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Comment by buckbova | Hacker News Reader

> "When I tried a mini burger slathered in vegan mayo, mashed avocado, caramelized onions and Dijon prepared by San Francisco chef Traci Des Jardin at the company's headquarters in Redwood City, I was floored."

Honestly a good chef can make cardboard taste good. But as a daily meat eater I'd love a good ground beef alternative.

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Honestly a good chef can make cardboard taste good.

Which is exactly the core operating principle upon which the fast food industry (including much of what is put on the shelves in larger grocery chains) basically works these days:

low-quality base ingredients + sugar, spices, MSG + gratuitous fats/oils + marketing == profit

But to be fair, MSG is amazing.

Yeah that almost sounds like they drowned a nugget of meat in sauce. Could he even taste the meat? Why not an actual plain, grilled meat test?

He did say it was about the texture, which is really the hard part in imitating beef. He also mentioned the flavor was a little weaker than normal beef.

Thanks I must have missed that.

Yes, reminds me of discussions of whether I "like" alcohol:

"You don't like alcohol? Even when we dilute the heck out of it by mixing it with lots of sugar and fruit flavors? Crazy! I definitely like alcohol, although only Smirnov Ice and cosmos, for some inexplicable reason..."

I feel like with these types of discussions, people like the feeling of alcohol, and conflate the feeling and the taste under the idea of alcohol. You could not like how it tastes but enjoy how it feels, and in the end it'd be a net positive.

Good point. Especially for strong drinks. Although the argument _may_ fall apart when you start talking about the taste or wines, ciders, or beers. I mean, I think they're delicious and I like the way they make me feel.

FWIW I tried an Impossible Food burger and was also impressed. I cooked it without condiments and found it a little nutty but definitely in the same category as meat.

Depending on the context, texture vegetable protein (TVP for short) is an option for things like pasta sauce that you want to add a ground beef alternative too. I'm sure there's many other ways to use it, but that's one we regularly use in our house.

http://www.bobsredmill.com/tvp-textured-veg-protein.html

A really good tip is anchovies and black olives, grounded. It honestly approaches ground beef in pasta sauce (Especially the cheap, student-living kind).

aka alla puttanesca :)

This https://lightlife.com/products/smart-ground-original is pretty good

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

My SO questions my use of ground turkey today. See what she thinks of this.

There's one version that's like spicier and it's better. You should also check out Gardein. Their vegan crab cakes are heavenly but all their products are really good. The fish is very convincing.

It's fairly crumbly, but I find it's good for pasta sauces.

> It's fairly crumbly

Crumbles gonna crumble.

Ground turkey?

Way too dry.

That would be why I add bacon fat whenever a certain someone brings over ground turkey when I asked for ground beef.

I do the same thing when somebody decides to buy the ultra-lean 95-93% ground beef. You've got to do something, or else burgers fall all apart and taste like shoe leather - the easiest is to just buy the cheaper, tastier, better, 75-80% hamburger...

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