Review: Veggie Patch Broccoli Bites with cheese

I like cooked broccoli. I like cheese. I like breaded fried foods. And so, it seems only natural that I’d like these Veggie Patch Broccoli Bites with cheese.

The Look: Like chicken nuggets, minus the chicken. There’s no attempt at fake meat here. When you bite one open, it looks like pureed broccoli mush inside an oily breadcrumb exterior.

The Taste: Like oily breadcrumbs with salty cheese and a mushy filling made of various ground-up veggies, including the dominant broccoli. There’s also a hint of spring roll, if you can believe it. Because of the spring-roll taste, I pulled a jar of plum sauce out of the fridge, using the sweet-and-tangy sauce for dipping. The result was grand. On their own, the nuggets are only so-so; but with the plum sauce, they become much more enjoyable.

The Texture: A bit mushy for my liking. The exterior breadcrumbs give some scratch on the tongue, but the filling is too soft. There’s no bite to these at all. Once they cool down and solidify a bit, if feels like you’re eating something slightly more substantial.

—

RATINGS AND DETAILS

Cost: $4.99 ($3.99 on sale) for a 284 gram (10 oz.) box at an Edmonton grocery store.

Value for cash money: OK, I guess.

Availability: Widely available.

Nutrition?: Per 80 gram serving (4 nuggets): 160 calories, 8 grams of fat, 400 mg of sodium (eek!), 2 grams of fibre, 6 grams of protein, 15 % daily value of calcium.

Vegetarian friendly: Yes, but the cheese means it’s obviously not safe for vegans. It’s also GMO-free.

Product of Israel?: How about that. These things have travelled quite a distance to make it to my oven.

The verdict: The blunt assessment? These nuggets are salty vegetarian junk food. But with plum sauce, they’re good enough that even my diehard carnivore wife was happy to scarf them down.