Serious Eats

Meat enthusiast here. There is no one who wants a viable meat alternative for meat eaters than me. The bleeding heart (pun intended) in me cares about the sustainability of meat and the sheer cost of ethical farming. Fact of the matter is though, I won't give up eating meat. I love it, so so much. And I have a leery eye towards meat substitutes. This product for example:

- How well does this product replicate the Maillard Reaction [0]? This is key when we're talking about taste and texture.

- Why did the author taste the burger with 82 toppings slathered on top by a professional chef? That's like testing out a new 21 speed, strapped to the top of an SUV.

- Why are they (presumably) trying to recreate chuck? Ground chuck is a terrible thing to replicate. It's like burger meat designed by committee[1].

- Is the sizzle coming from only extracted water from the plant burger (water vapor, decreasing heating temp)? Or are their lipids present spiking the flame, positively contributing to the cooking process?

That said, I'd love to give it a shot. Proper seasoning, a nice medium rare with a slice of American. But I'm not holding my breath. Meat is very hard.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction
[1]: http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2009/10/the-burger-lab-best-burger-blend-profiles-of-eight-cuts-of-beef.html

There have been plenty of attempts to reverse engineer Coca Cola - and some came pretty close.

However the major part of Coca Cola (and its flavour) is in the recipe - the technical process that yields final product, not the chemical composition of the ingredients.

I don't have a reference handy, but I am going to present you with an analogy for french fries. I hope you can understand my point from that case (which is even more illustrative of the phenomena I am trying to highlight).

http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/05/the-burger-lab-how-to-make-perfect-mcdonalds-style-french-fries.html

There are plenty of fields where the Car Companies can compete - and software quality should absolutely be one of them. Therefore killing DRM does everybody a favor.

That's not actually a good thing when it comes to french fries.[1] To get a good crisp exterior and a fluffy interior, you need a multi-stage process -- blanch in hot water, fry, freeze, and then fry again. French fries cooked from frozen differ from fries cooked fresh because the freezing crystallizes the water inside, essentially tearing the inside of the fry apart and making it easier for the fry to release its moisture during cooking. Cooking from actual potatoes right in front of you means they don't have time to actually do any of the stuff necessary to make good french fries.

1) http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/05/the-burger-lab-how-to-make-perfect-mcdonalds-style-french-fries.html

> To think that something that even bacteria and molds won't be able to eat and break down is going to enter my body as sustenance...that's a little unsettling.

Do you eat salt? Dried pasta? Rice? Honey? None of these things really go off, either.

http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/11/the-burger-lab-revisiting-the-myth-of-the-12-year-old-burger-testing-results.html

> It means that there's nothing that strange about a McDonald's burger not rotting. Any burger of the same shape will act the same way. The real question is, why?

TL;DR: moisture content is the issue. If you get a thin, dry piece of supermarket bread it'll sit there forever too.

The article already includes McDonald's response why its burger didn't decompose (it dries out quickly due to its small size).

If you're skeptical, Serious Eats confirmed this in an experiment: https://aht.seriouseats.com/2010/11/the-burger-lab-revisiting-the-myth-of-the-12-year-old-burger-testing-results.html

(A home-made burger of the same size tested under the same condition didn't decompose either. The only thing you need to do to make either the home-made or McD's burger rot is to make sure it doesn't dehydrate quickly.)