Squeaky Bean is quite a staple in my household. Their ready to eat products and sandwich pieces are usually included in our weekly shop as they are super convenient and also super good for my macros. That being said, I don’t think they bring out new products all too often so the food fatigue can start to set in with them. I then found these bacon strips in my local Tesco and whilst they were labelled as new, I cannot find anything online about whether or not they are in fact a new product from Squeaky Bean or if they are simply a new product to Tesco. So, let’s just go with them being entirely new for now.
I do want to preface this by saying that I have not eaten meat in about 16 years at this point, and even when I did eat meat, I did not like bacon. I’ve never gotten the hype around bacon and always found it super salty and really greasy. Annoyingly, it seems that even the vegan version of bacon is the same as these strips were insanely salty. They did taste like bacon, but in that very artificial tasting way – you know the way that bacon flavoured crisps taste? It’s exactly like that. Personally I don’t mind the taste, and I will admit it is quite moreish, but the big hinderance for me is the amount of salt that seems to be within these things.
The texture is very much like jerky, in that it is crispy but very chewy, which I personally don’t mind. I do wonder if these would be better if you cooked them, but as they are advertised as being ready to eat, I just had to persevere with them. The crunch was nice and the initial flavour is very similar to the bacon flavoured crisps you can get, but it does leave this weird aftertaste that is very, very salty, and also a tiny bit burnt? I imagine if these were mixed into something like a salad or a sandwich, then it would add this nice smoky crunch to the meal, but on their own I just found them a bit gross.
The other downside is that the Squeaky Bean products are quite expensive, with the majority of their sandwich and snack products costing at least £3, if not higher. With their other products I can kind of overlook the price, because they always taste nice and help me hit my macros in a very convenient and tasty way, but I’m afraid I felt a little ripped off with these. With a price of £3.50 for a pack, whilst you do get a lot of strips in a pack, when they taste so unpleasant it really doesn’t matter. I also think that even if I did want that bacon flavour for a meal, I would buy other products on the market that do it way better than these strips do.
Taylor Talks Vegan 