- Hello everyone, it's Mike here, hope you're doing well.
The original release of today's video featured
a company who don't meet the high standards of Sorted
nor you, our community,
but unfortunately, we weren't aware of this
until you guys pointed it out.
So, this is just a quick video to say, number one,
thank you so much for those of you who got in touch
and let us know and number two,
we're really sorry, we dropped the ball on this one.
We'll ensure that it doesn't happen again.
So, thanks so much for sticking with us.
We've recut the video, this is it.
We hope you enjoy it.
And thanks again.
(egg cracking) (food sizzling)
(upbeat music)
- Hello and welcome to Sorted Food.
- Now today, we have four trends and two normals
sat in our hot seat and we're gonna embark
on a bit of a journey to explore what makes them trendy
and why they're popular
and whether we might use them at home.
(upbeat music)
Are you ready?
- I am ready.
- Lift the cloche for number one.
- Careful. ( man exclaims)
What the hell is that?
This is King of (man groans)
Kefir.
- You sighed. Why did you sigh?
- 'Cause I've had kefir before
and it was
minging. (laughs)
- And is that because it was slightly
soured dairy? (man gasps)
- It was yours wasn't it?
(man laughing)
- Well, I have made some, yes.
But- - I forgot that. I forgot.
I wondered where I tasted it, I was like, "Oh! So sorry."
(man laughing)
- But that was dairy based kefir, this is kefir water.
This is water kefir by King of Kefir.
And they are Ireland and Europe's
first dedicated water kefir brewery
using traditional water kefir grains.
- Two different flavours.
Cucumber, mint, and thyme
and chilli and ginger.
Nice!
- Kefir grains basically consume,
you're right, the sugar in
dairy, lactose.
However, these are slightly different
kefir grains, it's water kefir,
and therefore, they eat, digest the other sugar
so natural sugars from fruit and therefore,
you can make fruit based,
and I think this one started as apple juice, kefir.
Same process.
It's eating the sugars and turning it into acid.
- A bit like kombucha?
- A bit like kombucha.
But instead of a scoby,
grains.
- Okay.
- So, I think the logic behind it is it is a soft drink
that is low in sugar, very low in calories
We're talking single digit calories per bottle
but has all the same goodness
and the effervescence and the deliciousness
that you want from something.
- That is really refreshing.
It's a big hit of ginger
and you're left with the warmth of chilli
rather than the flavour necessarily of chilli
but it's not
slap you in the face spicy or anything.
- From kefir, I was expecting.
(loud smacking)
Slight tang to it.
- And are you getting any of that sort of sour flavour
that's sort of attributed top this type of drink?
- Not as much as I get from kombucha.
- Interesting.
- So, it's sweeter, it tastes sweeter
and is far easier to drink.
- It's more akin to
maybe an artisanal lemonade or soft drink.
- Yeah. Like a health food version of a lemonade.
- Nice!
- I think they're both really delicious, refreshing drinks.
And if the kefir is doing something great to my gut's biome,
then that is all around a top effort.
- [Mike] You're liking it?
- I'm really liking this.
I can see myself buying a few bottles of this.
That's a game changer.
- [Ben] Subject to price of course.
- Oh yeah. - How much per bottle?
That's a 330 mil bottle.
- I'm gonna say £4 a bottle.
- £3.50.
- [Ben] Pretty good.
£3.33 on the basis of three for a tenner.
- Yeah, I'm all right with that.
I'm all right with that.
- So you like it?
- I like it.
- [Mike] Do you think it's a trend?
- I think it's a trend.
Ask him the question then Ebbers.
- A tasty bubble or not worth the trouble?
(men laughing)
- That is a tasty bubble.
- That is an outrageous success.
That's a healthy bubble.
(upbeat music)
- May I?
- [Mike] Give it a lift. (upbeat music)
- I like it when you give me undistinguishable meat.
- What is this?
- Have a smell, have a taste.
- They smell a lot like sausage.
- So, the spicing? - Yes.
(upbeat music)
That is four very tasty
pieces of meat.
