Hamburger Helper with Impossible meat substitute
I did it because I had bought a pack of Impossible ground beef substitute stuff, to try making smash burgers on my excellent electric griddle. But I forgot to use it when I had burger night, so I had to use it up somehow.
So I made Hamburger Helper with it, which is usually delicious when you use beef. So how is Impossible Helper? Is it worth using a $9 puck (12 oz.) of ground beef substitute when making a $1 cheeseburger macaroni kit?
The answer is, no, it's probably not worth it, unless you have a certain type of nostalgia for hamburger helper (which I do) combined with a dietary restriction that doesn't allow you to have beef (which I do not).
Cooking it was a bit different (I should point out this is my first time cooking with it in any way, I think I've tried cooking some kinda impossible sausage or some other brand, which I did not like) than with ground beef. I oiled the skillet, but even with that a lot of it stuck to the pan, but it mostly came unstuck when adding the liquid to the pan.
I also forgot to season the 'meat' before adding the powder/liquid/noodles, which I usually do with hamburger helper. I thought I'd read that it had a bit of sodium already, so I wasn't going to add salt, so I just added pepper and onion powder after I'd added everything else, which I think affected the flavor of the end result differently than if I'd just seasoned the 'meat'.
So yeah, anyways, it cooked up mostly like normal, but it didn't taste like normal hamburger helper. I'll say the texture was pretty much spot on, but the flavor was not (and who would really expect it to be?). I won't say I disliked the flavor, but I wasn't crazy about it.
If you're wondering if you should try doing this yourself, I'd say don't do it, unless you really like how the impossible meat tastes.