- Which vegan brat's the best?
- And which one's the worst?
- Let's talk about that.
(funky electronic music)
(fire crackles)
- Good Mythical Morning.
- Today we are joined by actor, writer,
and now author of the new book
Ronan Boyle and the Bridge of Riddles,
it's Thomas Lennon!
(crew applauds) - Yo, whoa!
Tom! (chuckles)
- I did a spit take like I didn't know
I was gonna be on your show.
Of course I knew-- - You're here, man.
- I was gonna be here, I'm here.
- You're here. - It's good to see you.
- Goodness, last time we-- - Rhett and the other one.
- Saw you we were clothed
and in your hot tub. - That's right.
- Rhett and the other one. - Flashback?
- If you guys want. - All right.
- Oh yes!
- Okay. - Great flashback guys.
It's fun to be in a flashback with you guys.
- It was so fabulous and hot. - We know that
you're currently living the vegetarian lifestyle.
- I'm an erstwhile vegetarian.
I do long chunks as a vegetarian, then sometimes I don't.
- But you're currently in a stretch right now.
- I'm in a stretch right now, yeah.
- That's good 'cause that makes you the perfect candidate
for our goal today,
to find the best vegan sausage substitute the world
and science has to offer.
It's time for
♪ Fake meat of mine ♪
♪ Buh buh buh ♪
♪ Vegan sausage is it good ♪
♪ So good, so good ♪
- I wasn't expecting a theme song, guys.
- Yeah. - That was amazing.
- Only for you, Tom.
- Could I tell people you were practicing that before--
- No I wasn't. - No we weren't.
- I don't know why and then spoiler.
You could tell that you practiced it
'cause it looked amazing.
- So it could be so good. - All right,
we're gonna try the leading vegan sausage brands
and we're gonna rank them on a scale of one to 10
but because you're a vegetarian, which is,
in our minds, almost vegan.
- Oh yeah, okay.
- Then you're--
- Not in most vegan's minds but--
- Yeah that's true. - Right.
- Your score is gonna count twice.
- That makes sense.
- Ours is each gonna count once.
We're gonna compile all those scores and come up
with the best vegan sausage-- - Great.
- Ever. - People are gonna
throw 'em at us.
- That might be arranged. - They will come in
an interesting way.
The winner will be crowned Vegan Brian.
Or it's more of a name tag.
Let's get to it.
- [Rhett and Link] Round one.
- Now each sausage will be delivered to us via
a vegal beagle, it's a dog and a forced rhyme.
Bring in the vegal beagle.
(Tom mimics trumpeting)
- Oh. - Oh.
- I doubled up on your music cue, guys, sorry.
- Did you-- - No you were just--
- I don't know
I just felt it. - Project your mouth trumpet
into like-- - I did.
- More of a regal trumpet. - This is a power that I have.
- All right this is the Lightlife Smart Sausage Italian,
so everybody grabby grabby their sausage here.
Soy-based, got some dried vegetables, potatoes, starch,
ooh evaporated cane sugar.
- I'm not kidding when I say it smells amazing.
- And it has a very meat-like quality.
- [Link] We're gonna dink our sausages.
- It does. - Dink 'em.
- And then we're gonna sink our sausages.
- [Tom] Oh.
- Okay once you get in there, very evident that this is--
- Not meat. - Imposing.
- Mm. - You know what I'm saying?
- It's confusing a little bit. - It's a spongy fibrous--
- Boy it's real kinky on the inside.
- Yeah. - It's like--
- It's like eating the stuffing from a teddy bear.
- I feel like this is what somebody on The Sopranos,
what their car smells like.
(Rhett laughs)
I don't know, I guess I mean that,
I mean that in exactly what I thought.
You get in the car--
- That's right. - Okay Paulie Walnuts.
- It tastes much better than it feels.
- Nah I was at the, it tastes better than it feels,
you say? - Yeah.
