They serve this patty at Umami Burger in SF. We tried it a few weeks ago and everyone was really disappointed. It definitely doesn't bleed. It's cooked well-done and can't be ordered any other way. The taste is similar to a well-done beef patty.
I'd love to try the burger they're describing here. Maybe the product is difficult to work with and Umami is unable to get these results? Or maybe they're describing some version 2.0 Impossible patty that isn't available yet?
It's my understanding that the Impossible burger _has_ to be served medium-rare; otherwise, you're boiling off all the myoglobin (the stuff that makes it taste meaty) and just tasting the pea protein (the stuff that's in every other veggie burger). It's unconscionable that they'd serve it well-done. (Though knowing Umami Burger, I'm not exactly surprised.)
I also tried it at Umami Burger, but mine was cooked medium. It dripped pinkish juice similar to a medium-cooked burger. I found it surprisingly close to the real thing. Most people would guess correctly in a blind test, but if you served it to an unsuspecting person, they'd probably think it was the real deal.
One caveat: I may not be the best judge of accuracy. I eat meat maybe once every three months (usually by accident or because my alternative is to go hungry).
Gott's at the Ferry Building has it so I'd gone once to try it. It was pretty good, and not well done. I'm only an occasional beef eater (a few times per year), so I don't have a super sensitive palette to compare to.
I think the mistake was making it well done. I've had it, and my take away was "good". Not nearly as good as grass fed beef, but better than fast food. Probably just below 5 guys.
Just to be clear, it's far less safe to eat ground beef rare than a steak. With a steak, potentially harmful bacteria are all on the outside, which you sear. So the interior can be practically raw and the steak will be safe to consume. If you grind it up, the outside is now mixed into the inside.
One cool trick to get around this is to cook the beef sous vide. Beef can be pasteurized at as low as 130 F as long as it's held at that temperature for long enough. That's basically medium rare.
less safe, but not far less safe. since 1998, there have been less than 400 deaths from foodborne illness in the united states. 12 of those were from ground beef. Your risk is utterly negligible.
True, however death is not the primary worry of anyone who thinks they have have eaten undercooked meat. People are generally more worried about just getting sick.
if you're worried about just getting sick, the odds are more like 2/100000 per 20 years from ground beef, although I trust these numbers less, despite being from the CDC.
The tool seems to be dealing with reported outbreaks only. The total illnesses in the outbreak tool over that time period is at 370K, but the cdc reports 48M foodborne illness cases per year, so totally different scale
Ok, clearly I am drawing the wrong inference from this tool, but I think the point still remains valid. insofar as it matters whether your beef was ground, the statistics you should care about are outbreak statistics. The reason that ground beef is less safe than steak is that pathogens from thousands of cows are evenly distributed among the entire slurry. This would absolutely be captured in outbreak statistics.
After the relevant processing, the argument for cooking burgers to 160 is no different from the argument to cook your lettuce to 160.
> If the OP didn't like it because they don't like well done burgers in general then, well, I'm not sure what they were expecting when they ordered one.
What OP actually said:
"It's cooked well-done and can't be ordered any other way."
OP didn't order it that way, Umami Burger won't cook it any other way.
They said they didn't have any choice in how it was prepared, and the restaurant picked "well-done" — but yes, I would call that a success for Impossible. Just because Umami Burger prepares the burger poorly doesn't mean the burger failed, since it tastes as good as a normal meat burger would be expected to when prepared the same way.
I'd guess they aim at the low-price market eventually. If they can scale it well enough it might become cheaper then real meat for mc donalds and than at will be huge!
I had the same experience — a charred puck. I actually returned the first one but the second wasn’t much of an improvement. Earlier in the month I spoke with one of IB’s execs and he said that each restaurant was preparing them differently.
Weird, I've had it at the Umami Burger in Santa Monica and it was definitely not well done and was a pretty passable burger. The one exception was a single bite on a single patty did taste really strongly of sea-weed but other than that it was pretty good.
