Beyond Impossible: The Showdown
This guide was written by staff writer, Lily Falk. Read about Lily here.
As you make your Independence Day shopping list, you may be considering swapping out your ground beef burgers for a meatless alternative like Impossible Meat or Beyond Meat. Doing so is not only a great way to reduce your carbon footprint as you feed the masses, but can also allow your vegetarian friends and family to enjoy the grilling tradition without feeling like they’re missing out.
Alternatives like Impossible Meat and Beyond Meat have created pretty convincing meatless burgers, so if you’re feeling a little mischievous, try serving Impossible or Beyond without saying what it is, and see if anyone notices (Disclaimer: carnivorous guests may get mad). As a vegetarian, I always opt for meatless alternatives, like those I just mentioned, but I’m often hung up on which alternative takes the crown as the best and/or most convincing. When my friends gathered recently, I decided to cook both Beyond and Impossible meats, and have everyone compare and contrast their experiences of the product. It was a great time, incredibly enlightening, and I can now share the grand results with all of you! But before we dive into my trials, I think a few helpful tips to cooking alternative meats might be in order for those of you taking a crack at it for the first time this holiday weekend.
Tip #1: They may taste like meat, but that doesn’t mean they cook like meat. In my experience with meat alternatives over the past year, I’ve found that it’s incredibly easy to overcook them. While the packaging suggests that the product be cooked just as you would cook regular beef (which they indicate means cooking on medium/high for a few minutes per side), I have found better results when cooking on a medium to low heat for slightly longer periods of time.
Tip #2: Traditional burgers are a composition of flavors and textures — meatless burgers should be just the same. My first suggestion, which is true for real meat too, is to dress up the burgers themselves with raw onion, chopped garlic, and/or basil - whatever you have on hand! While both are fine without additions, they are elevated to the next level with a little extra ~oomph~! And when you finally cook and plate them, don’t forget to dress up the buns as well — lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions, and myriad of sauces all come together to create the ultimate, satisfying, burger experience.
Now that you have some of basic strategies to keep in mind as you embark on your burger cooking/grilling adventures, let’s get back to the trial of Impossible Meat vs. Beyond Meat!
Motivation
A few weeks ago I ordered a Beyond Burger from a Boston burger chain and was thoroughly disappointed with the experience. The burger was dry and tasted like it had been cooked for a million years. I thought to myself, if this is how establishments are serving these innovative meat alternatives, the industry is doomed.
I’ve been very excited about the plant-based meat industry for quite some time now, enamored with what science has accomplished, and excited by the possibilities they’ve offered us vegetarians and vegans in the kitchen. Having been rooting for these products, and was deeply disappointed to find that the experience dining out was vastly different from my positive experience in my home kitchen.
So, in an effort to save you the disappointment, I wanted to share some meatless-burger cooking tips with the world, and offer a side-by-side comparison of the two industry behemoths for those interested.
Preparation
My preparation of the Beyond Meat and Impossible Meat was exactly the same - I mixed the meat with roughly chopped raw onion and red pepper flakes in two separate bowls.
Directly out of the package, the Impossible Meat had little to no smell, perhaps similar to ground beef. In contrast, the Beyond Meat had a distinct smell that escaped immediately upon opening - a smell that remained as the meat was cooked and certainly once served.
When mixing the raw ingredients by hand, I noticed that the Impossible meat felt mostly smooth with each squish, while the Beyond Meat texture felt more like many small nubs held together. Definitely contributing factors in their final cooked textures.
Cooking
While I typically cook these burgers on the stovetop, for the sake of a traditional Independence Day preparation, I decided to give the grill a try.
First, I cooked one of each type of “meat” on the grill’s high setting in order to match the instructions. I waited about 3 minutes for the first side to cook and turn brown in both cases before flipping and waiting another 3 minutes for the other side to turn brown. After cooking the second side, both burgers had char lines from the grill and I removed them from the heat in fear they would be well overdone.
