TVP - Textured Vegetable Protein

If you've done much research on any of the long term, freeze dried, canned storage foods besides Mountain House that are being heavily marketed then you probably already know what TVP is. Otherwise, you'd have to be a pretty hard core health nut/vegan to know what it is. For those of you who don't know what it is it's a high protein meat substitute made from soybeans.

Soybean oil is separated from the soybean flour. Then the soybean flour is superheated and shot through a nozzle to create the desired size "nugget". When the "nuggets" cool they're completely dry, can store for years and, by adding some boiling water, you have a product that's the equivalent of ground beef. Is it a replacement for real meat? I don't think so. Is it a viable alternative when real meat isn't available? Yes it is.

Like I mentioned before, if you're buying a long term, canned storage food solution that isn't produced by Mountain House then it's probably made with TVP rather than real meat. Obviously, as evidenced by the severe shortage that Mountain House is experiencing right now, it's not as easy to make long term storage food out of meat as it is to make it from TVP. I'm not aware of anyone else who's experiencing severe backups in their filling of orders. Maybe it's because people would rather wait for the real thing rather than settling on a lesser product. More likely, the companies using TVP as their "meat substitute" just have very little problems getting the product that they need to fill all of their orders. Then again, maybe the government is just buying all of the Mountain House and letting us little people buy as much TVP as we want.

To be honest, I don't really care about the long term, freeze dried, canned storage items. I have a can of this and a can of that that I've acquired over the years but the bulk of my food storage consists of some bulk basics (beans, rice, sugar, wheat, etc) and the extra stuff that I buy every time I go grocery shopping (canned food, boxes of pasta, etc). After playing with TVP I've added it to my "extra stuff list".

Here's why I like TVP. The flavor is best described as neutral. If you cook up a batch with nothing but water then it will have no flavor. In my opinion that's a good trait. Because every little TVP nugget is like a sponge it soaks up flavor wonderfully. It picks up the flavor of whatever you reconstitute it in. Different stocks and spices can make it extremely versatile. Reconstitute it in chicken stock? It's like ground chicken. Use beef stock? It tastes like ground beef. Use something like hotsauce or wine? Now you've got some applications.

So what's bad about it? It does have a bit of a "fake" flavor no matter what you do to it. I think that the texture has a lot to do with it. While it's close to the texture of cooked meat it's not quite spot on. It's almost artificially chewy and rubbery. Just cook it like rice. It will pick up whatever flavor you cook it with.

I like it. Some people don't. It's a good substitute when the real deal isn't available. It's easy to prepare and it's very versatile. It's also really cheap. If you can find it in a store then you'll probably find Bob's Red Mill brand (which is pretty expensive compared to other brands). A bag of that is a few bucks. It reconstitutes to the equivalent of a few pounds of meat. Once reconstituted it's also a lot cheaper than real meat. I've tried several recipes and have yet to be horribly disappointed. It's not a replacement for the real deal but if it's all you've got you'll be extremely happy that you've got it handy. If you're local store doesn't sell it then you can always buy it in bulk on Amazon or from other online sources. I encourage you to play around with it if you haven't already. You'll probably add it to your list of "bulk necessities" pretty fast.