The fact that they argued that leghemoglobin is safe because it is similar to other globins is kind of weird. A chemistry professor once told me that the chemical Thalidomide is a medicine that can be used to treat morning sickness, but if you only reverse the chirality it can cause birth defects.
In case you don't know, if you reverse the chirality of a molecule it is essentially what the same molecule would be when viewed in a mirror, with all it's directions reversed.
The greater issue with thalidomide is that it racemizes in the body. That means even if you take the enantiomerically pure form of thalidomide which treats morning sickness, the teratogenic form will be generated in the body.
The globin protein is going to be digested in the stomach and broken down into its constituent aminoacids (which are exactly the same as the one found in other proteins). It is probably is safe to eat.
That's not really how food/biology works. In this case the leghemoglobin is a protein that will be destroyed during digestion, come nowhere near the bloodstream, and is a protein not a small molecule (there can't be alternative chirality involved in a protein produced in a eukaryote).
As the protein is eaten it's broken down into the same small molecules and amino acids as every other protein eaten. Don't inject it into your bloodstream, and don't eat 100% by mass any individual thing and you'll be fine. Such a protein is likely less dissimilar biochemically to eating meat then eating an 'exotic' vegetarian dish.
Left a comment below, but chirality is not an issue at all here. It's yeast-derived protein and it's made the same way biochemically as all proteins in your body or that you've ever ingested.
Considering dietary research is so full of snake oil and poorly conducted studies, I'm sure that we're going to have decades of "studies" debating the pros and cons even if artificial beef becomes available in a quality that successfully mimics real beef.
They're fermenting the protein out of yeast, so it'll definitely be the exact same chirality as any protein in your body at the amino acid level. If you were to take the leghemoglobin extracted from a soy plant and the leghemoglobin fermented using yeast you'd essentially not be able to tell the difference. The only thing that might give it away would be some of the trace contaminants (you'd have trace soy protein versus trace yeast protein), all of which you eat/drink regularly anyway (that is if you eat soy or bread).
Full disclosure, the founder of Impossible Foods was an advisor of mine in grad school.
Read all the stories about this burger, they made it sound so amazing. So when I heard it was available in SF I called my sister who has been a vegan for 35 years and asked her to try it.
She had a high degree of anticipation but said afterward it wasn't that different than other alternatives. In fact she said the company was better at marketing hype than any real breakthrough.
So the impossible burger is coming to Detroit. Next time I'm in the city think I'm going to try the new Shake Shack instead.
But why would someone who's avoided meat for 35 years be interested in something that pretends to be meat?
I've not had milk-based ice cream for more than 5 years. There's a great variety of non-dairy frozen treats and I've eaten most of them. But I would not be a good person to ask which would be most palatable to someone who loved real ice cream -- I can't even remember what that tastes like.
Because they don't usually avoid meat because they don't like the taste - they do it for morale reasons. And sure, in 35 years a person may forget what that taste is, but if you make the best tasting plant-based burger then all sorts of people will be interested.
Even when I compare the Impossible Burger vs. the Beyond Burger, the Impossible Burger is more burger-y (I've been vegetarian for over 10 years FWIW). Now, I actually don't like the Impossible Burger it's too meat-like, and leaves a strong flavor for several hours afterwards. But there's a real difference between these "scientific veggie burgers" and the bean/tofu burgers of the past. I'm not saying you'll like the Impossible Burger, but at least try it once.
That's honestly a big upgrade though. When was the last time you had a veggie thing that tasted remotely like beef? I haven't had the opportunity for an impossible burger yet but I've never found any veggie product to be remotely close to meat imitation.
For what it's worth, I don't want veggie burgers to taste like beef. I want them to taste like a veggie burger. The ones that try too hard to taste like meat (save for this one perhaps), taste weird at best and terrible at worst. Beets, oats, and beans make for a pretty good meal.
