The Impossible Burger
wired.com
wired.com
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 was nothing special, but was a convincing meat substitute. I'd be happy taking it over any kind of fast food burger.
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-meat-of-the-...
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).
Isn't this basically the goal?
It means overcooked to the point the meat is completely gray. Highly undesirable to many (though preferred by some).
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.
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.
I grind my own beef, and there is no way I would want to eat a burger pattie cooked well done.
If you are worried that your mince may not be safe to eat - why the hell are you buying it?
Properly cooked pork (not ground pork!) should actually be slightly pink in the middle (like with a pork chop). Anything more is overcooked.
/most people have no clue how to cook pork...
The Impossible "meat" was unlike other veggie patties. If you had served this to me in McDonald's, I wouldn't have thought twice.
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.
source: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Organic_Chemistry/Chirality
Also wikipedia states about non-human globulins that "these proteins can cause allergic reactions if they bind with human IgE antibodies." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globulin#Nonhuman_globulins
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.
Full disclosure, the founder of Impossible Foods was an advisor of mine in grad school.
Was that professor Walter White by chance?
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.
https://detroit.eater.com/2017/9/15/16313768/impossible-burg...
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.
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.
Gardein grounds, and hamburgers. Not perfect, but exceptionally good.
Why don't we just raise and slaughter cattle humanely instead?
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.
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.
Now if only I could get over my fear of soy...
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.
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?
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.
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 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.
even jezza the orangutan wasn't fooled.
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.
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.
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:
https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/8964/33
https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/32619/33
http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/meat/INT-what-meat-colo...
https://www.thedailymeal.com/eat/stop-calling-juicy-steak-bl...
So you learn something new every day.
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.
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.
That's my understanding at least...
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.
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.
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.
Where do you think the animals get the protein from in the first place? (hint: you already mentioned it)
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.
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.
Do you mean a vegetarian? Never heard 'veggie' before. Heard 'veeg' (vege?) though.
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).
Therefore this is literally everyone's concern.
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.
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.
I am vegan and happy to drink Soylent. :-)
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.
Not everyone falls into a nice category.