We particularly liked the flavour and thickness of this burger, and thought it did well to imitate real meat. We did think however that it needed condiments to give it an extra flavoursome punch. Samuelsson thought the Meat Free Burger charred very well and enjoyed biting into it. "I like the size and flavour of this burger, which is important for it to stand out, so you don’t feel like you’re just eating stuff in a bun," he says.
Score: 6/10 | £2.50 for 226g | sainsburys.co.uk
1. Waitrose Korean Inspired Burger
WIRED
While it doesn’t even try to look like a real-meat burger, this vegan patty does well to pack in flavour and texture. It crumbled a lot during the searing process, but eventually held together when it was packed in the burger with the vegan condiments.
While we didn’t make it our favourite in our test, this burger did well to suitably impress Samuelsson. "I’m not sure what’s Korean about this burger," he quips. "While it doesn’t substitute for real meat, and I’d feel a little lost eating it, it does have the most flavour of all the vegan burgers I’ve tried in this test."
Its natural ingredients including red cabbage and black turtle beans make it so crumbly. It also includes ubiquitous beetroot and soya protein concentrate, as well as more unusual ingredients such as sushi rice and breadcrumbs to give it a bit of a crunch.
Score: 7/10 | £2.75 for 227g | waitrose.com
Conclusion
It's a vegan victory for Waitrose and ignominy for Iceland. But looking at the field in general, it's not great news. Not yet, anyway. "A burger for me has to be rock‘n’roll," says Samuelsson. "You need to feel like you’re eating something delicious. And a good burger depends on the perfect bun-to-patty ratio – you want the bun to be soft enough to bite into with a wonderful patty that should feel rich and almost fatty, but not too fatty."
"When we’re talking vegan, the burger needs to be delicious and better than the real thing. So we have to know what we’re trading for – and right now it can’t be for health reasons as we don’t exactly know what we’re eating, so we can only judge on pure taste."
"For me, eating a vegan burger after a meat burger is a bit like listening to Jimi Hendrix, and then someone suggesting that I listen to electric guitar on a computer. It just doesn’t have the same effect. But I applaud everyone who has launched a vegan burger for starting the conversation about what we should be eating. Now we just have to concentrate on getting delicious!"
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