For health reasons I don't eat much beef these days, so a veggie burger is the way to go at a lot of stands (or Chicken if I'm eating meat that day). I'm pretty happy deciding between the two instead of choosing one instead of the other.
I can appreciate the ideal of a marketable plant based product that tastes like beef but from a culinary standpoint I think it makes sense to just enjoy it for what it is. No one is trying to make Falafel taste like pulled pork. It's good as it is.
Who is the audience for this burger? I was a vegetarian growing up and to this day I prefer a balanced veggie burger (made of beans, grains, and veggies) to a beer burger. I would be horrified to eat something made of plants so desperately pretending to be meat... or which "bleeds".
Why don't we just raise and slaughter cattle humanely instead?
Meat eaters that don't want to give up the "taste" of meat to become vegetarian (e.g. for environmental or animal ethics reasons).
This is a "10x" sort of product -- for every 1 person who is willing to give up food that they think is delicious to become vegetarian, there are probably 10 people who wouldn't mind switching because the reasons are valid, but don't have the willpower or desire to give up burgers and fried chicken.
I believe this is the incorrect usage of "10x". "10x" generally implies a product that is 10 times better in some way to the existing solution in the market, not that there is "10x" the number of potential users.
Even if it were possible to take the life of a sentient being "humanely," trying to do so is not sustainable. You can't meet the demand for meat and still treat these animals with respect. So this product is aimed at people who will always eat meat, but who might try to reduce their consumption periodically without reducing the experience.
I think the intended audience is current meat eaters. Based on the marketing materials I've seen, it seems they're trying to push the fact that it's a much more land and water efficient way to make burgers.
It's arguable whether it's possible to slaughter cattle humanely; personally I'm skeptical. As for why most cattle isn't raised more humanely, it's because it's cheaper not to.
Some friends of mine are vegan or vegetarian for environmental reasons. Eating beef = biggest carbon footprint. These are folks who still want the taste of meat.
The video says they're not targeting vegetarians or vegans, they're targeting meat eaters. And why not? I love beef but I'm absolutely interested in eating a good, guilt-free copy of it.
I am. My wife is vegan but I'm not. I'm happy to eat something that tastes like what I'm used to and doesn't kill a cow. I'm not a foodie. For the most part, I eat out of necessity and not some sense of pleasure. I dislike most foods and I'm impossible to cook for because of it. I like the taste of a burger. I've cooked a Beyond burger. Tasted good enough. As long as the costs aren't crazy, that's what I'll eat.
For one (or, rather, for one billion) - the audience is a large portion of the Indian subcontinent, many of whom (79.8%) are Hindu, for whom cows are sacred (and they, therefore, don't eat beef.)
They're not vegetarian for the same reasons as many Western folks are - they're vegetarian because religion dictates it.
For them, a delicious Impossible Burger that meets religious guidelines might be a huge huge thing.
But why would they want a pale imitation of something else, instead of the good food they already have? Why bother trying to build the best handicapped product?
Sprouted superfirm tofu is a great base meat. It's fine raw and can be spiced and dressed any which way. Who needs to fake ground beef -- the cheapest meat cut there is?
Except India already has a culture of (delicious) vegetarian cuisine, so there's no great need for meat substitutes, unlike say America.
The Impossible burger is meant for the future of meat-loving America. At some point, we need to really raise the price of meat to factor in its environmental costs.
In the video, the narrator says that the target market for the burger isn't vegetarians but meat eaters. The idea being that it's a way to wean us carnivore folks off the real stuff.
The market isn't vegetarians/vegans. Their ultimate goal is reduction of environmental damage and greenhouse gases. Why try to sell to someone who already doesn't eat meat? The company is mission-driven and it wouldn't contribute to their cause.
The market is also too small. Reminds me of the apocryphal story of the 2 shoe salesmen in Africa: 1 says bad news, no one wears shoes. The other says good news, no one wears shoes.
I am? Lifelong vegetarian, but once in a while have real meat, so know what it tastes like.
