These are another find from our recent scouring of the shelves at Sprouts. These vegan friendly tamales live over in the freezer aisle where you will find six to a package. Inside the non resealable bag you should find these:

Once opened, we decided to move the tamales to a sealable bag asap to prevent freezer burn. Cooking couldn’t be easier, indeed they cook up like most frozen tamales: wrap them in a damp paper towel and microwave for 2-3 minutes. Hey presto, a fresh piping hot tamale. Here are a few plates we cooked up with ours:



Obviously the headline item here is the vegan sticker. That means no animal fats in the corn masa, and I think it does show through in the final tasting. The texture is more mealy and crumbly as opposed to those with lard. It’s not particular unpleasant, but it’s a noticeable difference.
The taste is solid enough, the filling is predominantly zucchini, which for my liking was actually a little too dominant – a little too vegetal? For my money I’d love to see a version of these with a meat-free ground beef product. That could be really interesting.
Meat eaters will find this a passable tamale, I expect vegans will be far more receptive (that’s essentially our household and how the results came in – one not bad, one awesome). At any rate there’s a whole heap less saturated fat here than a regular tamale!
Buenatural Vegan Tamales ingredients and nutrition

Are Buenatural Vegan Tamales any good?
These are decent but not spectacular. If you’re a steadfast vegan you might feel like adding an extra point to that score mind you. For the rest of us, there’s definitely something to be said for the extra richness.

Hi, I’m Stuart, nice to meet you! I’m the founder, writer and wrangler at Gastronomic SLC – Utah’s biggest and oldest online food magazine; I’m also a former restaurant critic of more than five years, working for the Salt Lake Tribune. I’ve worked extensively with multiple local publications from Visit Salt Lake to Salt Lake Magazine, not least helped to consult on national TV shows.
I’m a multiple-award winning journalist and have covered the Utah dining scene for the better part of fifteen years. I’m largely fueled by a critical obsession with rice, alliteration and the use of big words I don’t understand. I started Shop Smart to catalogue my adventures in the grocery store and kitchen. Follow along on Instagram too!