‘Marbled’ vegan steak is well done enough to sit in the meat aisle
WAITROSE has become the first supermarket in the UK to sell a plant-based filet mignon – and has stocked the “marbled” vegan steaks on the same shelves as real meat.
Customers buying the 225g soy and wheat protein-based fillets at £10 apiece would be forgiven for potentially mistaking them for prime cuts of Japanese wagyu beef.
Created by biotechnicians at the Slovenian start-up Juicy Marbles, the steaks contain nuggets of hardened sunflower oil to mimic fat marbling and beetroot powder to stain the “flesh” and juices red. Unlike other producers that use 3D printing technology to replicate the composition of real meat, its creators rely on a grinder, named the Meato-matic 9000, to layer the plant protein fibres on top of one another, mimicking genuine muscle fibres.
Waitrose launched the vegan product as part of its Valentine Day’s meal deal offer, which also includes rib-eye steaks with bearnaise sauce at £10 and rump steaks with chimichurri at £9.
A spokesman for the supermarket said the product will sit with its plantbased alternatives in April after the Valentine’s promotion runs out on Feb 14.
Martyn Lee, executive chef at Waitrose, added: “The thing that is really exciting about this product is when cooking you see the raw protein turn into a caramelised and juicy steak that looks like the real thing.”
Juicy Marbles said achieving appetising marbling on the steaks was the biggest challenge its experts faced in developing the product. Expensive cuts of beef rely on the high fat content provided by rare breeds of cow.
Luka Sincek, a microbiologist and cofounder of Juicy Marbles, said technologies such as 3D printing and lab-grown meat for achieving the marbling were “too complicated”, “too slow”, and had “too many behavioural barriers”.
He added: “That’s why we developed our own original machine – lovingly called the Meat-o-matic Reverse Grinder 9000 – which combines a couple of existing technologies, to which we have modified and added some of our own innovations.”
He said the company was pleased to see its goods stocked in Waitrose – particularly in time for Valentine’s Day as his staff are “big fans of romance” and “anything that has to do with celebrating love is our jam”.
The “steaks” are already available to purchase online and in the United States and gained popularity last May after a Tiktok video by the singer and flautist Lizzo.
The video, which attracted 1.7 million likes and more than 8,000 comments, shows the Grammy-winning musician cooking the steaks with vegan eggs and butter, ketchup and rosemary.
She said: “It has a smell that smells like meat, spam. I don’t get paid for these, so I will be honest. It has a corned beef-like consistency, it’s good.”