Asian Food Experiment:Take 1.......or Soylent Bean

A few months ago when I went to Philly with Professor Friend to see the Mates of State at the Trocadero we spent the next day roaming the city hangovers in tow. During our very long walk to Geno's Steaks (totally worth it) we detoured through china town and of course stopped in to a few Asian grocers. When you're shopping at the Asian market it's always fun to grab a few packets of something with mystery ingredients. Mystery ingredients to us anyway since neither of us actually speak Chinese. It's a fun game.

Throw in the fact that I have multiple food allergies and it makes this a much riskier venture you would originally think. Luckily, Asian marketing seems to be pretty straight forward. Those guys put pictures on everything! So, when flexing my culinary muscles I just look for the usual visual clues. There's not a doubt in my mind that if a package contained shrimp (or even shrimp flavoring) there would be a picture of those chipper little guys smiling up at me, waving his tentacles in glee as if to say, "I'm tasty!"

During the Philly trip I bought two different packages. We were going to drive back to Jersey, grab some beer, and do the experiment there using the professor as my own personal guinea pig. Unfortunately, the professor lost the cable for his camera and I wouldn't be able to access any pictures we took so we had to put our plans on hold until a later date. Technical difficulties thwart more plans of mine than I'd like to admit. Fast forward to Sunday night. Boyfriend and I got off work and went out for a drink (shocker, right?) We finally got home after a few stops and we were happily inebriated. We were also hungry, but hadn't gone grocery shopping in weeks so it was slim pickins. That's when boyfriend emerged from my office with a shit eating grin on his face and one of the packets of mystery snacks I had long forgotten.

Ta-da! Beef Pops! (I'm guessing) I never entertained the idea of these things actually counting as sustinance, they certainly didn't qualify as a meal. But, when you have a drunk and hungry boyfriend on your hands who's willing to eat anything the rules kinda go out the window. I know what you're thinking, "that's beef jerky, big deal". But I hate beef jerky (love Slim Jim's though), so the idea of meat lollipops are pretty gross to me. Besides, the big picture here is that these are Asian "beef" lollipops which means they could be made of practically anything; dog, cat, guinea pig... need I go on?

When we opened the packaging we were nearly bowled over by the smell. A mixture of beef and ass that one can only find in pre-packaged meats that need no refrigeration. It in no way made me want to try the treats inside. Nor did the greasy lubrication I assume they included to keep the meat 'moist', so it slides down the gullit more easily. Ideal, I'm sure, for the snacker on the run.

Boyfriend went first. He devoured half a meat pop in one bite. It tasted enough like beef jerky, but the texture begged to differ. It was chewy like it had been dehydrated and then rehydrated. Exactly what one looks for in a quality snack!

I went next and I believe the following picture sums up my reaction nicely......

Yeah. Besides my general hate for beef jerky something was not right there. Still, we polished off the whole package before we actually decided to do any further investigation (thanks alcohol). Even the Bean had some. Dogs.... she wasn't even drunk.

Here's where I feel I should mention that it wasn't until we were nearing the end of the packet that we noticed these weird swirly little objects peppered throughout the grease. Were they some sort of magical spices or were they tiny little rolled up worms? We weren't sure. Upon inspection we decided they probably weren't worms since they were visible through the clear packaging and these meat pops were heavily seasoned. Sometimes it's better for your own psyche to believe the less horrible of options, we were going to live blissfully in ignorance.

That lasted about three minutes.

Our bellies full, (and kinda rumbly) we decided to try and figure out what exactly we had just eaten. We were pretty sure it wasn't beef, and we hoped for Barski's sake it wasn't dog. I couldn't live with the idea of making my dog an involuntary cannibal. The only language on the packaging that wasn't a Chinese character accompanied what we assumed was the company mascot/logo in the corner of the packaging. Asia's answer to the Quaker Oats guy? Here's hoping!

There it is folks, Xiang Xiang, the only recognizable script on the packaging. We let our fingers do the walking with a quick internet search and found the company's website. It was in Chinese, but there was a translate to English option, perfect. There it was right on the home page, Xiang Xiang is China's number one maker of soy based foods. Whew... enter sigh of relief here. The texture wasn't cat after all, it was soy! Super.

Later I found this picture of Xiang Xiang soy skewers online except these ones look fucking delicious.