- It's got kind of a roast dinner
type of feel with flavours
like slightly burnt carrots
with turkey stuffing
and a spiced meatball.
It feels like it's trying to be meaty.
- However, none of them are original versions
of those meats.
And what I can't work out
is whether they are a different animal's meat
in place of where I'd expect it to be,
or whether it's a vegan alternative.
- Well Jay, we sourced all of these
from a vegan butcher.
Rudy's is based in London
and is an all vegan diner and butcher.
And they specialise in taking American classics
and turning them vegan.
- And in front of you you have their soysage,
pastrami,
baycon
and meatball.
- I'm going to need some help with the term
vegan butcher. (man grunts)
'Cause that sounds like an oxymoron to me.
- They have a butcher shop and diner
in North London.
And I tell you the hell
we went through to try and get these products
because they sell out like that,
which in itself says what a humongous
trend this continues to be
and how popular these particular products have been.
Question is, how do they hold up when added to dishes?
You're gonna have a good day.
(man exclaims)
Spaff, in front of you,
you have a meatball sub,
a breakfast muffin and a Ruben sandwich.
- That is incredible!
- Now, this looks better.
Much better.
I'm with you now.
The diner thing now makes sense.
- Do they taste amazing?
That's the question that we have.
- I'll start with the meatball sub.
- Very deliberately, we have chosen three sandwiches
that are typically quite meat heavy
and/or cheese heavy.
However, obviously no animal products in any of these.
- That is a stonking sandwich. (man laughs)
- I wouldn't be disappointed if that was served to me
rather than a meat meatball.
(man laughs)
- [Ben] Try the next one.
Breakfast muffin.
- [Jamie] Is that black pudding?
- [Mike] Black pudding
- [Ben] Sausage patty and baycon I think.
It's got it all in there.
The baycon is made with cannellini bean,
wheat gluten or seitan,
beet root, coconut oil,
nutritional yeast, the list goes on.
The black pudding,
the same but with kidney beans.
The sausage patty in there is mostly soy based,
we're talking soy protein.
- With processed meat like sausages, black puddings,
bacons, things like that,
they have so many spicing and flavourings added to them.
I can see how that can be replicated
through spices and that kind of thing, fine.
I get that.
But these go the extra mile with texture.
And I've not really had that with meat replacements before.
It's the texture where you always
can kind of tell something's slightly off
with what your expectations might be.
- The best thing about a meat based sandwich
is the the fatty, meaty juices.
And if you look at my napkin,
the only thing's that dripped is the sauce.
There's nothing wrong in that.
It's all delicious. It's absolutely perfect.
It's just not meat.
- The only added fats come from the likes of coconut oil,
palm oil, vegetable oils.
- Okay. Alright, a Ruben...
- Typically, all the flavours you would expect
but with their pastrami
and the pastrami's made from red kidney beans
and seitan and a whole bunch of other things.
Probably worth saying, when I say a whole bunch
of other things, the list of ingredients is extensive,
we're talking 20 plus ingredients.
And therefore, heavily or ultra processed for sure,
but most of it is vegetable protein
in the form of legumes, beans, chickpeas,
seitan, cashew nuts, soy.
That kind of stuff.
- It's very fibrous.
It kind of pulls really nicely and it has almost
those kind of fatty air bubbles you get from pastrami.
- On their own, I think is where they stand out
because you can tell that they're decent.
The fact that I'm sitting there trying to work out,
are they vegan, are they just a different animal
is a real tell-tale sign that that is
a massive advancement.
I'm quite blown away.
- Now, we are obviously saying check out veganism,
it's a future trend everyone.
But what we are doing is looking at
the evolution of vegan products
and just how incredible they're getting.
- If they start getting that good
and you don't feel like you're missing out
on the meat element, which was always something for me,
then why wouldn't I buy that?
- We'll talk price
and we're gonna target two of these products.
You've got the baycon
and the pastrami.
They're both actually the same price,
but how much do you think, per packet they cost?
- Yeah, £4.
- £3.50.
- £3.50?
Bang on!
- Whoa!
