What Is Mind Blown Dusted Shrimp?
Mind Blown is the retail brand of The Plant Based Seafood Co., founded by a mother-daughter team, Shelly Van Cleave and Monica Talbert, who both came out of the conventional seafood industry before moving into plant-based alternatives. Dusted Shrimp is one of their flagship products: bite-sized, breaded shrimp-shaped pieces built from konjac (a root vegetable long used in Asian cooking for its gelatinous, chewy texture) rather than the pea-protein extrusion most "meat" analogs rely on.
It's sold frozen, shipped on dry ice directly from the company's own site as well as through select natural grocers and online retailers, and it's positioned squarely as a drop-in replacement for popcorn shrimp or breaded shrimp appetizers — the kind of thing you'd toss in an air fryer for a party platter or a quick dinner side, not a slow-cooked, restaurant-plated dish.
Ingredients
The product is built in two layers — a shrimp-mimicking core and a seasoned breading — and the ingredient list reflects that split:
Shrimp base: konjac powder, vegetable gum, vegetable root starch, paprika, brown sugar, sea salt, plant-based vegan seasoning.
Breading: tapioca flour, coconut flour, egg replacer (potato starch, tapioca flour), leavening agents (calcium lactate, calcium carbonate, cream of tartar), cellulose gum, modified cellulose, crystallized lemon (citric acid, lemon oil, lemon juice), garlic, paprika, turmeric, and other spices.
Nothing here is animal-derived — even the "egg replacer" is a starch blend, not a processed egg substitute with any animal input, and the leavening agents (calcium lactate and calcium carbonate) are mineral-based, not derived from bone or dairy despite the "lactate" name. If a specific ingredient name on a package ever gives you pause, running it through the spvegan.com ingredient checker is a fast way to confirm what it actually is.
Is Mind Blown Dusted Shrimp Vegan?
Yes — Mind Blown Dusted Shrimp is fully vegan. Every ingredient in both the shrimp base and the breading is plant- or mineral-derived: konjac, starches, coconut flour, citric acid, and spices, with no dairy, egg, or shellfish products anywhere in the formulation despite the product replicating shellfish. The Plant Based Seafood Co. is a dedicated plant-based seafood company, so there's no shared-line contamination risk the way there sometimes is with brands that make both conventional and plant-based versions of the same product.
Nutrition Facts: How Does It Compare?
Vegan shrimp is a small enough category that direct, apples-to-apples nutrition comparisons are harder to find than they are for something like burgers or milk. Here's how Mind Blown Dusted Shrimp compares to Sophie's Kitchen Breaded Vegan Shrimp, the other widely available breaded vegan shrimp product, using each brand's own labeled serving size:
| Product | Serving Size | Calories | Protein | Total Fat | Sodium |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mind Blown Dusted Shrimp | 5 pieces (92g) | 90 | 4g | 0g | 1240mg |
| Sophie's Kitchen Breaded Vegan Shrimp | 7 pieces (100g) | 240 | 4g | 11g | 270mg |
These two products land in almost opposite places nutritionally. Mind Blown is lower in calories and essentially fat-free, which tracks with its konjac base rather than an oil-fried breading — but its sodium is dramatically higher, at 1,240mg per serving, more than half a day's recommended sodium intake in a single appetizer-sized portion. Sophie's Kitchen runs higher in calories and fat but far lower in sodium. Neither is a "health food" in the way a plain vegetable is, but if sodium is a concern for you, Mind Blown is not the low-sodium choice its light calorie count might suggest — this is worth pairing with unsalted sides rather than a salty dipping sauce.
Taste and Texture
Vegan shrimp is a genuinely hard category to nail, since real shrimp's appeal is as much about a specific springy, snappable bite as it is about flavor. Mind Blown's konjac base gets meaningfully close: the interior has a chewy, firm bite that reviewers have compared to a "tougher mushroom" — not identical to shrimp, but in the right neighborhood, and far closer than a soft, mushy substitute would be. The flavor profile leans mildly fishy with a touch of sweetness and salt, which comes through even under the breading.
The breading itself is where the product does a lot of its work: crisp when cooked properly, with citrus and garlic notes from the lemon and spice blend that read as a seasoned, restaurant-style coating rather than a generic frozen-food crust. Like most breaded frozen products, it performs best baked or air-fried rather than microwaved, which will leave the coating soft and gummy instead of crisp. Given the sodium load already baked into the seasoning, it's worth skipping extra salt in whatever dip or seasoning you serve alongside it.
