On Food 1: The Beyond Burger

I've been curious about meatless hamburgers for a while now, both as a disaffected Jew who wavers on kashrut and is dating a guy who thinks cheeseburgers are a good use of both meat and cheese, and as someone who's trying trying to eat less beef both for her own health and the health of the planet. But for most of my life thus far, veggie burgers have been weird and unappetizing. So it was a lovely surprise to learn that there are now two different brands of vegetarian hamburger that people think look and taste sufficiently similar to meat that even non-vegetarians will find them worth eating.

The Impossible Burger looks like more of a classy restaurant-y thing , while Beyond Meat's Beyond Burger has started showing up in such affordable places as Vancouver burger chains and the meat fridge at my local Seattle Safeway. So a couple of weeks ago, I bought myself a couple of Beyond Burgers and made them for lunch.

For about $6 US, you get two 4-ounce plantburger patties and instructions for grilling them. Not having a grill handy, or wanting to mess with pan-frying, I baked mine instead, which took 20 minutes at 350F with a break in the middle to flip them.

They came out a lighter brown than I'm used to from beef burgers, and the taste was less intense, but the smell and texture were convincingly beefy. I might have overdone them a little, since most of the juice ran out and there was less pink inside than the packaging recommended, but on multigrain bread with a slice of heirloom tomato (thank G-d for the farmer's market), one patty made most of a delicious lunch. Not all, though; it wasn't as filling as I'd expect the same mass of beef to be, and the smell lingered and made me not stop being hungry until I found some dessert.

I saved the second one for dinner and ate it with penne, mozzarella, and marinara sauce. The texture didn't really hold up to reheating, or maybe, when the flavor was covered up by the sauce, the texture was just more apparent; either way, the second burger felt and tasted a lot more like tofu. (It is not tofu: the packaging assures me that Beyond Burgers are vegan, soy-free, and gluten-free.) Since the flavor is such a big part of the meatlike experience, this is definitely a hamburger substitute, not a meatball substitute.

The Beyond Burger is a convincing meatless hamburger, but it's best as long as it's freshly grilled and the focus of the meal. If you want to be impressed by great strides in vegetarian technology, use as directed on the box and don't add strongly flavored toppings. And don't try to eat the crispy burned bits that get left in the pan. They do not taste like they're made of beef.