A vegan butcher shop sounds like an oxymoron, but believe it or not, such a venue is soon going to be operating in the US. Having surpassed their Kickstarter goal of $60,000, ‘The Herbivorous Butcher’ will be setting up shop in Minneapolis – bringing meat-free meat to vegans and vegetarians in the area. They’re going to be serving a host of meatless options, including ribs, bacon, chicken, sausage and more.
Siblings Aubry and Kale Walch are the brains behind Herbivorous Butcher. They have combined their vegetarian lifestyle with their Guamanian roots, and added touches from culinary cultures from around the world to create fake meats that have the texture and flavor of real red meats.
“We have carefully crafted 100% vegan, cruelty-free meat alternatives that capture the best flavors, textures, and nutrients that meats have to offer without their negative impacts on health, animals, and the environment,” they revealed. Some of the benefits of their products include – ‘small batch from scratch’, ‘hand-crafted’, ‘cholesterol free’, and ‘protein rich’.
“In addition to our five mainstays (Smoky House Ribs, Teriyaki Jerky, Pepperoni, Deli Bologna, Italian Sausage) we’ve created a series of successful weekly specials like Maple-Glazed Bacon, Hawaiian Ribs, Andouille Sausage, Scarborough Chicken, Beer Brats, Mexican Chorizo, Pulled Pork, and Maple Sage Breakfast Sausages,” they added.
If you’re curious to know how meat-free meats are made, the page does reveal some of the ingredients that go into their products. Wheat Gluten is a major component that is present in all their meatless offerings, along with various flavor enhancers such as tomato juice, nutritional yeast, soy sauce, brown sugar, olive oil, paprika, peppercorns, beet powder, and of course, salt.
According to the campaign page, Aubry has been a vegetarian for 18 years and spent close to 10 years creating meat-free alternatives to several foods that she grew up eating in Guam. She succeeded in blending the flavors, spices and textures of Guamanian cuisine with flavors from cultures across the world to create her own line of products.
Inspired by Aubry, Kale soon became a vegan and developed a keen sense for the many ingredients and methods that go into making nutritious and flavorful meat alternatives. Since he was an omnivore until a short while ago, he is able to accurately invoke the flavors of his previous ‘meat palate’ to create realistic meat-free alternatives.
The duo first started selling meatless meat at the Minneapolis Farmer’s Market and received great reviews from vegans and even carnivores! The brick-and-mortar shop is all set to open sometime in spring 2015 – it will be designed to look like a typical butcher’s shop with cold cases filled with fresh ‘meats’, rotary specials and a section that sells vegan cheeses, deli meats, breads and marinades.
Photos: The Herbivorous Butcher/Facebook
via Kickstarter
