SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 14 (UPI) — A Silicon Valley company unveiled a new meatless burger designed to taste, smell, look, and even “bleed” like a beef patty.
Impossible Foods, a company founded and headed by former Stanford professorPatrick Brown, said the team spent five years studying all aspects of a beef burger before settling on their plant-based Impossible Burger recipe.
“We didn’t just slap together a bunch of bits and pieces from plants and call it a burger. We did the deep research to understand what makes a burger so delicious,” Brown told KABC-TV.
He said the process involved the use of heme, a blood-like liquid created from a soybean gene injected into yeast, which is then fermented. The red-hued heme is what gives the burger its red color and causes it to “bleed” while cooking, just like a beef patty.
“It cooks just like meat, the only difference is that it gets a little bit crisper on the outside, but that’s really the only difference,” said Traci Des Jardins, owner of Jardiniere, one of three restaurants slated to start offering Impossible Foods’ burger.
The creators said Impossible Foods’ burger offers health benefits including having more protein, less fat and fewer calories than a lean beef patty. The burger also contains no cholesterol, the company said.
