste truly fabulous (and we’ve tried plenty of options over the years, believe us) it also has a game-changing facet. This tofu doesn’t need to be pressed. This is a big deal because if you’re the kind of person who often doesn’t think about what they want for dinner until the last minute, having to allow at least an hour for pressing tofu can make plenty of recipes undoable on a regular basis.

Now though, Tofoo is always there, ready and waiting in the fridge, expectedly sitting in its own juice, ready to be freed and stuck straight into whatever recipe has captured your imagination in the past five minutes. The clarity of flavour is really delicious. Sure it’s bland, but it’s also comforting and fulsome – kind of like a chicken dipper, but without exploiting our be-feathered friends.

You can get experimental, and perhaps deep fry it with some seaweed in order to create some tofish, if you’re really missing your local takeaway this Veganuary. However, in this household we often just steam it along with some broccoli and serve with sticky rice and a light soy and Chinese rice wine sauce – don’t tell anyone, but we prefer it to fish and chips.

Best: For a doner in the daytime

Vivera has also started appearing on supermarket shelves in the past couple of years. It’s a Dutch company and it sells a whole range of meat alternatives. We tried a number for this piece but we were most enamoured by the kebab “meat”. Sometimes your vegan brain just pines for the fattiness of lamb shawarma, and it won’t shut up until it’s satisfied.

Vivera’s option is so easy to cook – just fry it in the pan for a few minutes and then shove it in a pitta along with a bunch of pickles and other delicious things you normally inhale on your way home from the pub. In fact, perhaps the best thing about this meat alternative is that it totally normalises eating a kebab in the middle of the day.

Tofurky is an old American vegetarian brand that used to be the butt of jokes and Nineties sitcoms but is now a thoroughly modern plant-based company providing delicious alternatives for every situation. It will always be most famous for its turkey, but we are so obsessed with its Italian-style sausages.

These are replicating a kind of sausage that isn’t so common here in the UK, but if you look up recipes that include sweet sausage, normally from US websites, you’ll get an incredible array of uses for this product. We usually bung it in a porcini mushroom-based pasta dish and the spices in the sausages just give it the most amazing flavour boost along with the meatiness of the mushrooms. They work really nicely when fried up to get them a little bit crispy, but ultimately you want the tastes to seep into whatever it is that you’re cooking. They would do fabulously in a casserole too.

Sosmix is another blast from the past when it comes to vegetarianism in the UK. We understand that at one point this was the only mix that tasted anything like meat that you could find in this country. Now, it’s quite difficult to get hold of, but one website is still championing the original recipe and selling it in pantry-friendly bags of 500g and 1kg.

In terms of its ability to recreate a meat texture, it’s not the strongest, but it does have an undoubtedly savoury and comforting taste, especially when shaped into sausages. It reminded us a little bit of meat-flavoured Northern Irish potato farl, which is no bad thing.

However, where Sosmix really sings is when you use it to make different things. One of the big issues with modern meat alternatives is that they normally come in a particular shape, designed to mimic a particular animal. But if you are a really keen vegan chef then Sosmix can help you break out of the fake-fillet orthodoxy.

Suddenly you are free to make spiced stuffing balls, or even Picasso-style paintings, out of this slightly strange dehydrated mix. You can add spices or even vegetables, and it has a super-long shelf life, making it a really handy backup to have in the cupboard. Since we tried it, we’ve been having a whale of a time finding the weirdest ways to add Sosmix to every meal.

Best: For a quick supper

Quorn are the OGs – what a great bunch of lads. However the company’s primary product is made using egg, meaning its been playing catch-up with the needs of vegans for a while. One product we’ve come to rely on, however, is its properly plant-based fishless fingers, that are a widely available alternative for every toddler’s favourite dinner.

Our vegan palates can absolutely not tell the difference between this and the real thing. That may be more of a comment on the quality of a regular fish finger, but they really hit the spot when it comes to that midnight snack just the same. A flawless hit that’s perfect with some vegenaise (£3.19, Thevegankind.com).