Doesn't feel good to me. - The mouthfeel--
- The mouthfeel is real bad. (Tom sputters)
- I wasn't gonna say real bad.
- They're not a sponsor.
- They're not? - Nope.
- The mouthfeel's real bad. (Rhett and Link laugh)
It's really--
- I don't mind the taste at all.
- Taste is great.
- I think I'm going with a five.
- It's a one.
(Rhett laughs)
- God. - I'm gonna give it a four.
- Wow. - You don't know where
we're going from here, I mean, you might be going negative.
- So this was the great one.
- I don't know either.
- Again, smells wonderful.
Smells wonderful, don't you think?
- Yeah. - I love the outside
of this casing. - And you're still giving it
a one. - We got five, four,
and one, and that gives us a total of 11.
- [Rhett and Link] Round two.
- All right bring in the vegal beagle.
(trumpeting music)
Oh.
- Oh. - It's different music.
- [Tom] I'm gonna try to get this one like this.
- He's here, he's here.
- Welcome. - A little long,
a little long.
Okay, this is-- - The beagle,
not only does he have a hat, he has poor vision apparently.
- [Rhett] (laughs) Yeah, right.
That's why he's attached to a stick.
- Okay. - He should be led around by.
Okay this is Amy's Meatless Veggie Sausage.
It is quinoa and rice, well quinoa, red rice,
tofu and potato. - Mm-hmm.
- Then has a bunch of varied vegetables in there as well.
- Okay we're gonna dink, well if you bit it, don't dink it.
- My favorite thing about eating all these,
'cause I'm a bit of a germaphobe,
is that there's like eight hipster dudes
who handle every one just out of my eye line.
- That's what we call-- - And they're just like
rolling them around with their strange mustaches.
There's just so many weird people have touched this
by the time it gets to us.
- (chuckles) Welcome to my entire life, Tom.
- I'm not sure how much of the taste is the thing
and from the hipster guys who just handed it--
- Hipster hands.
- Hipster-- - Hipster hands, mm.
- Definitely your microbiome is going to be impacted
by whatever is on their fingers.
- I'll tell ya on the nose, I love it.
- And then you bite it and it's crunchy.
- I love it. - Much better texture.
- I love it. - Incidentally,
here's a picture of Amy.
Actually this is their president of global, Xavier Unkovic.
He loves sausage and karate.
- Mm, yeah he does.
- We've done our research, Tom.
- Guys, it's exactly the right size,
which also makes me realize something
I didn't really notice about number one, it was too big.
- They were too big. - It was too large.
- It's too big. - You don't want a sausage--
- This is like, you could sit at the movie
and have a bucket of these.
(Rhett laughs)
- I'll take the-- - They're great.
- I'll take the vegan bucket
of hipster handed sausages please.
- Again, some of this is just the mustache wax that's on it
but it's unbelievably good.
If this is, we're gonna go--
- Go for it. - Go to the board?
- I like it.
- I've eaten the whole thing.
- I legit love it and I'm gonna go...
It's a nine.
- Whoa! - Going from one
to a nine. - It's a nine out of 10.
Yeah.
- I really like it. - I'm giving it a seven.
- I was gonna say seven, okay.
Better texture, but I mean I'm not crazy about it.
I don't wanna eat it at the movies, that's all I'm saying.
- [Link] So that brings us to a total of 32.
- [Rhett and Link] Round three.
- Bring in that vegal beagle.
(trumpeting music)
Okay.
Yeah.
You don't have to play the whole, I mean, we get it.
- All right this is the Tofurky Artisan Sausage Kielbasa.
- Are you sure it's not just three cigars?
- It really feels like three cigars.
(Rhett and Link laugh)
- Oh man. - I'll take the dented one
'cause it's your show.
This one first of all, so hot, you guys.
- It's so hot. - Wow.
- Oh my God.
Hey, hipster weirdos?
(Rhett and Link chuckling)
That's like the surface of the sun.