- Which is 100 grammes.
So, as a direct comparison,
kilo for kilo,
it's about twice as expensive as a
higher end supermarket smoked bacon.
- I'm not gonna switch to a vegan diet
cause I'm not expecting to up my weekly budget by that much.
These for me, will be a fun alternative.
So, I can justify that cost.
- So, the question is, is this
a meat free marvel
or is there mushroom for improvement?
(man chuckling)
There are no mushrooms in any of this.
(man laughing)
It's purely for pun. - Weak. That was weak.
That one. A meat free marvel.
- Yeah. It's a meat free marvel.
I'm changing.
Is this what growing feels like?
- And talking of growing and improvement,
we are in fact gonna set you a little challenge
around the alternative meat market
in battle form.
So,
clock it, log it, digest it
and plan.
- Some meal vegan brisket recipes.
Comment down below.
(upbeat music)
(audience cheering)
- Last but not least. (upbeat music)
- Ice cream?
- Ice cream makes me happy, Ben.
I'm a simple man with simple pleasures.
- I think it makes us all happy
those of us who enjoy it. - [Barry] Can I just?
- Yeah.
Then tell us what flavours you've got.
Both of them have been made on site.
- That is very tasty.
Chocolate caramel ice cream.
- It's delicious.
It's pappy. - [Mike] Okay. Pappy.
- Strange texture to it.
- [Mike] Try the other, see if it helps you out.
- That one is just peanut.
That's just peanut butter.
- [Mike] Correct. Peanut butter flavoured.
- There's something with the texture.
Different from normal ice cream.
It feels more cookie dough.
- If we were to tell you that this is vegan ice cream,
would that surprise you?
And if you think that we have to substitute the dairy
out of it for something else,
could you take a guess at what that was?
- I have a lot of butter beans at home.
And it's almost like mushed up butter beans.
- You pretty much hit the nail on the head.
It is a legume in the form of a chickpea.
So, we're looking at the rise of chickpeas
in so many things.
We've seen chickpeas baked to snacks,
we've seen humus crisps,
we've seen aqua faba used as an egg white replacement,
in meringues and in cocktails.
This is something we've seen pop up,
chickpea ice cream.
We couldn't actually get a hold of any,
so we made some.
- There is a difference in texture.
It's not melting in the same way
that a normal ice cream would melt
and you get the lovely bit of cream in the bottom.
You're not getting that from the experience.
But it tastes
and does feel, on the surface,
like ice cream.
- The association of vegan food with health
I don't think is in itself healthy.
And if you look at some of the examples we've had recently,
we did vegan fish and chips
with banana blossom.
We did vegan KFC burger
with seitan and beans.
You know, these are fast foods and fried foods.
These are just vegan alternatives.
- We need to move away from vegan meaning healthy.
If I want a scoop or four of ice cream,
I'm not expecting it to be
good for me and healthy,
I want it to be delicious and fulfil that luxurious
need that I have within me for ice cream.
I don't need that to be made with cow's milk.
- [Mike] That's it, isn't it?
- You know, that's the difference.
It's not about health or not health,
it's about whether you're following a vegan diet.
Whether you are lactose intolerant.
There's so many different elements to cover
that aren't health based.
- Now, the food team have made
the chickpea ice cream in front of you
because we aren't able to source
chickpea ice cream products in the UK.
You can get them globally.
So, there's no price point to talk about here.
But I will ask you the question,
is this the year of the chickpea
or not your cup of tea?
- I really like it.
It's the year of the chickpea.
- I love this product.
I love chickpeas.
Is this the year of the chickpea?
No.
That's a silly statement.
It's always been the year of the chickpea
and it forever will be.
- Well, over to you guys.
Do you see any of these as future food trends for 2021?
- And as always, let us know if there are other things
that you can see in your crystal ball
that are ahead of us.
- Join in the conversation on Twitter
with the hashtag, sortedfoodtrends and let us know.
- Mike happy?
- Yeah, I'm just going over the big words again.
(men laughing)
What's your name? Barry.
- [Barry] Yeah.