Today I tried the Impossible Burger

[rachelmanija]

If you haven't heard of this, it's a new soy-based burger that supposedly cooks, looks, tastes, and feels exactly like a meat burger. I saw it at Fatburger, which I figured was a good place to try it -I already know I like their regular burgers so I have a good basis for comparison, and it's pretty cheap so if I hated it at least I wasn't out a tragic amount of money.

I asked the guy at the counter if people were liking it. With slight evasiveness, he said, "Yeah, lots of people are ordering it!"

If my experience was typical, I suspect that lots of people will not be ordering it twice.

On the one hand, it was by far the best non-meat burger I've ever had, and I ate almost the entire thing. (I was hungry.) However, it does not look like meat. It looks similar to meat. But it was visibly a veggie burger. I actually don't care much about appearance, but just sayin'. Similarly, the texture isn't quite right. It's close. But it has a noticeably vegetal soft homogeneity, which is different from that of ground meat. Most importantly, it doesn't taste quite like meat. Or rather, it doesn't taste like a Fatburger burger. It has a slight spiciness that I didn't care for, which is probably there to mask the non-meat flavors. If the texture and appearance had been perfect, I might have believed it as a meat burger that was overspiced to make up for the meat not being the best.

In short, disappointing. I would have preferred their real burger. I also would have preferred going home and making myself a salad. I keep hoping for a perfect meat substitute, but in the meantime I'll stick to eating less meat and mostly from identifiably good-practice sources.

Have any of you tried this? What did you think?

Comments

[ex_inklessej388]

I've always wondered why vegans need to simulate meat. If the whole point was to move away from meat, why do you feel the need to trick your body into thinking your are consuming meat?

[rachelmanija]

I can't speak for vegans, but personally, I love the taste of meat but for ethical and environmental reasons, I'd rather eat vegetables that are indistinguishable from meat.

[mrissa]

Ah, this explains what I was coming in to ask. Thanks. I really love the high end of veggie burgers even though I do eat meat--a good spicy black bean burger, or a mushroom-and-edamame concoction or whatever will make me so happy--so the idea that the best non-meat burger you had had would be imitating meat was kind of confusing me. And here you've laid out your priorities, and they make sense, so: thumbs up, yay for understanding.

[yhlee]

My sister's boyfriend is a vegan and has explained to me that he eats vegetables for health reasons, but he still likes the taste and texture of meat. This made sense to me.

[em_h]

I'm not a vegan (pescatarian actually), but as someone who hasn't eaten meat for so long I don't remember it, I enjoy certain veggie burgers or sausages, not as a meat analogue, but as things in themselves. And some are quite nice that way. Others are pretty poor stuff, though.

[mount_oregano]

On our vegan-meal days, I cook beans. They're delicious, and you can do all sorts of things with them.

I can understand the reason for wanting to reproduce meat, but I'd rather eat minimally processed food.

[kore]

I can't eat red meat anymore, but yeah, I would rather eat minimally processed food and I also think it's better for you (it's certainly better for my personal health issues). After a lifetime of avoiding beans unless they were in Mexican food, I started cooking with them a lot, and they are delicious!

[lilacsigil]

Also, if you're cooking for mixed group of vegans and non-vegans, sometimes it's easier to cook a meat-like product along with everyone else's meat products.

[yhlee]

Aww, sorry it was disappointing.

I have learned that, weirdly, I prefer Chik'n veggie nuggets to actually chicken nuggets, but that may be because I am not really enthralled by real chicken in the first place. I've never had a beef substitute that really convinced me.

[genarti]

Same -- I very much enjoy fake chicken pasties and nuggets, but every time I've had fake beef it's been underwhelming. I haven't tried the Impossible Burger, though, so I can't weigh in on that one.

[chomiji]

I usually feel that one should let meat be meat and veggies be veggies.

We're getting most of our meat form small and local farms these days.

There have been some interesting studies recently about people's ancestries and the sort of diets that they can tolerate or thrive on.

[rachelmanija]

I don't know if it's actually good for me in the long run, but I subjectively do not feel good on a no-meat diet. (Doesn't have to be red meat. Fish is fine.) I've had extensive opportunities to notice this as I ate mostly vegetarian as a child and have spent time in vegetarian locales since. However, it would be nice to have perfect meat substitute for cases where I haven't bought the meat myself.

