Have It Your Way
It was kind of huge when Burger King launched its Impossible Foods Whopper. The commercial risk aside, if they could mainstream fake meat, maybe the country would meaningfully reduce its genuine meat consumption. McDonald’s and other major national fast food chains watched closely, but didn’t follow Burger King. And in fact, meat consumption is rising in the US and projected to continue doing so between now and 2032 (at least).
However, that doesn’t mean that plant-based proteins like the Impossible burger have failed. American consumption of plant-based protein is projected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 23.9% from this year through to 2030. Although my wife Kayce and I make most of the meals we eat, we love dining out, and have seen growth of alternative protein options on menus around the world. One recent encounter at a road-side grill called Archie’s Food to Die for in the tiny town of Orderville, UT, illustrated the ripple effect Burger King helped create.
Archie’s offers classic American grill staples like chicken fingers and hamburger patty melts, but it also offers a plant-based hamburger featuring the Beyond Meat patty. Fellow diners that day included a group of middle-aged, camouflage-clad men returning from a hunt; a family of Chinese tourists; and a local rancher who arrived by ATV. Not necessarily the target demo you’d expect for fake meat, but I watched three people order the Beyond Burger, including one of the hunters.
The Alternative Meat Uptake
The growth in plant-based protein, simultaneous meat consumption growth not withstanding, means that people are warming up to meat alternatives. Whether or not they eventually replace meat seems like a rhetorical question. The substantial environmental and climatic impact of meat has not discouraged less meat intake. The pros and cons of eliminating meat and seafood from one’s diet aren’t clear-cut. And then there’s the morality of eating formerly living things, which is not discouraging Americans from cutting back on meat, either.
Nevertheless, Archie’s is just one of many data points on the social and commercial uptake of plant-based protein that Kayce and I have collected over the last two or so years as she transitioned from carnivore to pescatarian to vegetarian. While I haven’t given up meat or seafood, I do most of the cooking at home, and I’ve taken on the challenge of figuring out how to make enjoyable meals from plant-based protein. The experimentation has been just as fun – and satisfying – as the meals we’ve enjoyed.
Pairing Alternative Meat
Our favorites include Daring.‘s chicken, Beyond’s steak, and Impossible’s ground beef. Daring’s is great for a diverse range of uses because it actually behaves like real chicken when cooked and can be cooked using a variety of methods. It’s the only fake chicken I’ve come across that actually pulls off being pulled, for example. Beyond’s steak can be used like flank steak; I love it as a substitute for carne asada in tacos, for example. And Impossible’s ground, if overcooked a bit, can replace ground beef or pork in an otherwise traditionally prepared Dan Dan noodles that few would know was meatless.
In a lot of ways the performance of plant-based protein comes down to the cuisines you make. I’ve been making a lot of traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican the past six months and I haven’t run into a single problem. However, when I’ve wanted to make Italian or French meals, for example bolognese and coq au vin, I’ve had no meatless options that can be braised and cooked low and slow because they don’t have things like saturated fat (specifically at high ratios), cartilage, and connective tissue.
These meat-only properties add flavor, texture, and viscosity, and give meat the endurance to be cooked, without going dry, for sufficiently long periods of time to extract flavors that take significant time to emerge. Plant-based protein, from my experience, can’t be cooked for that kind of time while retaining sufficient moisture. Nor do meat alternatives have the structure to achieve a juicy, flavorful raw state that offers a minimally acceptable amount of fibrous texture like red meat.
In our household, serving up a high quality, delicious meal often means putting a wine to it. And many will agree that meat is best served with wine because they elevate each other. It’s therefore a requirement (for me) that plant-based proteins pair well with wine. In determining pairing guidelines, the general answer I’ve found is pretty similar to most food and wine pairings: If you make the main food flavors the focus in picking the wine, you’ll get nice compliments from both food and drink. However, even though good pairings are relatively easy, achieving the level of elevation of a good pairing with genuine meat is much harder with plant-based alternatives.
I’ve found that the success with plant-based protein wine pairings ultimately comes down to whether I’m staying in the preparation sweet spot of the plant-based protein, just as it would be if I was faithful to what meat is and isn’t in its preparation. Since we’re not eating meat these days, and because we’re blessed with a versatile collection of wine, I’ve been able to make things work, and work well, most of the time, especially when I stick with cuisines that don’t subject red meat to long, intensive cooks. Venturing into those, however, exposes the limits of both the application of plant-based protein and its ability to pair with hefty, highly-structured red wines. I want alternative meat to support salivating food and wine pairings.
How the alternative meat industry can win over winos
I know the market that I’m discussing is niche, but it is relevant for those mission-driven, climate and morally-motivated plant-based protein producers that are (hopefully) in it for the long haul and thus need to figure out how to emulate the behavior of saturated fat, cartilage, connective tissue, and the like, to take a bite out of genuine meat’s marketshare.
Towards that end I hope to see restaurants that offer wine pairing options include plant-based protein in their prix fixe and chef’s menu experiences (e.g. for captive audiences). I hope to see wineries include plant-based protein in their suggested food pairings and recipes. I hope to see plant-based protein producers work on alternatives that better emulate meat in the ways I’ve described above. And most of all I hope to see more people try plant-based proteins in their home cooking and wine pairings.
