Somehow, I completely forgot to include these in yesterday’s meatless meats roundup.

I ordered these a while ago, cooked them last week, and (in accordance with standard operating procedure) failed to take any pictures. (Dammit, Jim, I’m a dance blogger, not a food blogger!)

Anyway.

Overall, I liked these more than I expected to. I love sausages in part for that delicious pop! you get when you bite into one, and I have yet to encounter a meatless sausage that replicates it particularly well (to be fair, lots of meat sausages fail to provide it, too). Because I figured that pop! would be missing, I honestly doubted whether the EarthGrown meatless Italian sausage experience would be worthwhile.

In fact, I was pleasantly surprised.

While you won’t get that satisfying pop! when you bite into one, there’s a touch of resistance to the outside of each meatless link. I’m not sure whether they’re contained in some kind of meatless casing, or whether it’s just the way the physics of the sausage overall work out. It doesn’t replicate the meat sausage experience (which sounds like the name of my next imaginary band…), but it does add a desirable textural dimension I hadn’t expected.

Meanwhile, the interior of EarthGrown’s Italian sausages is both finer-textured and denser than a typical Italian sausage made from meat, but still chewy enough to be perfectly acceptable. Those who like their sausage fillings ground smooth and fine will probably find it quite suitable. Of note, I tend to actively dislike finely-ground meat sausages: usually, the fatty pate texture just seriously isn’t my thing (I also tend to dislike really tender cuts of meat for similar reasons). I find that I don’t mind it at all in meatless sausages, which tend to be lean.

As with EarthGrown’s meatless meatballs, the flavor here is pleasant, but quite mild: though, where the sausages are concerned, a little too mild for my preferences.

That said, the mild flavor won’t prevent me from using these sausages in the future: better a mild, pleasant flavor than a strong, unpleasant one. Likewise, while I wouldn’t have minded a note of fennel in the flavor profile, D doesn’t particularly like fennel: in short, depending on what you like in an Italian sausage, YMMV.

Moreover, their mild flavor makes these meatless sausages versatile. Since sage proved to be the dominant flavor, you could probably toss these into an omelet or a breakfast burrito without offending those who think Italian sausages don’t belong at the breakfast table[1].

1. I’m a culinary heathen who adheres to no laws about which foods should be eaten when[2], and my breakfast of choice is leftovers: which is to say, I’m all for Italian sausage at any time of day.
2. That said, I prefer not to eat most of the typical American breakfast foods for breakfast. They’re typically pretty high in sugar and carbs and low in everything else, yielding a crazy high Glycemic Index. If I eat them for breakfast, an hour later my blood sugar will have crashed back into hypoglycemic territory, and I will transform into that terrible person from the Snickers ads.

I’m not sure how D felt about these sausages, because he wasn’t all that hungry and only ate about half of his dinner when I served them. He didn’t complain about them, though, so I assume??? that they’ve passed the Husband Test[3], at least insofar as being acceptable. I’m not sure he even remotely thought they were the usual meat sausages from Kroger.

3. While I haven’t precisely codified my Husband Test, it’s basically a measure of [A] whether D will actually eat a meatless version of a dish we typically eat, and [B] whether he’ll ask if I’ve switched sausages or meatballs or what have you if I don’t tell him in advance. I don’t say anything in advance about it one way or another, as he’s one of those people whose expectations about food play a really, really strong role in his perceptions–like, if I tell him we’re having chili, but then discover we don’t have the right ingredients and make pasta with red sauce instead, he often won’t even eat it.

These actually rather grew on me as I continued eating them. I’m not sure that I’d be terribly enthusiastic about them served as a sausage sub, but I rarely eat Italian sausage subs anyway (in the Italian-meats-as-subs department, I’m a meatball boi for lyyyyyfffffeeee). Served with pasta and a nice, chonky tomato sauce, they’re really quite satisfying.

Nutritionally speaking, they’re similar to the other meatless sausage and meatball options we’ve explored to date.

By themselves, they won’t bring you the full magic of adding more plants to your diet–but they will greatly reduce the unpleasant side-effects of eating sausagey things:

In short, unlike ALDI’s EarthGrown meatballs [4], the EarthGrown Italian sausage links aren’t a bang-on match for the meat version, but they’re still worth buying if you’re looking to introduce some plant-based meal options that even your meat-and-potatoes fam will probably accept. Likewise, as a quick-cooking meal-maker, these qualify for the Cooking With ADHD Squirrel! of Approval(tm).

4. Possibly because meatball recipes are highly variable and typically include non-meat ingredients even in their traditional forms?

TL;DR: 6/10. Mild-flavor, acceptable texture, easy to cook, very acceptable served with pasta and red sauce. Not going to take home the top prize at the sausage races, but I won’t hesitate to buy these again.

Join me later this week (unless I forget) for an adventure with Field Roast[5], which arrived unexpectedly because Kroger was apparently out of The Sacred Chorizo (regarding which: o_________o)

5. …Assuming it’s not made with nuts that I can’t eat. I haven’t checked yet. My chosen ice cream was substituted with butter pecan, which makes me sad, because I’m severely allergic to pecans. Like, “keel over dead from anaphylaxis” allergic. No shade to my order-picker at Kroger, though–they did their best, and I didn’t check “do not substitute” because I always, always forget that Death Nut Ice Cream even exists (because I don’t eat it, obvs). D can take it to work, or we can give it to a friend, or something.