Jimmy Dean Debuts Plant-Based Patties—with Plenty Of Egg And Cheese On Top
Jimmy Dean—the all-American company whose entire schtick is pork sausage—is introducing two new microwavable breakfast sandwiches that feature plant sausage. Plant sausage! I never thought I'd live to see this day, and I feel like one lucky sonofabitch. This is probably how my parents felt when we landed on the moon.
Alas, people on vegan diets shouldn't get too excited by this news. Jimmy Dean's new sausage is based on plants, sure (namely soybeans), but it is bound with egg whites produced by chickens. The new breakfast sandwiches also complement the plant patty with eggs and American cheese, because there's only so far Jimmy Dean can go down the road to Plantsville without throwing the entire world into disarray. Baby steps.
Jimmy Dean's Plant-Based Patty, Egg & Cheese Croissant Sandwich is available starting today; the Plant-Based Patty & Frittata Sandwich—a vegetable and grain patty made of soybeans, black beans, brown rice, quinoa, and egg white topped with a spinach and egg white frittata and American cheese on a whole wheat English muffin—will be in stores this spring. I had the opportunity to try both new sandwiches in advance, and I'm pleased to report that as far as microwaveable breakfast foods go, they were pretty damn good. In fact, dare I say I found them to be better than their meat-based counterparts? As much as I enjoy the taste of breakfast sausage, I've always found it too heavy and greasy to actually be eaten for breakfast. It's hard enough for me to fully embrace consciousness first thing in the morning, and if I'm going to eat a sandwich, I can't have one that's going to make me want to go straight back to bed to sleep it off. These new plant-based sausage sandwiches, however, taste nearly identical to the real thing, but without the excess grease or the lethargy that follows. In fact, I was able to eat two whole sandwiches shortly after I woke up today, and didn't start feeling like I wanted to take a nap until two hours later! This is a personal record, and possibly scientific proof that these sandwiches are, indeed, part of a balanced breakfast. (Whatever that actually means.)