• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Skip to navigation
Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

  • Home
  • Podcasts
  • Events
  • Newsletter
  • Connect
    • Custom Events
    • Slack
    • RSS
    • Send us a Tip
  • Advertise
  • Consulting
  • About
The Spoon
  • Home
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Events
  • Advertise
  • About

Beyond Meat Burgers Blew Me Away

by Chris Albrecht
March 25, 2018March 28, 2018Filed under:
  • Next-Gen Cooking
  • synthetic food
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

I love cheeseburgers, but the harmful environmental effects of raising beef has all but sapped my appetite for them. Which is why I’m so excited by alterna-meats (or whatever we’ll wind up calling them), and why I was even more excited to see that my local grocer has finally started carrying Beyond Meat burger patties.

Filled with the same adventurous spirit Mike and Catherine had on their recent Impossible foods field trip, I snapped up a package of Beyond Meat burgers and rushed home to do my own taste test.

We’ve written a lot about Beyond Meat. They use pea protein as the basis for their burgers and have celebrity backers like Bill Gates and Leonardo DiCaprio. Their company wants stores to stock their burgers in the meat aisle, which is not without controversy.

Unlike earlier incarnations of “veggie burgers,” which often just substituted beans, soy, or tofu for beef and called it a day, Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are trying to replicate the experience of eating meat. So have they succeeded?

Hell yes they have.

Beyond Meat burgers probably won’t fool any die-hard carnivores (they don’t “bleed” like Impossible burgers), but if you don’t have to have beef, this is an excellent substitute. When I sampled them, I found Beyond Meat burgers flavorful and light, with a pleasing texture that was beef-like.

Which is good, because Beyond Meat burgers are not cheap. It was $6.49 for just two patties. Despite Beyond Meat’s marketing demands, their burgers were located in the meat alternative section in the freezer aisle, instead of in between the ground beef and sausage links.

Frozen, they look just like thick beef patties. As they cook, they don’t brown very much, staying pretty rose-colored. I cooked my patties frozen, which, in retrospect, was a mistake. It required a longer cook time to warm the middle and I feel I may have overcooked the outside. Next time I’ll thaw them out fully before putting them on the stove.

Once cooked, I covered my burger with cheese and slid it on to a bun. I decided to eat it without any ketchup or mustard or other added flavorings to get the best sense of its taste. Beyond Meat definitely has that umami flavor, but the word that lingers most as I think back on eating it is… springy. The burger felt light and delicate — without being fragile — but it also had this elasticity to it. This gave it more of a meat texture, though it didn’t feel as dense or heavy as beef.

The biggest sensation I got from my experience eating a Beyond Meat burger was excitement. I loved every bite. And I can’t wait to make another one. I’d like the price to come down a bit, if only to entice more people to try it, but I’m sure that will come. Until then, I’m just happy to be eating cheeseburgers without any guilt.


Related

Cooking Plant-Based Meat Gets Smart as June Oven Adds Beyond Meat Programs

As I've confessed before, there are two food tech-related things I absolutely adore: Beyond Burgers and my June oven. Now, thanks to a software update earlier this week, those two things are the peanut butter and chocolate in my connected kitchen world, as the June sports new automated cook programs…

With Beyond Meat and Impossible Burgers, Food is Now Software

I was excited when my wife brought home Beyond Burgers the other night, but I was soon crestfallen (don't tell her this) when I saw that they were the old recipe of Beyond Burgers. That version of Beyond Burgers was fine — enough to get me into the plant-based burgers…

My 9-Year-Old’s Reaction to Impossible Burgers Surprised Me

To show how its new direct-to-consumer store works, Impossible Foods sent me a batch of their plant-based burgers, which arrived yesterday. Impossible isn't available in stores up near us, so we've been eating a lot of Beyond Meat during our quarantine. I was excited for the rest of my family…

Get the Spoon in your inbox

Just enter your email and we’ll take care of the rest:

Find us on some of these other platforms:

  • Apple Podcasts
  • Spotify
Tagged:
  • Beyond Meat
  • meat alternatives

Post navigation

Previous Post Food Tech News Roundup: Tooth Calorie Counters, Snoop Dogg, and Amazon’s Next Move
Next Post Scoop: Omidyar Invests in Markov, A Startup Building An AI To Change Cooking

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Get The Spoon in Your Inbox

The Spoon Podcast Network!

Feed your mind! Subscribe to one of our podcasts!

Could Lasers Made From Olive Oil Be The Next-Gen Freshness Detector or Use-By Label?
Leanpath CEO: The Fight Against Food Waste Enters Its ‘Second Act’
The Grocery Store is the Food System
Nearly Seven Years After Launching Kickstarter, Silo Finally Delivers Next-Gen Home Food Storage System
What Flavor Unlocks

Footer

  • About
  • Sponsor the Spoon
  • The Spoon Events
  • Spoon Plus

© 2016–2025 The Spoon. All rights reserved.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
 

Loading Comments...