Where it falls short of real shrimp is in that specific translucent, springy snap — konjac-based products in general tend to land closer to a firm mushroom or a dense noodle than to the exact bite of crustacean meat. For a cocktail-shrimp-on-ice presentation, that gap is more noticeable. Breaded and fried, tucked into tacos or a stir-fry, it's far less of an issue.
How It Compares to Other Vegan Shrimp Brands
| Product | Base Ingredient | Format | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mind Blown Dusted Shrimp | Konjac | Breaded, frozen | Lower-calorie, fat-free option; air fryer appetizers |
| Sophie's Kitchen Breaded Vegan Shrimp | Konjac / starch blend | Breaded, frozen | Lower sodium, more traditional "fried shrimp" richness |
| Beleaf Plant-Based Shrimp | Konjac powder, potato extract | Unbreaded, frozen, seaweed-seasoned | Stir-fries, pasta, dishes needing plain shrimp pieces |
The category has converged on konjac as the base of choice, which makes sense — it's one of the few plant ingredients that naturally has a chewy, slightly springy bite without needing heavy processing. The real differentiator between brands ends up being format: Mind Blown and Sophie's Kitchen are both pre-breaded and best suited to appetizer-style use, while Beleaf sells plain, unbreaded pieces meant to go straight into a stir-fry, pasta, or shrimp cocktail–style presentation.
How to Cook It
Because the coating is starch-based rather than a traditional wheat batter, it responds best to dry, high-heat cooking rather than deep frying in a home kitchen. An air fryer at around 400°F for roughly 8–10 minutes, flipping halfway, gets the breading properly crisp without drying out the konjac interior. A conventional oven works too, though it takes a few minutes longer and benefits from a wire rack so the underside doesn't steam instead of crisping. Pan-frying in a thin layer of oil is another option if you want more browning, but keep the heat moderate — the exterior can brown faster than the inside heats through if the pan is too hot.
What doesn't work well is the microwave: without dry heat, the starch-based breading turns soft and slightly gummy rather than crisp, which undercuts most of what the product has going for it. If you're serving it as a party appetizer, a simple dip — cocktail sauce, a garlic aioli, or a squeeze of lemon — plays well with the citrus and garlic notes already in the breading, though given the sodium content already baked in, a lower-sodium dip is worth considering over something like a salty remoulade.
Storage
Mind Blown Dusted Shrimp ships and is sold frozen, and like most breaded frozen foods, it should stay in the freezer until you're ready to cook it rather than thawing first — cooking from frozen is part of what keeps the breading from turning soggy. Once opened, reseal the bag tightly and use the remainder within the timeframe printed on the package; refreezing after the product has fully thawed is not recommended for texture reasons, even though it may still be technically safe.
Where to Buy and Price
Mind Blown Dusted Shrimp is sold in a 6.5–7.5 oz. package, generally running somewhere in the $10–$12 range depending on the retailer, and can be ordered directly from the company's website (shipped frozen with dry ice) as well as through online grocers that carry the brand. It's a smaller, newer company than names like Gardein or Sophie's Kitchen, so physical shelf space is limited — it's more reliably found through online ordering than by walking into a mainstream grocery store.
Who Should Buy This
Mind Blown Dusted Shrimp is a good fit if you want a lower-calorie, fat-free plant-based appetizer with a genuinely seasoned, crisp breading, and you're comfortable ordering a specialty item online rather than finding it on a regular grocery run. It's a poor fit if you're sodium-restricted — the 1,240mg per serving is a real number to plan around — or if what you're after is unbreaded shrimp pieces for a stir-fry or pasta dish, where Beleaf's plain version is the better match. If you specifically want the closest thing to a traditional fried-shrimp appetizer experience with lower sodium, Sophie's Kitchen is worth comparing side by side before you commit to a case.
Final Verdict
Mind Blown Dusted Shrimp is a legitimately clever piece of food engineering — konjac gives it a bite that's closer to real shrimp than most plant-based seafood manages, and the seasoned breading tastes like it was actually developed by people who know seafood, which tracks with the founders' backgrounds. The sodium content is the clearest knock against it, and it's worth going in with realistic expectations about that "tougher mushroom" texture rather than expecting an exact shrimp clone. As a frozen appetizer for an air fryer rather than a straight seafood replacement in a composed dish, it earns its reputation.
Rating: 7.5/10 — a strong pick if you want a fat-free, genuinely seasoned vegan shrimp appetizer and don't mind ordering online, with sodium as the one number worth watching.
