Here’s a veggie burger that can fool carnivores in the crowd
Every week or two since February, I have Googled “Beyond Burger Canada,” to see when the fabled plant-based patty would be for sale in stores.
This was after first hearing about the Beyond Burger at the awesome Saskatoon vegan restaurant Gud Eats (where I opted for a fried “chickn” sandwich instead of faux beef ).
A few weeks later, I found Beyond at a grocery store in Montana. I bought six patties and waited for barbecue season to finally roll around.
When it did, I was honestly shocked.
The Beyond Burger has been called the veggie burger that bleeds — a gross description, but one that really gets at how beeflike the patties are. It’s no joke.
The burgers are pink (from a hint of beet juice) and look a lot like ground beef. It’s a far cry from most processed, pre-packaged veggie patties, which are usually rubbery and puck-like. Some come with pre-stamped grill marks, but the Beyond actually acquires them through cooking. They actually sizzle on the grill (thanks to canola and coconut oil ingredients).
And they taste like beef.
“It tricked me very well,” my co-worker Austin Davis said Tuesday, coincidentally #CowAppreciationday, according to Twitter.
It was his first time trying the Beyond, along with our colleagues Tim Switzer, Pam Cowan and Brandon Harder.
Finally, the Beyond Burger is widely available in Canada, for $6.99 at A&W.
The burger that made its nationwide debut on Monday is the creation of California-based company Beyond Meat.
At A&W, the patty is served on a sesame-seed bun with the vegan ingredients of red onions, tomato, lettuce, pickles and mustard. Mayonnaise is served by default, cheese is an additional option. (Definition FYI: Vegetarian includes eggs or dairy, while vegan is entirely plant-based, no animal products involved.)
Beyond Meat’s website claims that “(it) looks, cooks, and tastes like a fresh beef burger.” I wanted to test that claim — specifically the taste part — with some meat eaters. So I picked up some Beyond burgers and we scarfed them down in the Leader-post cafeteria on Tuesday at lunch, my four omnivorous counterparts comparing the veggie burger to what Switzer calls “far and away the best friggin’ fastfood burger,” the A&W Buddy burger.
“For my money, the veggie burger’s as good as the Buddy burger,” said Cowan, who “would sooner have a good burger than a steak any day,” and had never eaten a veggie burger before Tuesday.
Davis was the biggest skeptic of the bunch.
“Burgers are good. Veggie burgers are fake. That’s not a burger. It’s just vegetable stuff packed into a fake patty,” he said, then changed his tune with one bite.
The “vegetable stuff ” is pea protein isolate (made from split peas), which provides 20 grams of protein to one Beyond patty.
“Most veggie burgers are kind of rubbery,” but this one is not, Switzer added.
I love veggie burgers of most varieties. Chickpea patty, yes. Black bean patty, even better. Mushroom-based, the best.
But, agreed, the store-bought processed ones are usually a little rubbery.
At other fast-food restaurants, like Burger King, the veggie patty is thin and tasteless. At Mcdonald’s, my road-trip go-to, it’s non-existent, although the international chain did trial a vegan burger in Finland last fall.
Apparently Harvey’s has a good vegan patty, though I’ve never tried it.
As for local restaurants, I love a Leo’s veggie burger and will always pine for the beluga lentil burger from Flip, a great downtown restaurant that unfortunately closed its doors in November. But good or bad, most veggie patties don’t taste like meat, and — as a former meat eater — sometimes I still get that craving.
At Beyond Meat, “Our belief is that the best way to get people to eat less meat is by giving them what they love — in this case, a juicy delicious burger.”
In the Vegans of Regina Facebook group — which was pretty excited about the Beyond Burger this week — one member said his “hope is that it can convince others to lean away from the actual beef.”
Switzer won’t be one of them. Yes, he said, he would eat this one again but, “I’m sorry, it doesn’t beat a Buddy burger.”
Contrarian that he was, Davis was the biggest convert: “I’m convinced. I might spend my own money on this Beyond Burger.”
It goes without saying, I will too. A&W will get the bulk of my fast-food dollars, at least until I can buy Beyond Meat in Regina grocery stores.