That was heated up, you ever get
like a breakfast item at Starbucks?
- Yes. - Oh yes,
and you have to wait so long.
- And then those egg things, that's what I'm talking about.
- Comes out it's like, this is really hot.
Does it help to dip it in water?
- It could, yeah.
- Okay ouch.
- Okay sorry.
- I think we're gonna get hurt if we eat this, guys.
It's too hot.
- Tofu, roasted poblano peppers, wheat berries.
- [Rhett] Oh, oh.
- Smell almost nothing on the nose.
- [Link] Oh my gosh, it's orange.
- We're back to where the first one was in terms of texture.
- Mm-hmm, it's way too thick.
It's way too thick and it's--
- It's like biting a pillow.
- I feel like I would like packing peanuts more.
- We've had those, they're good.
- Just regular packing peanuts.
- Mm-hmm.
- It tastes like you left a regular sausage
in the attic and then moved out
and then someone else moved in.
- Yes. - And then,
you move back in after they moved out
and the sausage was still there and then you ate it.
- Did you guys see the King Tut exhibit
when it was at the museum?
- No I thought about it.
- If you took a bite out of the actual--
- Yeah. - King Tut, today.
- Right. - Are you talking
mummified Egyptian piece?
- Any part, it doesn't even--
- I should have put cat in there.
That would have made it more palatable.
- I truly hate it.
- It's awful. - It's horrible.
- It's really, really terrible.
- The fact that it made it through some kind
of research and development process
and then-- - That seems impossible.
- And then it's on a shelf somewhere.
- Is it?
This is a real item?
By the way I actually love their slices.
I don't work for the Tofurky people
but I did have Tofurky, their slices are amazing.
- On your way in?
- Yeah at home. - Oh.
- I keep 'em at home,
I just roll 'em up with yellow mustard.
It's amazing. - Okay.
- We believe in you Tofurky, but not for this.
Zero.
- We can go zero?
I'm gonna go zero on this.
- I'm gonna go one just so--
- Why?
- Because that leaves the possibility
of going completely zero on another one.
- And if I'm not mistaken,
that brings us to a grand total of--
- One. - Wow.
- [Rhett and Link] Round four.
- Cue that beagle.
(trumpeting music)
Okay, all right, can we get, thank you.
- Mm-hmm, all right what is this one?
This one is Beyond Meat. - Oh.
- Yeah. - Uh-oh.
- Okay so we've-- - You've heard about the--
- The 66 car from North Carolina.
- We've got great experience with the Beyond Meat company.
- These people know what they're doing.
- This has got water, pea protein, refined,
you know what, I'm not gonna read all of the ingredients
'cause that doesn't make it sound good.
Let's just imagine-- - Do it.
- That it's just sausage. - Well they call it
Beyond Sausage, the original brat flavor.
Dink it and sink it. - Okay smells like a brat.
- [Link] You're right.
- [Tom] Oh.
- They've done something with the texture
to create a bounciness.
- It feels bratty. - That you do not get
in the other ones.
- It apparently sizzles identically
to a traditional meat sausage according to my notes.
- Although my question would be can you cook it
like a brat, can you cook it in beer?
Which would only make it better.
- Can you cook it in beer? - I like it a lot.
We'll take your calls.
(Rhett chuckles)
- We're taking another bite. - I wanna keep eating it.
I wanna keep eating it.
- I actually really like it.
- Mm-hmm. - I really like it.
- It tastes of Boulder, Colorado in a cylindrical casing.
- That's a good sausage.
- Yeah and this is by the way, imagine if you put
a little interesting mustard on that.
- Interesting mustard. - Yeah.
- Not regular mustard. - And they've,
you make a good point that a brat is not fully a brat
until it's mustardfied, so we're really being hard
on these brats. - Listen, this is pure.
- We're isolating the flavor.
- This is gonna be very, very tough to beat.
- Yeah. - Very tough.
- You've already given that a nine.
