Magpyes (vegan meat pies from Northumberland)
Magpye is an amazing company in Northumberland, where a couple make vegan pies (without palm oil) then fill them with vegan steak and chicken, and sometimes vegan steak and blue cheese! They are even made with pastry made from regenerated local wheat.
Keep these faux meats away from pets, due to unsafe ingredients like garlic, onion and salt. For the same reason, don’t give them to garden birds or wildfowl (salt is toxic, and fat can smear on feathers, affecting waterproofing and insulation).
Recycle packaging at supermarket bag bins, if your kerbside doesn’t recycle.
The range includes:
- Steak & ale (in onion gravy)
- Chick’n, Leek & Bacun (in creamy parsley sauce)
- Mince & Onion (in homemade gravy)
- Mushroom & Roasted garlic
- Roast Chickn’ Dinner (in a pie!)
Why Choose Vegan Meats?
England is a country of around 67 million people. This means that although most people eat meat (though the amount of people who don’t is growing rapidly), there is simply not enough land for everyone to eat free-range meat, from animals that graze outside and have access to cosy indoors barns,
This means that most meats sold in England are either raised in factory farms here, or imported (for instance, most factory-farmed Danish bacon is imported to the UK for supermarkets).
So it’s not ‘harming traditional farmers’ to try faux meats, because people who eat meat will support them anyway by eating free-range meat. But for everyone else, then it’s good to discover some good vegan alternatives. And these are not just animal-kind, but cholesterol-free and not linked to cancers, like many processed meats (bacon is an obvious example, due to nitrates produced when cooked).
Old vegan meats used to be dire – dehydrated textured vegetable protein that you would hydrate and have to add things to make it tasty. But today we have all kinds of options, made from pea protein and other natural ingredients like tempeh (an Indonesian fermented soy) and seitan (a wheat-meat that looks, tastes and smells just like meat).
