Savoury Snacks With Protein That Aren't Meat

September 16, 2026|Team TEMPTÉ

a plate of tempeh crisps with crispy chickpeas, seaweed sheets and chunks of hard cheese.

The savoury snack aisle divides fairly neatly. There's the meat end — jerky, biltong, pork scratchings, sausage sticks — and there's the starch end, which is crisps in various shapes.

What's thinner on the ground is the bit in between: something savoury and substantial that isn't either. Here's what's worth knowing about, with the actual numbers where they're useful.

Edamame

Young soya beans, sold frozen or roasted. Around 11g of protein per 100g cooked, and they come with fibre attached.

Frozen ones need three minutes and a lot of salt. The roasted crunchy sort travel well and are genuinely underrated.

Roasted chickpeas

The cheapest option here by a distance. A drained tin, dried properly, tossed in oil and spices, roasted at 200°C for around 35 minutes.

Getting them thoroughly dry before they go in is what separates crunchy from chewy. Around 9g of protein per 100g, and you control the salt entirely.

Nuts

The obvious answer. Peanuts run around 26g of protein per 100g, almonds about 21g.

One thing worth knowing, since it's rarely mentioned: nuts are calorie-dense and physically light, which is a combination that doesn't fill you up as much as the numbers suggest. In the best-known study on satiety, peanuts scored below plain white bread. Worth pairing them with something more substantial.

Hard cheese

If you eat dairy, this is the most efficient thing on the list. Cheddar is around 25g of protein per 100g, it needs no preparation, and it survives a bag. It's also the backbone of a decent board, if you're putting one out rather than packing one.

Boiled eggs

Around 13g of protein per 100g, already packaged by nature, and considerably better cold than people expect.

Wasabi peas and Bombay mix

Both dried pulses at heart, both in British corner shops for decades. Bombay mix is gram flour, lentils and peanuts with spice. Most versions are suitable for plant-based eaters, though some use ghee — worth a glance at the label.

Seaweed snacks

Very savoury, very light, and almost nothing to them nutritionally — which is fine as long as you know it. Good alongside something more substantial rather than instead of it.

Tempeh snacks

Ours, so weigh it accordingly.

Tempeh is fermented whole soya beans, and plain tempeh runs around 20g of protein and 7g of fibre per 100g. As a base ingredient for a savoury snack that's an unusually substantial starting point — most of the aisle starts from potato or a starch blend.

What you actually eat depends on how it's made, as it does for everything on this list. Baked rather than fried, no batter, and the flavour comes from the bean rather than a coating.

What to look at, generally

Two habits do most of the work.

Read protein per 100g, not per portion. Portion sizes are chosen by whoever made the packet, and 30g is a smaller handful than most people take.

Check where the protein comes from. A snack built on pea protein isolate and a snack built on whole beans can show similar numbers and eat very differently — the whole food brings fibre and texture with it.

And bear in mind that protein alone doesn't determine how full something leaves you. The research suggests physical weight and water content matter more than any single nutrient — which is why a light, airy high-protein puff can leave you hungry twenty minutes later.