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Comment by marrone12 | Hacker News Reader

I prefer the taste of impossible but this is great news for the category.

I think either beats any frozen beef that gets served at a cheap fast-food joints while neither comes close to beating fresh, high-quality beef. They can take over the entire bottom of the market which is probably the most unwholesome for the environment.

Eh, the bottom of the market is made from the "bad" cuts of meat. As long someone wants the good cuts there's no reason to waste the rest. Nobody's making hamburger out of cuts of meat that could have been sold as a steak.

most dairy cow meat is used for hamburger, it's rarely sold as steak or roasts.

Speak for yourself. Nothing can beat an oily, greasy In N Out beef burger with processed American "Cheese" on top of something that barely resembles beef, but you can't say it isn't the best thing you've ever tasted!

> In N Out

In-N-Out is never frozen and is of a higher quality beef than most other chains, fyi

I never liked In N Out myself. Not even in comparison to other fast food, nevermind "the best thing I've ever tasted," that's laughable. I'd rather have a double from Wendy's and MUCH rather have something like Five Guys or Shake Shack.

None of those four chains use frozen beef.

I prefer Impossible Burger as a substitute for grounds, but Beyond Meat also makes things like hot dogs and breakfast sausage, which Impossible doesn't.

YES, Beyond has some incredible sausage products! I go with them for sausage and Impossible for burgers.

Trader Joe's tofu based chorizo is also in this space and is amazing as well. If you want something that makes for good "grounds" but don't need it to literally be hamburger then a marinated block of tofu will probably get you there.

Yeah, I've had that one, and it's good. Unfortunately, it's harder to come by because Trader Joe's doesn't allow delivery and doesn't sell their store-brand products anywhere else; I've stopped relying on anything from Trader Joe's store brand for that reason. It also has a specific flavor profile that works in some dishes but not others; it isn't a neutral substitute for grounds.

Those sausages are definitely better than the burger patty to me. I just wish Impossible would get more products out since their burger patty is the first uncanny valley leaping veggie meat I've had.

Impossible makes breakfast sausage. Starbucks has an Impossible breakfast sandwich.

That's great to hear, but they don't appear to sell it publicly yet. It appears to be restaurant-exclusive.

Agreed, impossible is far superior. Impossible is only $5.99 for 12oz in Trader Joes at the moment

It's also for sale at Costco: $16 for 2 lbs which matches the pricing of the Trader Joes.

i can get a pound of organic, free range, rocked to sleep every night by the rancher, ground beef for about that. i thought Impossible/Beyond was suppose to be significantly cheaper than beef? I've had it but my wife brought it home one night so didn't see the price.

Butcher box sells you free range, grass fed beef for $16/pound, delivered to your home.

Beef is hella subsidized in the USA. Both directly, and indirectly, through low grazing fees on public lands and subsidized feeds.

The grocery store tubes of 73/27 are under $3/lb where I'm at. Making beef insanely cheap per calorie.

I agree, Beyond overdoes the fake smoke flavor. But they seem to be better equipped to scale up than Impossible, they've beaten them to mass market in almost every location I've seen.

I bought a package of Beyond Meat. It was right next to the ground beef, and looked like ground beef. I assumed I could substitute it for ground beef in my spaghetti. Big fat nope! I opened the package, and it smelled exactly like dog food. The smell when cooking it was horrible. It completely ruined my batch of spaghetti. I don't know how people are cooking this stuff and enjoying it. Maybe there's some other way to cook it or season it? As someone who isn't much of a chef, I don't know what to do with it. Go to your favorite search engine, search for "Beyond Meat Smells..." and check out the autofill. I know I'm not the only one.

Yeah, the artificial smoke flavor makes it useless for anything that isn't supposed to taste like it was on an open flame grill. I tried using the Beyond ground burger substitute for tacos once and all I could taste was that stupid smoke flavor.

The Impossible ground burger substitute is far more versatile, but harder to find. None of my local grocery stores carry it.

There is no smoke flavouring in Beyond Burgers.

Maybe people are getting spoiled product? I regularly use Beyond and Impossible and usually don’t notice any off smell. Once I got a pack of Impossible from the refrigerated section that did smell wrong.

put it on a charcoal grill and cook a hamburger. It's definitely not beef but the taste is ok for what it is. I think of it like a veggie compromise, not a perfect burger but not terrible either.

Actually that's an interesting idea I wonder if Impossible or Beyond meat have considered selling their stuff as dog food. I'm sure vegan dog owners would love that.

That'd probably do a lot of damage to their brand, as silly as it sounds, since people wouldn't want to be eating something used as a meat substitute in dog food (which has historically been not very safe/good for humans).

Then go to the same engine and see autocompletes for "ground beef smells". Given enough sample, there would be some people complaining about random weird things, and those are the people typing such searches in search engines.

I’ve found I have to brown it, or it has a weird aftertaste that lasts for hours.

After browning, that’s replaced with a nice nutty cashew flavor. This is especially true of the patties.

I imagine that they'll tweak the flavoring for customers like Taco Bell, who wouldn't want the over-the-top smoke flavor. Like others here, I have tried Beyond as a ground beef substitute (in chili) and found it to be way too smokey.

On the other hand, Impossible + ground turkey makes a great chili.

impossible is focusing on restaurants more than mass market. observe eg partnerships with chefs/restaurants. a fairly large amount of beef in the US is consumed in restaurants/made to order type stuff; that's what they're attacking

If you prefer the taste of Impossible, wouldn't you prefer that Yum brands select them as their fake beef provider? Why is this good news for the category?

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