We actually intended to review this company’s zalmon (£6.91, Vegex.co.uk) and no tuna products (£9.29, Vegex.co.uk), which you might have seen crop up recently, with food-to-go brand Wasabi now using the ingredient in its vegan sushi. We did make some vegan sushi and it was pretty delicious (it needs the soy and the rice vinegar and all the other stuff to really help it sing), however we’ve become way more obsessed with the brand’s breaded lemon shrimpz.

These tasty snacks go in the oven and come out looking crispy and delectable. We absolutely smashed through a packet in about three seconds. If you miss snacking seafood as much as we do (honestly, vegan party food sucks) then you’ll absolutely love these bites of greedy deliciousness. They have the texture of a crab stick with an incredibly mellow but appealing seafood flavour.

You can also buy just the fake shrimp, without the breaded covering, however these are only available in huge chef-sized packets (£59.19, Vegex.co.uk). If you have the freezer space we recommend them wholeheartedly for paellas, laksas and plenty more, but for your average kitchen dweller it’s probably too much of an investment. The breaded versions though… grab them now and make sure you have a delicious vegan aioli (£2.50, Sainsburys.co.uk) or sweet chilli dip (£1.55, Sainsburys.co.uk) knocking around for when they come out of the oven.

Rudy’s made a name for itself over the lockdown by offering amazing vegan alternatives to the posh takeaways that became such a mainstay of stay-at-home celebrations during the pandemic. And as delicious as its dirty burger DIY kit is (£36, Rudysvegan.com), we think the pastrami in the brand’s incredible Reuben kit proved itself to be the real star of the vegan butcher’s line-up.

We served it with some dairy-free cream cheese and dill pickles in a delicious fresh bagel and we instantly felt transported to the other side of the Atlantic. The texture is bang on and the flavour really has a bit of gaminess to it that we weren’t expecting.

Our only issue is that it comes in such a large packet we weren’t quite sure how to fit that much pastrami into our diets. But hey, we’re playing it fast and loose with the word “problem”. You can also pick up a pack of the pastrami by itself (£4, Rudysvegan.com), but the “secret” Reuben sauce included the pack is a total winner. This would make for a fabulous weekend brunch.

If you love smoked meats, look no further than Taifun, which has been a major player in the market for many years. We have found these little packets of goodness to be incredibly reliable and much preferable to sandwich fillers marketed as direct alternatives for things like ham or chicken slices. It makes great fodder for baguettes filled with salad and fresh tomatoes, while the basil variety (£3.69, Thevegankind.com) can help create a remarkably pizza-flavoured panini. If you love making a sandwich to take into work, then these are a valuable tool in your plant-powered arsenal.

Best: For a sausage sarnie

Sausages have to be the most fiercely contested bracket when it comes to meat alternatives. There are a plethora of options and they all seem to have their own USP. We’ve tried many over the years – including the Tofurky (£3.50, Thevegankind.com) and Sosmix (£5.50, Alternativestores.com) options that we have recommended above – and although Linda McCartney’s (£2.20, Sainsburys.co.uk) will always have a special place in our heart, we think these from This are some of the best we’ve come across.

Unlike an older generation of meat alternatives, these cook like meat, making them incredibly easy to handle if you are new to this whole plant-based malarky. The spices are faultless and they provide a feeling of fullness that can be lacking from some other alternatives. We think in general that vegan sausages are of incredible quality, but these just pip others to the post when it comes to a Saturday morning sausage sarnie.

This also boasts some of the best chicken pieces (£1.11, Thevegankind.com) that we encountered during our testing process, if you’re desperate for a chunk of bird-like bite in your Friday stir fry.

New to veganism? Have a plant-based burger courtesy of Beyond Meat to give you the confidence to keep to your new diet. If you’re an old hat, however, Tempeh Meade’s fermented soybeans are a total revelation.

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