- We might have to bust the top of your scale.
- We'll go 10.
- Oh. - I'm gonna go 10
on the Beyond Meat-- - He's respecting the scale.
- I won't break the scale but I believe it's really,
really solid. - I'm going nine.
- Yeah, maybe there's something out there,
I'm also going nine.
Bringing us to a 38.
- [Rhett and Link] Round five.
- Okay I'm gonna ask you to bring the dog in
but I would just prefer if you didn't even start the music.
Bring the dog out.
(trumpeting music)
♪ Brickety doo ♪ - Come on!
♪ Dee dee dee ♪
- You just couldn't help yourself!
Look, he's eating one of the sausages.
- [Tom] He is, I'm gonna fight him for it.
Fight him for it, give me that, give me that.
Who's a good boy, who's a good--
(Link mimics dog grumbling)
(Tom chuckles)
Three adult men. (Link mimics dog grumbling)
Oh you give me that.
Who's a good, who's a good beagle?
- Okay. - Oh.
- Morningstar Farms Original Sausage Patties.
- Now Morningstar, they've been in the vegetarian's--
- [Tom] They've been at it for a minute.
- Meat game for a long time.
- They've been inside vegetarian for--
- 30 years.
Or however long, so we got water, gluten, soy protein,
egg white, spices.
It's pretty simple. - Smells good.
- It smells nice and spicy.
Can I say this and I mean this in the best possible way?
It smells like when you're a kid and you walk
in a McDonald's, that kinda smell that like,
everything's cooking at one time--
- Oh it does have something like that.
- And like a, yeah. - Nostalgia.
- Lardy,
(chuckles) childhood lard.
- Lardy nostalgia.
You are right.
Dink it, sink it.
Taste it. - Oh, oh that's good.
That's really good.
- That's impressive. - That's pretty good.
- Oh man. - It's interesting
'cause this is, the brat was trying to be a brat.
- Yeah. - This is a--
- It's a breakfast sausage. - They're winning
with the spices.
- Guys. - I got a good number for it.
- I love this. - I like it.
- I do not like it as much as the Beyond.
- [Tom] I don't either.
- But I do like it. - I like it a lot.
- I like it so much I'm going to the top of my scale.
Tippety top all the way to 10.
- I think it's a solid eight.
- I went nine before so--
- Hey should we point out this one has egg whites
so it's not really vegan.
- Oh. - Yeah.
- That's why I like it so much.
- That's why you like it so much.
- So this is vegetarian but it's not technically vegan.
- Okay well I can only still give it the score
I'm gonna give it based on taste.
- Which is?
- Eight.
Bringing us to a grand total of 34.
- And so with an overall score of 38,
the vegan sausage champ and the title of Vegan Brian
goes to Beyond Original Brat. - Woo!
Hit the music, no, don't.
Oh yes, do, don't, ah.
(Tom mimics trumpet)
Look at that. - Who's good?
Who's good, who's good?
Who's good? - Let's put this right
on there.
- Right on. - Wrap it up.
- Thank you Thomas Lennon for stopping by.
Make sure you get his new book.
It's Ronan Boyle and the Bridge of Riddles on sale now.
- Get 'em together, can you get all both together?
- Yeah all in one shot.
That's an amazing-- - Showbiz.
This feels like show business, guys.
- [Link] Right, we're doing it.
- Thanks for liking, commenting and subscribing.
Now you say you know what time it is.
- You know what time it is!
- What's up?
My name's Josh Hill and we're in the mountains
of South Africa and it's time
to spin the Wheel of Mythicality!
- I love the energy. (laughs)
Click the top link to watch us taste top vegan mayo
in Good Mythical More.
- And to find out where
the Wheel of Mythicality's gonna land.
(Rhett grunts)
- [Rhett] Our summer tour is officially on sale today.
You can see us live in concert June 21st through the 30th
and you can see all the tour dates at RhettAndLinkLive.com.