Nutrition and health are the key considerations when it comes to menu planning. Menus need to have a variety of protein options that taste, sound, and look amazing. Vegan and vegetarian dishes are no exception to this.
Protein plays a huge role in creating the perfect menu and whilst it’s an ingredient that has typically been linked to meat and fish, we’re showing chefs that there’s another option.
QuornPro mycoprotein
We work with customers across all channels to make this as easy as possible with our super-protein, QuornPro mycoprotein. Our mycoprotein is a nutritious and sustainable complete protein, making it easier for chefs to add dishes to menus with nutritional benefits, that taste great and have a positive impact on the planet.
We always advise chefs to think about the key food groups to create a balanced meal option. Protein is really important, as are fats and carbohydrates to keep energy levels up. Fruit and vegetables should also be added into each meal for further vitamins and minerals.
NHS catering: staff and patient
We are launching a dedicated support service for healthcare chefs. The QuornPro Healthcare team will support NHS sites in the development of our Meat Halfway solution ensuring caterers have access to our delicious carbon calculated recipes and inspiration boards for both staff and patient menu planning.
Let’s Meat Halfway
A bit of meat. A bit of meat free protein. Our 50:50 approach is inspiring NHS operators with tasty, healthy, low carbon dishes. It is also playing a really important role in the total amount of meat being eaten - helping tackle climate change and improve public health – while still delivering great-tasting food which people are familiar with.
We are incredibly proud to be working closely with the NHS on Let’s Meat Halfway as we believe it provides excellent value and incredible taste, so that NHS caterers do not need to compromise on quality, affordability, health or helping the planet.
We’re receiving brilliant feedback from our partners who recognise the numerous benefits this initiative is bringing - reducing carbon emissions, lowering saturated fat and cholesterol, and increasing fibre in the diets of patients and staff.
Testimonial: assistant food production manager, Food Production Unit, City Hospital Campus
The food production management team at NUH were introduced to the 50/50 ‘meat in the middle’ concept by Quorn last year. After our meeting, the intention was to put some of these dishes on as part of our monthly food tasting sessions.
We produced two dishes, Beef Chilli and Beef Lasagne. using our current recipes which have been developed to ensure they are able to withstand the cook, chill freeze processes that we are using for patient feeding. The only change we made was to substitute half of the beef mince content with the Quorn mince.
We presented the two finished dishes to our monthly food-tasting group where they both scored over 90% in the taste test. Overall, it was extremely well received, and it is a concept we would like to explore further in our next menu development cycle.