Beyond Meat: FirstTaste
Tastes like meat, no cruelty to animals
The RainyDayKitchen folks were shopping in a local market the other day when they came upon a sale on Beyond Meat burgers…$3.99 per pack, down from $6.99. Still not cheap, but inexpensive enough that they picked up four packs.
It took a few tries, but they have worked out a way to cook them such that the taste and texture are quite satisfying without the “heaviness” of a meat-burger!!!
We thought we would share our FirstTaste experience should others want to venture out from their animal-protein-based burgers to something that is…well, you’ll have to taste it to believe it.
Beyond Meat
RainyDayKitchen has figured out how to cook Beyond Burgers so that biting into one satisfies both taste and texture expectations that come with eating “a burger.” It’s a two-step process.
1. Defrost them.
There are two defrosting methods that will give you a good final result:
- Take them straight from the freeze to the microwave on DEFROST, but don’t let it defrost completely (i.e., still cold but no ice crystals); and
- Put the package in the fridge overnight.
Unlike some veggie burgers, the Beyond Burgers stayed together after defrosting, handled exactly like their meat counterparts, and unlike meat patties, there was no liquid in the package.
Pretty hard to tell that that is not meat just from looking at it…
2. Cook.
- Pan-fry w/ olive oil on medium-high heat for three minutes on each side, flipping frequently. Brown each side, but don’t burn—and we found the best way to do that was to not cook each side for three minutes straight, but to flip the burger often until each side has had three minutes of cooking. Stopping at three minutes also prevents the patties from drying out.
The Beyond Burgers almost cooks just like meat. Because there is no fat per se in these things, you need to add some oil is to the pan to keep it from drying out and from burning.
On the other hand, there was almost ZERO shrinkage from cooking.
Best cooked in a non-stick pan…
We believe Beyond Burgers ought to be cooked in a non-stick pan, to provide additional slippage for getting the spatula under them for flipping. Onions, mushrooms, whatever…just toss it in the pan while the patty is cooking. The overall cook time, including veggies, is about 3-4 minutes per side.
Once browned, the Beyond Meat patties were almost indistinguishable from ones made with hamburger.
Not a meat-based burger? Really?
We all agreed the Beyond Burger was a lot juicier than the other veggie burgers out there, and the taste is good enough to stand on its own. Some of us actually found the smell/other qualities TOO CLOSE to meat-burgers that it was off-putting.
We ate their share.
Looking at the “Nutritional Facts,” the salt and fat content of these burgers are no worse than beef health-wise, better then other veggie burgers taste-wise, and better for the planet resource-utilization-wise…the net is a “win” as an alternative for us!
Just to be clear, this alternative plant-based patty may not any healthier for you than a meat-based one, as the ingredients are heavily processed. But if you want to eat less meat and your croc-brain doesn’t, Beyond Meat patties have the taste and texture spot on, which should put that part of your brain at ease.
Also…our resident vegan would like to point out Beyond Mean does not harm animals nor rely on animals that were harmed (to quote her: “i.e., made dead, hacked to pieces, and then eaten”) which apparently we had completely, uh, neglected to mention until now.
Kindness FTW!!!
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