I actively avoid burger joints that only serve your mashed vegetable cakes (aka garden burger). The point of a burger is lost.
There are plenty alternatives besides Impossible Burger that have robust flavor and texture. Several burger bars have let me bring examples, tried them, and started stocking.
To be fair, none of those alternatives were trying to bleed.
I would eat this (as long as the price is reasonable). I've been having to cut down on red meat due to health issues (gout). I find most veggie burgers to be pretty good (I'm not too picky) so this stuff would have to be extremely competitive in taste and price to make me even bother trying it.
I'm guessing vegans and those worried about the environmental impact of meat products (how much water does it take to make a pound of beef?) and worried about meeting the food demands of a larger world population.
because even the most ideal implementation of cattle is inefficient, adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and, ultimately, not humane. industrial murder can never be humane. as a meat eater, i am eager to switch to synthetic meats because they are better in every conceivable way.
More broadly, I, an omnivore, would be overwhelmingly more likely to eat a good vegetarian meal than an ersatz meat-containing meal. Be honest with your ingredients and your food will be tastier.
I wonder when people will realize that not all the land used by animal agriculture is particularly suited to high-yield crop outputs. I'd be less concerned with the portion of land being used for animal agriculture and more concerned about the amount of crop land being used for animal feed.
Is the implication here that meat-reduced diets are less ecologically sustainable in your opinion?
Considering that biomass transfer efficiency typically sits around 10%, it's likely still better to eat the majority of our crops directly.
Red-meat reduced diets are likely much more efficient, especially grain-fed cattle. Animals that graze well on rocky, nutrition-poor land like goats or that can be raised in small plots lots goats, chickens, and crickets can have far less impact.
Primarily, though, I'm saying that the biggest impact isn't the raw amount of land being used by animal agriculture. It's the amount of productive cropland that's not being used for human crops but for animal feed. If your goal is to eat the crops directly, then feeding the same grains humans eat to cattle is counter to that goal.
Who the fuck wants their burger to bleed? Seriously, why is this a thing? If it were real meat, I'd be even more concerned if it were bleeding, because undercooked ground meat is one of the worst things you can put in your food-hole.
They are taking artistic liberty with the term "bleed". Obviously, the fake meat doesn't have a blood analog, but it does have a myoglobin analog, which is what causes the juices secreted by real meat to be red.
Burgers don't ever really bleed, the blood was removed when the animal was slaughtered or it would go bad quickly. When people talk about their meat bleeding it the juice coming out of it, which isn't there if you cook it well done as you've boiled it all off
What do you think is in that juice? Sure the cattle are bled after slaughter, but you never get all the blood out, even after it's been hung, which is still retained in the tissue.
EDIT: Ah ha! My apologies and I stand corrected :) Apparently the red colouring in the steak juice is myoglobin and not in fact blood:
You get a greater level of flavor from a medium rare burger than you do a well done one. Also if the health risks are that high I must be an extremely lucky man as I have only ever consumed burgers medium rare.
> If it were real meat, I'd be even more concerned if it were bleeding, because undercooked ground meat is one of the worst things you can put in your food-hole.
I get the general argument being made, but if this were true steak tartare would not be a thing.
Burgers served medium-rare should (probably) not be made from beef you buy ground.
Ground meat is only dangerous if it's been sitting. Beef is perfectly safe to serve at rare if it's been ground the day of serving. Personally I think medium is the absolute minimum, not because safety concerns, but more because burger falls apart more easily the less it's cooked.
> Beef is perfectly safe to serve at rare if it's been ground the day of serving
Why would that be the case?
The reason we can cook and eat steaks rare is because dangerous bacteria form on the outside surface of the steak, and cooking the outside while leaving the inside rare destroys the bacteria. Grinding the beef mixes the surface of the beef with the inside, meaning you should cook the inside to 165F as well.
Beef before it's cut has the potential to have harmful microbes on it's surface, but they don't travel very fast, so they can't get deep, which is why it's safer to cook to a lesser degree than ground meat.
