A Delicious Alternative to Pork

Does this look like Cantonese steamed minced pork? It's made from plants!

First off -- did anyone in Hong Kong feel the tremors from the 6.1 magnitude earthquake in Penghu county in Taiwan just before 8am this morning?

I was sitting at the table eating breakfast when I felt my building swaying a bit, much like when it did when Super Typhoon Mangkhut came through Hong Kong.

At the time I thought it was strange and a little later when I checked the Hong Kong Observatory for the weather, it had a note that some residents had called in about feeling a tremor.

So it wasn't just me!

The Omnipork right after it is steamed for five minutes

Secondly, this afternoon, I tried some Omnipork, a plant-based meat that is supposed to mimic pork, but is made of shiitake mushrooms, peas, non GMO soy beans and rice. Today is the first day Omnipork is available for retail, priced at HK$43 for a pack that weighs 230grams.

The first demonstration was steamed minced pork, a typical family-style Cantonese dish. The portion looks good for two or three people. When scooped out of the plastic packaging, Omnipork looks like, well ground pork, pink in colour and mushy in texture.

The instructor added some finely julienne ginger and ginger juice, and pre-cooked diced mushrooms. He said the mushrooms had to be cooked beforehand as the Omnipork would be cooked in five minutes through steaming. He also added a bit of soy sauce that wasn't too salty.

Then he placed the plate with the mixture in a steamer and within five minutes we had "pork" that looked darker in colour and had the texture of meat. Because he added mushrooms to it, the taste was more mushroom in flavour.

Omnipork made into dumplings with a splash of sesame oil

Next up was dumplings and the Omnipork was combined with finely minced cauliflower and some of the left over diced mushrooms, seasoned and then portioned in round wrappers. They were then boiled and within minutes we were able to try these dumplings that had a splash of sesame oil and were very delicious.

The versatility of this plant-based meat is pretty amazing -- more so than Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat because there isn't much more you can do to those "meats" except to fry them as burger patties.

But with Omnipork it can be used in a variety of ways, making it easy for home cooks to use it.

It'll be interesting to see if Omnipork catches on especially for the retail market. It could possibly disrupt the pork industry, particularly now with the serious outbreak of African swine fever that is widespread in China!

Impossible Chilli Cheese Fries

Looks yum, right? The "ground meat" is plant protein by Impossible Foods

My colleagues and I were in Central around lunchtime and following our appointment we had a late lunch at Beef and Liberty in Lan Kwai Fong.

On the menu were the usual burgers, along with one vegetarian featuring a patty made from beetroot, brown rice and kidney beans. There was also the Impossible Thai burger -- using a plant-based protein made to look like beef.

Three of the four of us had beef burgers, while one went vegetarian and had not only the beetroot burger, but also the Impossible chilli cheese fries. It features the "meat" broken up and combined with kidney beans, Cheddar cheese, spring onions and sour cream.

If you were given two plates of this dish, one featuring real beef and the other the Impossible beef, it would be very hard to identify which was which, not only in terms of appearance but also taste.

When it's mixed in a flavourful sauce (and melted Cheddar helps too!) then the Impossible chilli cheese fries were just as good as real ground beef. But why eat meat if you don't have to or want to?

Price-wise the real beef and Impossible version are the same price at HK$62. It's really a no brainer.

More and more hotels and restaurants in Hong Kong are embracing not only Impossible Foods' products, but also Beyond Meat, another "beef" protein substitute, and also Omnipork, that is supposed to mimic minced pork that can be steamed, stir-fried, deep-fried and wrapped in dumplings.

It's great to see these establishments trying out these new products -- apparently people in Hong Kong eat more than three times the daily recommended amount of meat, the equivalent of two 10oz steaks per person.

This is hardly unsustainable nor healthy. With alternative "meat" products on the market, we really need to try them out and even if it's one day a week or even one meal per day, it's better than nothing.