To think I could add quorn mince to beef mince and get away with it?

[Ilovehamabeads]

Disclaimer.. I've never tried quorn mince.

I'm trying to make our meals a little healthier and less red-meat heavy. We don't eat badly, but my children's two favourite meals are made of beef- spag bol and cottage pie. I already add as much veg as I can without altering the meal beyond recognition so wondered if I could swap out some of the beef mince for soya mince? Would that work or does it taste really different and be disgusting?

I do Quorn shepherds pie but half the "meat" and add a tin of green lentils instead

The children still haven't noticed

I don't like quorn but you can buy other brands of 'mince'.

IMO quorn has too many additives, its too mushy and has no texture, its made with eggs, which I cant eat and its pretty grim.

True soya mince is more commonly referred to as textured soya protein or TSP, It has substantially less additives and is much nicer.

I regularly feed TSP to guests and most cant tell the difference from meat.

Haven't RTFT but we do this with tinned lentils. Probably cheaper and better for you than quern mince.

I think it's only actual quorn made from mushroom crap. How about soya protein mince?

I think it's a good idea. The veggie mince will absorb the flavour of the meat so will taste just as nice.

NB lentils i use aren't red.
They're sort of greyish brown
Essential Waitrose something haha

Quorn is not healthy. It's highly processed. Use lentils instead.

Hester it's actually not even related to mushroom. It's not a fungus. it's a weird microprotein which was never meant as food...it goes through loads of processing in order to make it appear as it does on our shelves.

I was shocked at the amount of people saying that quorn disagrees with them, so will hold off that idea for now as DS and DH have rather delicate bowels as it is! Also because I'm clueless, I didn't realise that mince substitutes aren't all made of the same stuff.
Going to try turkey mince cottage pie today, and later in the week the spag bol will be half the quantity of mince, plus lentils.
Some great ideas thanks

Don't red lentils make the spag Bol go a little sludgy/smooth? I love red lentils in soups and curries because of the velvety texture they bring, but that would be a bit odd in spag Bol.

How many do you add?

Also, do dry green lentils need soaking or can they just be added too?

I don't find it smooth because I include chopped onion and diced carrot...also celery...loads of onion, carrot and celery in fact...I cut it small but it adds bite. I only use red lentils.

If you've already massively bulked out with veg, is it really still "red meat heavy"?

We have stacks of fruit trees in the garden, so one thing we do to decrease meat and increase fruit/veg intake is to have smaller main courses and then cooked fruit pudding of some sort.

Skylark if you're putting the same amount of meat in it then it;s still the same amount of meat no matter how many veg are in it. But I don't see anything wrong with meat twice a week...that's how often we have it.

one chicken per week and either gammon or bacon in something another day. The rest of the days are meat free.