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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

steak

Want a Whole Cut Fungi-Based Steak? Head to Sacramento This Weekend

Curious what a steak made from fungi tastes like?

You’re in luck if you are in Sacramento, California this weekend because that’s where the Better Meat Co will debut their mycelium-based steak. Made using Better Meat Co’s proprietary Rhiza mycoprotein, the alt-steak will be available for one day only at Bennett’s American Cooking steak house this Saturday.

The debut of the company’s new cut comes just a couple of months after the company opened its Rhiza manufacturing plant in West Sacramento. Better Meat CEO Paul Shapiro told me in a video call this week that they were able to create a steak-like experience so quickly in part because fungi are much closer in texture and overall makeup to meat than plants.

“It takes a lot to get plants to taste like animals, but because we’re using fungi which are much closer to animals, you have a shorter distance to bridge,” said Shapiro. “We can create a more meat-like experience with our fungi than we can with plants.”

In addition to Rhiza, the steak also had added avocado oil, fava beans, beet juice for coloring, and some natural flavors. The results, according to Shapiro, are pretty close to the real thing.

“[American Cooking Steak House owner] Brian Bennett says it’s the most convincing alternative meat he’s ever had,” said Shapiro.

And while that may be true, the steak still isn’t 100 percent there, in part because it’s missing the structural and flavor complexity of the fatty marbling that comes in in a traditional cut of meat. Shapiro admits this is something their alt-steak 1.0 edition doesn’t have but says they are working on it.

“[Marbling] is something that we would like to pursue but we have not yet gotten that down,” said Shapiro. “However, when you eat it, it really does have a steak-like experience.”

Better Meat is not the only company working on alt-steaks. Whole cuts are quickly becoming an obsession in the alternative meat space, as startups like Novameat, Green Rebel Foods, Atlast, and even Impossible Foods are working on plant-based steak, while ingredient companies like Motif and Melt&Marble are developing building blocks like plant-based fat to help those creating consumer products get closer to the real thing.

According to Shapiro, he believes this is the first time an alternative steak has been served at a high-end steakhouse. Maybe, but it’s certainly not the first plant-based steak on the menu at a restaurant, as companies like Meati (also made with mycelium) have been showing up at places like SALT’s Bistro since last year.

Either way, it certainly won’t be the last steak made with Rhiza and, according to Shapiro, the next one could be from one of their partners.

“This is our 1.0. What we want to do is showcase what our ingredients can do, and work with companies who can utilize these ingredients to take them to even higher heights.”

Aleph Farms Puts a Steak in the Ground, Unveils New Cell-Based Cut of Meat

Israeli startup Aleph Farms has unveiled what it calls “the first cell-grown minute steak” — that is, the first steak made from cow cells, but grown outside a cow in a bioreactor.

Up until now, companies such as Finless Foods, JUST, and Mosa Meats have made cultured tuna, chicken nuggets, and hamburgers, respectively. But cell-based steak, with its complex, sliceable texture, has remained elusive.

I spoke with Aleph Farms CEO Didier Toubia back in May about their plans to make the first cultured steak:

“Instead of starting with a simpler ground “meat” product and later developing 3D tissue-growing technology, [Aleph Farms] is hoping to skip ahead and bring a fully developed product — one with the same texture, structure, and taste as beef — to market.

To do that, their scientists are working on growing four types of cells: muscle, fat, blood vessels, and connective tissue… Once they cultivate the various types of cells, they place them on scaffolds which act as a framework for the cells to cling onto. That way, the four types of cells can grow together into a finished product with the shape of steak — not just blobs of separate cell types in petri dishes that have to be manually combined.”

Wall Street Journal senior correspondent Jason Bellini got to taste this new cut of cell-based meat on camera. In the video, Amir Ilan, a chef at the restaurant Paris Texas in Israel, seared the thin slices of pre-cooked steak about the size of a credit card. (Interestingly, the camera crew was not allowed to film raw slices of the steak.) He served the meat with a truffle glaze and mushrooms. The consensus? “It’s pretty good, I have to say,” said Bellini between chews. “It’s pretty close to a regular steak… it passes.”

For now, the size and texture of Aleph Farms’ steaks are limited. They can’t grow them bigger than a few inches and no thicker than a few centimeters. Though companies are working to create bigger and better-textured cuts of cultured meat through 3D printing or using plants as scaffolds, texture remains one of the biggest challenges in making cell-based meat taste like the real thing.

Aleph Farms’ news comes just a day after JUST, a San Francisco startup most known for their plant-based foods, announced that it has partnered with Japanese producer Toriyama to create the first cell-based Wagyu. Though they’re planning to make a burger instead of a steak, the one-two punch speaks to how quickly the field of cultured meat is accelerating — though it’ll be a while yet (at least a year) before JUST’s product is to market.

