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Impossible Sausage

March 30, 2022

Impossible Sausage Link Review: Tasty, But Missing That Familiar Sausage ‘Snap’

Today, Impossible Foods announced the debut of their plant-based sausage links, the sixth retail product from the alt protein pioneer in the last eight months.

The new products come in three different varieties – Spicy, Italian, and Bratwurst – and the company claims they have the same snap and savory flavor as conventional pork sausage.

The Spoon got a hold of some samples in advance of today’s news, so I thought I’d try them out. I was excited because I like sausage, and my favorite Impossible product – by a long shot – is the company’s ground sausage product which came out last year.

I pulled the sausages out of the package, and this is what they looked like:

While the Impossible sausages look link-ish, they also struck me as looking a bit, well, squooshy. And, when I picked them up, they felt soft and didn’t have the same firmness I associate with traditional sausage. This, of course, has a lot to do with the casing (which I’ll talk more about a bit later).

You can see in the video below what an Impossible sausage link looks like grilling up in a pan. The instructions suggested I heat the link up at a medium heat. I put a couple of drops of olive oil in the pan to give it a little more sizzle while cooking.

The Impossible Sausage frying in a pan

After cooking the link for 10 minutes, rotating it every minute or two to give it that nice sausage crispiness, I plated it. It looked pretty close to what a conventional pork sausage link looks like on a plate, with slight exception of the casing, which looked a bit loose at the end of the link.

I cut up the sausage into smaller pieces and gave it a taste. I liked the flavor of the interior sausage and thought it tasted pretty darn close to what a conventional sausage filling tasted like. The mouthfeel was similar and, overall, it definitely didn’t give me uncanny valley “vibes”.

But where the sausage fell short is, you guessed it, the casing. The casing is what gives a sausage link its famous “snap” when eating, and, truth be told, the Impossible link just doesn’t have it.

Of course, I understand there are tradeoffs, and no doubt it’s really hard to mimic a conventional casing made of (yes, gross) animal intestines. But the reality is Impossible’s isn’t there yet.

Would I try it again? Yes. I think the Impossible sausage links taste good and I would happily replace conventional pork sausage with these in future meals. But, unfortunately, those craving that traditional sausage snap won’t find what they’re looking for with Impossible’s plant-based alternative.

August 11, 2021

Impossible Foods Launches its Plant-Based Impossible Sausage at Retail

Impossible Foods announced today that its plant-based Impossible Sausage is now available at retailers across the country. The new sausage comes in two flavors, Savory and Spicy. The product costs $5.99 for a 14-ounce package,and is rolling out at Kroger, Ralphs, King Soopers, Fred Meyer, Safeway, Albertsons, Wegmens, Stop & Shop, Hannaford, Gian martins, Giant Food, Shoprite, Sprouts Farmers Market and Heinen’s.

This is Impossible’s first new product at retail since the company’s Impossible Burger. Impossible Sausage made its debut at CES in 2020 and went to restaurants such as Starbucks and Burger King last year in the form of sausage patties. The plant-based sausage Impossible is introducing today is a ground product and not pre-formed into a patty shape like Beyond Meat’s retail sausage.

During a video chat this week, Michael Bortinger, Senior Manager of Retail Marketing at Impossible Foods told me why. “We always want to bring more products in different forms,” he said. “There really isn’t a ground sausage form in the segment right now. It’s a white space for us.” Bortinger said that the ground form will give the product more versatility to be used in casseroles, sandwiches and more.

Just like the Impossible Burger, the new Impossible Sausage uses heme as one of its ingredients. Because heme is derived from genetically modified ingredients, it does not yet have approval to be sold in the European Union. As such, Impossible is currently focused on the U.S. with this launch. Bortinger said that by the end of the year Impossible Sausage will be available in 13,000 stores domestically.

Impossible said its sausage has 30 percent fewer calories, 47 percent less total fat and 43 percent less saturated fat when cooked and “compared to the leading pork ground sausage.” Impossible’s Savory Sausage has 380mg of sodium per serving, and the Spicy version has 370mg, representing 17 and 16 percent of the daily recommended allowance, respectively. A similar sized package of Jimmy Dean pork sausage contains 415mg of sodium. One serving size of Beyond Meat Classic Sausage Patties (two patties) has 270mg of sodium.

In advance of this post, Impossible sent me samples of the new sausage to try out and it is definitely versatile. We made standalone patties, breakfast sandwiches, breakfast burritos and even mixed it in with some mac n’ cheese. The sausage is indeed delicious, though a little watery in its texture. While there is versatility with the sausage, there is also extra work to cook it. A frozen Beyond Sausage Patty is easy to throw in the oven to heat up as you whip up a morning sandwich. The Impossible Sausage is “raw,” so it takes more work and preparation (forming patties, frying up) and is messier. But having said that, Impossible Sausage will definitely be on my shopping list as I try to reduce the amount of meat I buy.

June 29, 2020

Impossible Makes its Plant-Based Sausage Available to All Restaurants in the U.S.

Well, that was fast. Impossible’s plant-based sausage, which debuted at CES in January of this year and recently rolled out nationally at Burger King and Starbucks, is now available to restaurants across the country, the company announced today.

Impossible is kicking off this expansion by debuting its sausage at 30 of the top diner-style restaurants around the country today. The list of diners was determined in conjunction with Yelp, and helps illustrate that any restaurant, not just the high-end or big brand names, can put Impossible sausage on its menu.

Impossible’s plant-based sausage comes in a 1.6-ounce pre-seasoned patty and arrives fully cooked. According to today’s press announcement, Impossible’s sausage has the same amount of protein, 60 more iron, 45 percent fewer calories, 60 less total fat, 50 percent less saturated fat and 0 mg of cholesterol than traditional meat-based sausage.

The rapid expansion of its sausage comes in stark contrast to the slow rollout of Impossible’s initial plant-based beef burger. The original Impossible burger debuted in 2016 and by the end of that year was still only in four restaurants. Along the way, Impossible ran into production issues before becoming widely available at restaurants, grocers and most recently, a direct to consumer site.

During a virtual press conference to announce the news today, I asked what the timeline was for consumer sales of Impossible sausage. Impossible Founder and CEO Pat Brown said that there is no announced date, but “before long you can count on it appearing in grocery stores.” Additionally, the company said that the consumer sausage would arrive far faster than the three years it took to get Impossible burgers directly to consumers.

Sales of plant-based meat have taken off during this pandemic, and recent moves from both Impossible and its main rival, Beyond Meat, have capitalized on this plant-based boom. As noted, Impossible recently launched a direct to consumer site to sell its burgers. And Beyond, which has its own sausage patty already at retail, launched a bulk package of its burgers that narrowed its price gap with animal based burgers.

With states slowing down or halting re-openings, who knows when we will be able to fully go back into restaurants, but when we do, Impossible sausage might just be on the menu at your favorite local diner.

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