Immediately after removing the burgers, I cut each burger in half to see the results and found that the Beyond Burger appeared fully cooked on the inside, while the Impossible Burger looked extremely rare and mostly red.
I then cooked the rest of the burgers on the lowest heat/flame the grill allowed (as I normally would, and recommend), and flipped each burger after the bottom side appeared to turn brown (about 5 minutes). Notably, in the case of the Impossible burgers, the meat did clearly “bleed” as the red heme gushed out of the top, while a similar reaction did not occur for the Beyond Burgers.
In this second round, both burgers were cooked evenly throughout. The Impossible Burger was slightly pink on the inside, but mostly a light brown, and the Beyond Burger was brown throughout.
Once cooked, Beyond’s previously mentioned “nubs” maintained a similar texture, but all in all the texture of both brands were comparable.
Consumption
To accompany the burgers, I prepared chopped onion, avocado, arugula, and spinach dressed in lemon, tomato, ketchup, and mustard.
I will note that all four friends involved in this trial were omnivores, and will occasionally eat a beef burger (thus their opinion may be more valuable to you carnivorous converts!).
I gave each of my friends one half of an Impossible Burger and one half of a Beyond Burger (all from the second low heat cooked batch) and told them to dress each up however they would like. I did not tell them which was which but instructed them to all try the “more pink burger” (the Impossible) first. I chose this order knowing that the Beyond had a strong, distinct flavor that I didn’t want to influence their Impossible Burger experience.
Everyone seemed pleased in the first round, the most notable reaction being, “the thing is, I don’t usually like burgers, and I like this”. My other friend said that she would not have known it was fake meat had I not told her. Given the latter reaction, I was surprised the first friend enjoyed it!
In the second round, two friends said they preferred the Impossible, but the Beyond was ok, and two said they preferred the Beyond, though both agreed it tasted less like “real” meat. One friend said, “It’s farther from a burger but I like it so much better”. The strong smell and flavor from Beyond has been described as repulsive to some, but clearly enjoyable to many who feel it is just a product of it being a “veggie” burger.
As for the batch cooked on high heat, I tried both and did not notice a huge difference in flavor once the burgers were dressed up. That being said, for those who do not like a rare burger, if the meat had been cooked all the way through to eliminate any red in the Impossible it would have most definitely overcooked and been dried out — stick to low and slow!
A Few Closing Notes
Impossible Meat uses heme from soy to create that red “bleeding” that we typically associate with meat. Beyond Meat uses dye from beets to create a red hue, but you can see in the packaging that even when raw, Beyond is more brown than red, almost grey, while Impossible Meat begins a vibrant red and turns brown when cooked. While the heme in the Impossible Meat creates a more meat-like experience, it is important to note the soy content in Impossible for those with allergies. Beyond Meat on the other hand uses pea, mung bean, faba bean, and brown rice for its protein content, and as a result may be a more allergy-friendly option.
Impact & Takeaway
Ultimately, while we can go back and forth on which meat replacement is the tastiest, or the best for the environment, or sources the best ingredients, it is important to keep in mind the bigger picture which is one industry versus another. The meat alternative (which includes all meat alternatives, not just beef) industry is growing and is estimated to be worth between US$ 5.6 Billion and US$ 20 Billion dollars, with plenty of room to grow – both in terms of new products and companies entering the market, as well as the room for improvement in the products themselves.
If you thought US$ 20 Billion was a lot, you may be surprised that the global meat industry is estimated to be worth $2 Trillion US dollars, and beef alone is estimated to be worth $332.49 Billion US dollars. Whichever plant-based product you choose, you are supporting a more sustainable industry working to create a path forward for the world, in place of an industry stuck in the past and contributing 14.5% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
There are rituals and practices around killing an animal and eating it for sustenance among a relatively small subset of our global community, but the fact is, the majority of US consumers are extremely detached from where their food comes from, and the processes to produce factory-farmed meat are more lab-like than many realize.