(upbeat music) - I am all in when it
comes to bean burgers and all the veggie patties you
can find at the supermarket, but I am more than a little skeptical of these meatless burgers
that pretend to be meat. But today Jack's gonna walk
me through all these options. - My goal today is to change your mind. - Okay. - And I know how difficult that's gonna be 'cause you're not somebody easily swayed. - I'm not. - All right, so there are
four meatless burger patties. Some of these came as patties
and we cooked them that way. Some of them came as basically
a block of ground product that we shaped. (Julia laughs) - You almost need a new
dictionary for this kind of food. - Yeah, I mean, you know,
ground plant-based meat. I mean, it's an odd terminology, but I'm gonna tell you there's
something good on the table. So you dig in. - All right. - You can tell a lot
by looking at them raw. - Yes, you can. - So, no surprise, the one that looks like a beef burger ended up cooking up a lot
more like a beef burger, and the one that looks like
an old frozen mushroom, it was further away from the real deal. There are four components that I want you to be thinking about. The first is what's the base? And so it's either soy, or pea protein, wheat gluten, mycoprotein,
which is from fungus. The pea and the soy
probably do a better job. Second thing is flavors. So there's all kinds of flavors. I think the ones that
are trying to replicate the flavor of beef are
better than the ones where you can taste carrot,
or garlic, or onion. I mean, I like garlic
and onion and carrot, but it doesn't really taste like meat. - Okay, come on. Like this, this is supposed to be a burger? - It is a burger. (Julia chuckles) Is your mind still open here? You didn't say anything
about the middle sample. - You know what? This has a texture that
is very similar to burger. The flavor was fine. It doesn't taste like meat by any stretch, but I love all sorts of bean
burgers and veggie patties. And this tastes like a veggie patty, but it has a texture of a burger, and so I like it. I would eat this happily. - All right, well, a lot of the texture is how they process it, how they take all these ingredients and then turn them into a patty. So the best ones have coconut oil. - Oh, that makes sense. - Which is solid at room temperature and then melts when it's heated, and gives you that sort of lusciousness that you get from a beef burger. The last thing is how they
replicate looking like meat. And so some of them use pomegranate juice, beet juice, heme protein. So they basically extract
from soybean plant roots something that is very similar to the hemoglobin that's in beef, and really is giving you this appearance not only when it's raw,
but when it's cooked. If you cook it too rare
it's pink in the middle. - Now, can you undercook these
and cook them medium rare, or do you really have to cook
them all the way through? - You wanna get a crispy exterior, 'cause I think, that's
it, you want them brown but if you want a well-done
burger, make it well-done. I think they're better cooked to somewhere around the 130. - All right, well these are very different right off the bat. These two definitely
taste like veggie patties, I mean, the textures of a veggie patty, the flavors of veggie patty. This one is just really unappealing. I mean, the texture, the
flavor, the size, the thickness. This one I could easily make fun of but there's something about it I like. It tastes like a veggie patty, but there's a nice flavor in there. I love the browning and
crisp on the outside. It'd be a lovely dinner, but it doesn't taste like meat. - Okay. - So these two are
really approaching meat. They're not there, but
you know, enough ketchup, and mustard, and pickles, and tomatoes, and a good brioche bun, I don't think I'd be
fooled, but I'd be happy. - And I will tell you with the better ones that I've done a lot of
cooking with these recently, tacos and other things where
you start using bigger flavors, honestly, it gets really
difficult to tell difference because the texture is so close and there's no flavor
that screams not beef. - This one, I like the
texture a bit better. It's a bit more like beef, but there's something about
this one I really appreciate. It doesn't have a strong
flavor one way or the other. It almost tastes a little
on the sausage side, but I like that. I think if you're looking for a really good replacement for beef, this is the closest, I would think. This is not far behind
though, in terms of flavor. - Let's start with what you liked best. You can flip over the cards. So you chose the runner
up, which we recommended, the Beyond Meat Beyond Burger. So they have two products. This is the one that sold
already in a patty form, so they call it a burger. The other one that has
beef at the end of the name is sold in a brick. - [Julia] Gotcha. - Like a ground meat. So the winner's down on the end. So this is the Impossible. This is the one with the heme. It's pretty close, and when you start putting
any seasoning in this other than salt and pepper, which is really all you've got, you really get pretty close to beef. So let's take a look at the things you were less enthusiastic about. - [Julia] This one. - Yeah, so this is MorningStar Farms. This was not recommended. It was better than some of
the other not recommended. I mean, you found a little
bit to like about it, but it's not that close to beef. And at the very end, this is the Gardein, bottom of the rankings. It's too thin. It's too wispy. It's not really beefy. It's not that close to meat. - Thanks, Jack. - You're welcome, Julia. - So there you go. If you're ready to enter the
world of meat-free burgers, check out Impossible
Food's Impossible Burger, which costs about $10
for a 12 ounce package. Thanks for watching
"America's Test Kitchen." What'd you think? - Well, leave a comment, and let us know which recipes
you're excited to make, or you can just say hello. - You can find links to
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