[jjhunter]

Clover Food Lab in the greater Boston area has an Impossible Meatball pita pocket that's actually fantastic - but I suspect it's not the same variant of soy-pseudo-meat that you tried at Fatburger,. Would recommend Clover's version if you're ever in town!

[nenya_kanadka]

Icon! The cutest teal deer I've ever seen. <3

[minim_calibre]

My thoughts were that it was slightly too salty, as close to meat in taste and texture as I've had in my years of trying veggie patties (I haven't yet had the Beyond Burger), but a good effort and I'm interested to see where the technology goes.

Unlike a burger, I didn't wind up paying for it the next day, so that was also a plus.

[loligo]

My husband is a big fan of the frozen version of the Beyond Burger; we haven't had the opportunity to try the fresh version, or the Impossible Burger. He's a vegetarian, and I'm allergic to beef. I just go for ground turkey on those rare occasions when I really want a burger, but I would definitely be open to a good veggie substitute. Maybe I will try the Beyond next time he buys them...

[starlady]

I actually quite liked it when I had one for the first time in LA last year at Umami Burger. Perhaps I am not as discerning a carnivore as you, but I thought it was decently meat-like aside from the falling-apart texture. I suppose I should try the Gott's Impossible Burger (a local chain up here) for true comparison purposes, it seems like the preparation probably makes a big difference.

[monanotlisa]

I don't get it, honestly. If you want or need to eat meat, eat meat -- sustainable, local meat, if you can afford it. If you don't want or don't need to eat meat, why desperately try to recreate it?

(To be fair, I come from the grumpy place of Would Eat Anything, But Her Body Is Not Down With That. I think of those choice-based or plain choosy eaters, and wish I had the luxury they are reveling in.)

[rachelmanija]

I don't know for sure where meat comes from unless I buy it myself at the farmer's market, and I can't (and don't want to) cook all my own meals. Many people who eat meat cannot afford local, sustainable meat. Some people like meat, but can't eat it for health reasons. And even under the best conditions, meat means killing things. There's a whole lot of people out there who are not going to stop eating meat (or eat less, or only eat the local/sustainable stuff) unless there's a really great and affordable substitute, so why not try to create that substitute? If you could eat perfect facsimiles of everything you currently can't eat for health reasons, wouldn't you want to?

If someone can create a meat substitute that's indistinguishable from real meat, that seems well worth doing and supporting for the general good.

[graydon]

Meat has stuff in it that vegetable sources don't. (B12 and D3 vitamins, most notably. DHA and taurine...) Nutritionally indistinguishable from real meat is going to have to include those, which gets us into serious genetic engineering. (Which raises the question of who would be happy about salmon genes in their kale! Or the concept of arboriculture with beefnut trees.)

Anything you do to capture ecological productivity for your purposes kills whatever else would have used it, directly or indirectly. It doesn't matter if you're growing carrots or raising beef, something with nerves, eyes, and a spine ceased to exist for your dinner. It's possible to be bothered by the direct version more than the indirect version, but I'm generally with the pastoralists about this; there's a lot more ecological responsibility, especially in dry land (where water is the primary productivity constraint) in pastoralism and meat-eating than there is in irrigated crops or the kind of nothing-lives cropland we're increasingly seeing now. (The entire ecological guild of aerial insectivores, birds, bats, and bugs, are going extinct because there aren't enough bugs for them to eat. Not the only bad thing happening from agricultural practices.)

(My take on the "can't afford" is that wages are too low, not that sustainable farming is too expensive. Which I acknowledge is no immediate help to anyone.)

[kore]

Americans need to eat a lot more fruits and vegetables than they do meat or meat substitutes, though. I'd rather see a lot of that research and funding go in that direction than a meat substitute poorer people aren't that likely to eat anyway.

[kore]

I come from the grumpy place of Would Eat Anything, But Her Body Is Not Down With That

//waves from the bleacher seating of Severe Dietary Restrictions Acquired Later in Life

[brainwane]

I have had the Impossible Burger once or twice at Bareburger and liked it. I have never or very rarely eaten beef in my life (raised Hindu, now occasionally eat fish and poultry) and I liked the Impossible Burger for taste and texture.

I figure that vegetarians and vegans come up with and try meat-like substitute foods for some of the same reasons lots of people try simulations and mediated experiences and risk-mitigated versions of other, more risky or harmful experiences and so on, and some of the same reasons artists try stuff, some of which includes working towards mimesis/verismilitude.