The Best Meat-Free Burgers

A meatier burger. A perfect burger. A meat lover’s burger. This doesn’t sound like marketing for vegetarian burgers, but it is. There’s a seismic shift happening in the world of vegetarian, or plant-based, “meat.” Companies are shaking their health-store reputations and targeting consumers who like meat but who, for any number of reasons, want to eat less of it. More products than ever before are intended to mimic the taste, texture, and experience of eating meat. Some of these burgers even claim to stay red and juicy at the center when cooked, much like real meat that’s been cooked rare or medium-rare. The meat eater–friendly approach is working: Americans spent $801 million on plant-based meat last year, according to research from the Plant Based Foods Association and the Good Food Institute. That’s an increase of 10 percent over the previous year. As a testament to the success of plant-based meat—and the threat it poses to conventional meat producers—many meat producers are now urging lawmakers to pass laws preventing meat-free products from containing words such as “meat” or “burger” on their packaging. 

The plant-based meat companies getting the biggest press are the relative newcomers Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. Each was inspired by an ambitious goal: combating climate change by lessening, or even completely stopping, human dependence on livestock. Both companies acknowledge that they can only accomplish that sky-high goal if their products are delicious and satisfying enough to win over meat eaters. They’ve had the most success so far with burgers, which Americans first got to taste in restaurants as varied as Burger King, Applebee’s, and David Chang’s Momofuku Nishi. Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat products are now available in supermarkets, with Beyond Meat offering burger patties and both companies offering packages of coarsely ground plant-based meat that resembles bulk ground beef. The companies say that these bulk products can be formed into burgers or incorporated into any recipe that calls for ground beef. Increasingly, these meat-free options are found right next to the regular ground beef in supermarket meat sections instead of with the tofu and other vegetarian proteins. However, they tend to cost more, sometimes up to about $18 per pound compared with about $6 per pound for ground beef. 

As curious as we were about the implications the rising popularity of plant-based meat will have on the climate, animal agriculture, and America’s meat-eating habits, we wanted to know the answers to much simpler questions. Does the next generation of meat-free burgers taste good? Can they really appeal ... read more