New Finnish veggie protein products + Blog anniversary

I try to get into a more regular posting schedule again this year, but as always the year has started hectically, so I must apologise for the more quiet period. Even my blog anniversary caught me by surprise. I was fully aware the whole time that it would be coming, but I just didn't have the time to prepare anything special for it, and then the day suddenly passed. However I'm thrilled to be blogging still and want to say a big thank you to all my readers, you really make it worthwhile! I'm really motivated for the new blogging year, I just need to schedule my time better, more coming soon!

Last year I wrote about a new Finnish protein product Pulled Oats. It has become a big hit product, and also at the same time vegetarian eating in general has started to interest people more in Finland, and vegetarian meals and meat substitutes are selling better than ever. I really hope that my home country will embrace a more vegetable based diet with the time, as many of the traditional dishes tend to be heavy and meat based. When I went to Finland over Christmas, I was happy to detect new veggie products that are also already trending. I tasted Härkis, a broad bean protein product and Mifu, a milk protein based product. Both are from the chilled counter and basically ready to go, which makes this sort of vegetarian cooking with more substance really easy.

Härkis, which I would translate as Broadie (the name is kind of a nickname for the Finnish word broad bean Härkäpapu), is mainly made from broad beans and pea protein. It’s pre-prepared and then chilled, so it only needs warming up and it can be just fried briefly or added to sauces towards the end. It comes in fairly large chunks and the texture is soft yet firm. This product is suitable for vegans. I made a tomato sauce with Härkis to go with nice vegetable pasta, and it was very tasty. The product is very easy to use and I can’t wait to experiment more with it (once I can get some again). I could imagine that it makes brilliant burgers and meatless balls.

The second new product is Mifu (see what they did there, milk + tofu maybe..?), granules made from milk protein. It’s very much like Finnish cottage cheese (which is drier and has more defined granules in comparison to the British equivalent) with the one difference that this product can be fried. It currently comes in three flavours: plain, Mediterranean tomato and Mexican pepper. These are all lactose free, but obviously only suitable for vegetarians and not vegans. I really like the grainy cottage cheese anyway and the fact that this can now be fried only makes it better. I made mixed vegetables in a pan with the plain Mifu and served it with potato mash. The Mifu really added something nice to the dish, and I can see it being very versatile in sauces, pasta dishes, soups, salads, anything. I really want to experiment more with this product as well.

Your VegHog