100% USDA Grade A Bull – Part II
With a hefty amount of professional etiquette and journalistic integrity, I will give you my detailed review of purchasing, cooking and eating a plain and dry burger made with Beyond Beef®. Please note, everything I am about to say is 100 percent my opinion and could possibly gross you out a little. Read with caution.
Last week, we discussed a photo submission from a reader of an Impossible™ Whopper® with all its ingredients displayed at the Mo-Kan Livestock Market sale barn. In that column, I hypothesized that the Impossible™ Whopper® wouldn’t taste much different than a traditional Whopper® due to the way Whoppers® are cooked, paired with added condiments. I went on to hypothesize that a plain and dry (bread, patty, cheese) fake meat burger would taste significantly different than a traditional, 100 percent beef burger. SPOILER ALERT: After this week’s blind taste test, six blindfolded testers proved my hypothesis correct.
I left the Western Ag Reporter office on my lunch break en route to a local grocery store. This store carried Beyond Beef®and informed me Impossible™ meat wasn’t yet available for purchase in grocery stores. At the grocery store, I purchased a package of hamburger buns, sharp cheddar cheese slices, salt, pepper, 1.19 lbs. of 93 percent XX-Lean Ground Beef and 1 lb. of Plant-Based Ground Beyond Beef®.
I drove back to the office and fired up a griddle my grandma gifted me for my 19thbirthday. I poured a tablespoon of olive oil on each side of the griddle and waited for the hotplates to heat up. While waiting, I formed four patties: two made with Beyond Beef®and two made with real beef.
At this time, I would like to explain to you my distaste for the word “yucky.” I absolutely hate this word. It reminds me of that dirty kid in elementary school who somehow always has dried cafeteria food on his face and has his finger glued up his nose. Just hearing someone say “yucky,” makes me want to take a bath in bleach to rid me of the it’s disgusting, germy feeling. If I am using the word “yucky,” you know there is absolutely no other word on the planet I could use to describe something.
Y’all, the Beyond Beef® looked, felt and smelled YUCKY.
It looked like wet dog food and vomit. It felt mushy, like cheesecake, with chunks of things that resembled the crushed-up peanuts in crunchy peanut butter and the shell of purple hull peas. And that smell… you know when you’re cooking a pretty potent supper and throw some of the raw ingredients in the trash and leave it for a few days? Okay, so THAT, mixed with rubbing alcohol — that is the only way I can think to describe the smell of ground Beyond Beef®.
When I tried to form patties from the Beyond Beef®, the mold kept breaking and cracking. I videoed this whole process and it took more than triple the amount of time to form a solid Beyond Beef® patty than it did a traditional beef patty. Another strange observation was after molding the Beyond Beef®, my hands were incredibly greasy and shiny. It looked like I had just rubbed coconut oil all over my hands. This is not something that happened after forming the traditional beef patties.
I cooked all four patties the same amount of time. I left a little bit of a pinkish hue in the traditional beef patties and waited until they felt done enough to me. There was no way to tell if the Beyond Beef® patties were “done,” based off look and feel, so I just assumed they deserved the same cook time as the traditional patties.
I think the most shocking aspect of this experiment was, to me anyway, the amount of grease collected in the small bowls I placed on each side of the griddle. The Beyond Beef® created a significantly larger amount of grease than the traditional beef, and the coloring was yellow with a reddish center. This made me question: is Beyond Beef® really healthier than traditional beef like many vegans claim?
Grease from 100% beef.
Grease from ground Beyond Beef®.
A serving of ground Beyond Beef® is 250 calories while traditional beef is 170 calories. Beyond Beef® contains 18 grams of fat, 390 milligrams of sodium, 3 carbohydrates and 20 grams of protein per serving. Traditional beef contains 8 grams of fat, 75 milligrams of sodium, 0 carbohydrates and 23 grams of protein per serving. However, in Beyond Beef’s® defense, a serving of Beyond Beef® contains no cholesterol while a serving of traditional beef contains 70 milligrams of cholesterol.
As far as an ingredients list goes, Beyond Beef® is made of water, pea protein isolate, expeller-pressed canola oil, refined coconut oil, rice protein, natural flavors, cocoa butter, mung bean protein, methylcellulose, potato starch, apple extract, salt, potassium chloride, vinegar, lemon juice concentrate, sunflower lecithin, pomegranate fruit powder and beet juice extract (for color).
Comparatively, the ingredients for traditional beef are as follows: beef.
Once all four patties were cooked, I placed a slice of sharp cheddar cheese atop each patty for around 30 seconds until the cheese melted and placed the cheesy patties between a sesame seed hamburger bun and washed my dishes. I cut the burgers into quarters and stuck toothpicks flagged with green and blue tabs in their rightful pieces — green for Beyond Beef®, blue for traditional beef.
I then filled up a few glasses of water, grabbed a handful of plates from our office kitchen, laid a blindfold on our conference table and hollered, “Alright, who’s hungry for a burger?”.
Next week, the Activist vs. Agriculture column will feature Part III of the “100% USDA Grade A Bull,” series where we will dive into the blind taste test my coworkers agreed to participate in. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will admit, I brought in a platter of homemade brownies for those who participated the following day at work.
