Having spent about two-thirds of my life around a barbecue grill I decided to see how the two most popular nonmeat burgers would cook up and taste alongside regular 80 percent lean hamburger meat.
The Beyond Beef was easy to locate for this test. I went to a local Safeway and after I got over sticker shock bought two packages. Each package contained two quarter-pound burgers at $6.50 per package, or $3.25 for each patty.
Since Impossible Burger is not available in this area yet, we asked Impossible’s parent company if we could buy some to test and received the 5-pound package that they send restaurants. For the consumer price we called Gelson’s Market in Los Angeles and learned that a 12-ounce package sells there for $8.99, so a quarter-pound patty costs $3.99.
Plain-old everyday hamburger cost me $3.49 for a pound, which means a quarter-pound burger would price out at 87 cents each.
When I prepared all three for the grill, using a circular pastry cutter and scale to make sure each was the same size, I discovered that both the Beyond Beef and the Impossible Burger are very sticky and unpleasant to handle with bare hands. When preparing meat for the public, I wear silicone gloves, but in my own home I trust myself and use my bare hands. But not this time.
I added no spices nor herbs to any of the patties. I just put them on a pre-heated charcoal grill for 5 minutes on both sides, then let them sit on the unheated side of the grill for 3 minutes.
The burgers were placed on plain hamburger buns with no condiments for my first taste.
The Beyond Beef had a nice taste, but I did not like the mushy texture and mouthfeel. The Impossible Burger tasted like a grilled burger, and had a hamburgerlike texture and mouthfeel. The regular burger, surprise, tasted like a beef burger and had a pleasant texture and mouthfeel.
All three looked exactly like well-cooked burgers from the outside. The Beyond Beef smelled like a beef burger and had some reddish liquid leaking out but had no pinkness inside. The Impossible Burger was pinker inside and smelled like a beef burger that had been grilled. The regular burger smelled and looked like the medium-rare burger that it was.
I then put the same condiments on each burger. A slice of raw onion, some sweet relish, and a small amount of mustard and ketchup. All of them were very tasty and neither I nor two people who joined the tasting could tell the difference in taste and mouthfeel — except, however, the mushy, soft texture of the Beyond Beef.
As Rachel Pinsky and I discovered in our restaurant burger taste tests, properly prepared, I don’t think anyone could tell the Impossible Burger and a regular beef burger apart, especially when dressed with your favorite condiments and seasonings. The Beyond Beef would be much easier to recognize.