If you want to try Aleph Farms’ steaks, you’ll have to wait even longer. While the company didn’t give an exact timeline, the WSJ video stated that their cultured steak is still at least two years away. But the implications of this first taste test are still significant. As I wrote back in May, “If they can nail the texture of a steak, Aleph Farms has a real shot at converting even the most hardcore of carnivores.” It seems that the startup has taken one big step closer to that goal.

Vivera’s Plant-Based Steaks Now Available in Belgian Supermarkets

The plant-based “bleeding” steak by Dutch company Vivera is now available in Belgian locations of supermarket Carrefour. The vegan product is meant to have the same look, taste, and texture as real steak.

Vivera’s vegan steaks first popped up on the shelves at 400 locations of British supermarket chain Tesco in May of this year. A press release from the company stated the company’s plans to launch in several locations in the Netherlands in June, followed by an expansion into Germany, France, and Italy.

A later release stated that Vivera’s steaks would reach multiple Netherlands locations on June 11, including the largest Dutch grocery chain, Albert Heijn, and the aforementioned Carrefour in Belgium. A statement by Carrefour, however, indicates that the goods didn’t actually arrive until June 19. This slight delay could be due to the high demand for Vivera’s vegan steaks: CCO Gert Jan Gombert told Plant-Based News that Tesco stores nearly sold out of the 40,000-strong initial shipment after just a few days.

Gombert wrote: “We apologize for the empty shelves, we just could not keep up with the high rotations (sometimes>100/per shop/week!). Better availability is on its way!” In response, Vivera is planning to increase their overall manufacturing output to 100,000 units per week. After some internet sleuthing, I could not find any evidence that Vivera is available in Dutch supermarkets yet.

From one angle, this is a good problem to have. The popularity of alterna-proteins is encouraging for health and environmental reasons. More and more people are becoming flexitarian and looking to substitute some of their meat products with vegetarian taste-alikes. Allied Research Market reported that the meat alternative market is projected to grow by 8.4% and reach $5.4 billion by 2020, and Mintel reports that over a quarter of Brits are trying to cut back on meat consumption. According to a press release from Carrefour, 95 percent of their customers are flexitarians, with 70 percent actively looking for meat substitutes.

Even so, it’s tough for plant-based meat companies to keep up with this growing demand. Just a few weeks ago, Beyond Meat had to quadruple their production because their vegan burgers were outselling meat patties in some California grocery stores. Vivera is planning to manufacture several million of their vegan steaks, but will it be enough?

If plant-based meat demand continues to rise (and I don’t see why it wouldn’t), more companies may have to make some major overhauls to their manufacturing and supply strategy to keep up.

ChefSteps Working On Marketplace To Connect Cattle Ranchers With Consumers

Just last week, ChefSteps announced the rollout of a new Facebook Messenger bot to assist users of its Joule sous vide cooker in the process of making a meal. This just a few months after adding an Alexa skill for the Joule, and we know from conversations with the company they have plans to create a platform that would enable influencers like chefs to create branded content for the Joule.

If this wasn’t enough to convince you the busy Seattle cooking startup has a whole lot of balls in the air, there’s one more business they’d like to add to their juggling act. According to a job posting on ChefSteps.com, the company also has plans to launch a new line of business that allows independent ranchers to sell their meat directly to users of the Joule.

According to the job listing, the new product manager position will oversee a marketplace that connects “independent ranchers with ChefSteps users, offering them direct access to high-quality meat and ingredients at great prices.”  The new position would oversee the marketplace and help to manage the home delivery service portion of this new line of business.

It’s an interesting move for ChefSteps. The world of high-quality meat is one that is largely still dependent on the traditional wholesale food distribution business, with the vast majority of meat still being bought through grocery and food retail.  Changing this business would take a heavy lift, but given that sous vide customers are already somewhat enlightened when it comes to the quality of food, ChefSteps probably believes it can extend that higher awareness into the actual steak purchase itself.

Could it work? Maybe. Success would be dependent on whether there is an underserved market for quality steaks and if ChefSteps can provide a unique way to connect producers of meat and consumers that has interesting economics for both parties.

The motivation for moving into ancillary areas to their current hardware business is clear. The consumer sous vide appliance market is heating up, as companies like Anova, who is now part of Electrolux, and ChefSteps are starting to see increased competition from low-cost brands such as Gourmia and InstantPot.  ChefSteps early success with the Joule resulted from successfully tapping into the company’s large online community, but recent moves suggest that they see continued innovation around new features and services as a way to keep ahead of the crowd.