Ground meat on the other hand can introduce those harmful surface microbes to the rest of the meat, so burgers have to be cooked all the way through to ensure those microbes are successfully deaded.
From the article: "But Impossible Foods thinks the essence of a meat lies in a compound called heme, which gives ground beef its color and vaguely metallic taste—thanks to iron in the heme molecule. In blood, heme lives in a protein called hemoglobin; in muscle, it's in myoglobin."
The blood might cook out of the final burger, but it affects the taste and texture. In that respect it's not unlike cooking with wine, liquor, or cider, with which the alcohol will cook out.
I'm still skeptical if veganism suits everyone. I don't think we lived 100% off plants at any point in history. There isn't much evidence that plant based protein is superior or equivalent to animal based(grass fed).
Also, agriculture itself isn't blood free. So many animals die while procuring the land for agriculture or even while growing crops on an agricultural land.
The vast majority of the crops we grow end up feeding livestock. If you're concerned by suffering caused by agriculture, we can counterintuitively eat more plants to reduce our total plant needs. See biomass transfer efficiency.
There is a different between consuming plant protein directly and indirectly. Take the example of Giant Pandas, they have to eat constant to meet the demands of their body since they just eat plants. Their cousins on the other hand are not feeding all the time.
Also we cannot digest a lot of plant protein or covert it from
complex fibre since we lack the enzymes and gut microbes to process them.
It’s interesting that pedantic types that are so obsessed with logical purity would take two groups that might have a small intersection and pretend that they completely intersect in order to make a point.
There are so many ways to eat junk food, even as a veggie, or even a vegan.
While there are health benefits to avoid meat, a lot of people doing it are not particularly health conscious.
It's just that it's a funny stereotype, the seed eating peace lover hippie. Just like the annoying moralist activist or the lunatic product abuser new agist.
But frankly, most veggies I know are just regular folks with regular quirks.
Slang for vegetarian, yes. But I suspect that you know full well what parent meant, unless you’re not a native U. S. English speaker (even then, you could have just looked it up).
Assuming this actually tastes great and is cost effective I would argue the sole point is the way lower ecological footprint if done on a larger scale than beef ever could.
You know very well what they meant. The same 'type' of person is more likely to be into 'cleansing' and yoga and other middle class nonsense that others don't have the time or money to think/care about and will freuquently deceive themselves. "I don't eat meat or any of those fake GMO's! Oh look, a non beef burger!" in the same breath.
I'm pretty sure stu_k knew exactly what they meant, and was questioning the "vegetarian types" the OP was referring to.
Just because one is vegetarian doesn't mean they care about GMO, or being healthy, or any of that stuff. This type of classification almost always comes from someone who isn't vegetarian, and its a subtle way of prescribing how they think a vegetarian should think and act.
Way more people are vegetarian than that - it's just that the same people that are loudly cleansing themselves, contorting themselves, et al. are also loudly vegetarian.
The rest talk about it about as much as you talk about not eating <something you don't eat for whatever reason> - viz. only if it comes up naturally.
No, what you describe are the vocally self-absorbed. That category can, but not necessarily does, include some vegetarians. <insert obligatory link to a Wikipedia page of logical fallacies.>
Most of the vegetarian/vegans I know are more likely to be glad that Oreos are vegan than to fight against GMOs. Anecdotes != data, but I suspect those two demographics overlap less than you're suggesting.
Personally, my motivations for not eating meat have precisely zero to do with any "natural" or anti-GMO stance, and everything to do with environmental impact and animal welfare concerns.
I am strongly in support of GMOs (sans monsanto) and am trying to reduce my meat consumption (ethical & environmental are the largest causes). I'm really interested in the Impossible burger.
I'd love to try the burger they're describing here. Maybe the product is difficult to work with and Umami is unable to get these results? Or maybe they're describing some version 2.0 Impossible patty that isn't available yet?