I tried searching, what’s the difference between these burgers and Boca, Morningstar, and all the other meatless products that have been on the market for years?
They taste better and have a better “mouth feel.”
Although if you take a Boca, add cheese and all the usual fast food hamburger fixins, there’s not much meat taste to worry about.
Impossible burger reportedly uses a plant-based compound that simulates the metallic taste of hemoglobin, which they believe is what gives meat products their characteristic taste.
I also believe the other burgers were soy based.
For the impossible burger it’s heme. Heme is a functional group found in many proteins and is very common in animal tissues and blood. (Think hemoglobin) It can also be found to a lesser extent in plants - most notably soybeans. What impossible foods did is genetically modify some yeast so they can ferment the heme out of soybean roots and then put that in the final product to mimic animal blood.
The beyond burger is different in that it is non GMO and also non soy. It’s “bleed” comes from beet extract, and it doesn’t use any soy. It also touts itself as gluten free. The Boca burger uses soy and wheat gluten.
I find all this kinda interesting, but personally I’ll stick to eating cows. 
ETA: ninjaed
Do side by side taste comparisons between the beyond meat, impossible burger, bean burgers, veggie burgers, garden burgers, nut burgers, tofu burgers, etc. At least to my palate and experience making my own or trying everything out there, the impossible burger is credible as a burger. Not as a “veggie burger” but simply as a good tasting burger.
I will second this. The impossible burger is the only vegan/vegetarian burger I have eaten and felt satisfied. It is possible it could have fooled me into thinking it was meat had I not been aware of what it was.
I wouldn’t say that about any of the other available choices.
[Moderating]
Welcome to the SDMB, Mcmechanic. We have a forum specifically for questions about the arts, including cooking. I’ll move this thread from General Questions to Cafe Society for you.
By the way, one thing about Impossible Burger specifically (and perhaps Beyond’s product as well) is that the goal was not to be healthier (lower calories, lower sodium, etc) than a conventional meat burger and in fact I think the nutritional numbers are comparable. Instead, the project was all about reducing the massive environmental impact of meat production.
(BTW, it seems that we’re soon going to have to start using a retronym like beefburger to distinguish. And another thing; other people are working on lab-grown meat, and that may be another way to reduce the environmental impact of meat production.)
Because I don’t eat non-kosher meat, I eat a lot of veggie burgers when I’m eating out, but unlike a vegetarian, still love a good beef burger at home or a kosher restaurant. Some like gardenburger make no attempt to be meatlike and can just be enjoyed on their own merits. I’ve had a few veggie burgers, boca and franklin portabella, and a few others where I said, “hey this is almost like meat”. Impossible burger is the first time where I said, “Are you sure you didn’t give me beef by mistake?” It’s a very, very close simulacrum of a burger. Also, I’ve never seen any sort of faux-meat at a tex-mex place until Impossible made it to Qdoba, and it was cool to have “meat” and not just beans as the protein in my tacos and burritos for a change. Looking forward daily to the Impossible Whopper reaching my local BK.
I bought Beyond at the grocery store and grilled it at home. I didn’t like the smell before it was cooked. But after cooking it was just OK. More meatlike than most veggie burgers, but not as good as Impossible. But I recognize that I’d have to have a professionally cooked Beyond burger for a fair comparison to the Impossible burger, which I had at a restaurant, so I’m reserving final judgement.
My daughter (a vegetarian) bought some of the Beyond Meat and made burgers on the grill. She was impressed. They says they looked and tasted like ground meat burgers.
My son sent me an article about how Impossible Foods is struggling to keep up with demand after we had some WC Sliders and threw a few of those into the mix. They were very burger-like. Unlike Boca, which doesn’t taste bad but, let’s face it, sure doesn’t taste like meat. Here’s hoping they can meet demand and actually help save a few acres of rain forest.
Yes, the Impossible, when prepared well, does actually taste like a passable meat burger. Not necessarily a “great” burger, but if you handed me one at a cookout and not told me it was plant-based, chances are I would not notice. It’s still distinguishable from beef, but it’s pretty darned close, and the new version of it is better than the first, which I thought was pretty impressive.
Beyond is also fairly “meaty” (and also available at the retail level, unlike Impossible Burger at the moment, so you’re not going to be handing me an Impossible at a cookout quite yet) but it’s a step below in convincing me that it’s real beef. Still, pretty decent for a beef-burger-like experience.
Both of these are miles beyond Boca Burgers, which I just find awful and not at all beef-like.
I do like Morningstar, though, but none of their products really reminded me of beef. And their bean or chickpea burgers are better than the Grillers, anyway. But the Grillers I’ll have from time to time as I enjoy it as its own thing, but it’s not going to fool anyone into thinking it’s beef.
As someone who’s been eating these things for a decade, Beyond and Impossible have something the others don’t: texture. Whether it’s “meat-like” is debatable, but they’re definitely juicier/fluffier than anything else out there except for maybe a portobello mushroom burger. The other veggie burgers are dry and thin and have a rubbery or granola-like texture. The wonders of industrial food science, eh?
Gardein and Field Roast products are similar, direct competitors to Boca and Morning Star… and also have much better textures.
We’ve gotten to the point where fake meats have release cycles like computer programs. If Morning Star and Boca are v1.0, Field Roast is like v1.5, Gardein is v2.0, Beyond/Impossible is v3.0. They’re generational leaps. And Beyond/Impossible are both already working on v3.5 of their own burgers, which either just came out or are just about to. Not long after, we’ll probably see lab-grown meats in the marketplace.
And now many competitors are also entering the fray, from the terrible (Safeway’s new organic vegan burgers) to the cheating (Tyson and others launching 20% beef, 80% plant burgers). These are all highly-engineered food products counter to the “whole foods” ethos, but arguably, getting fast food chains to serve 10% GMO vegan burgers will have a much bigger climatic impact than getting 3% of people to switch to home-grown nut burgers harvested from their organic backyards. In that sense, Beyond & Impossible are capitalism’s answers to the Slow Food movement: just improve it, harness efficiencies of scale, market the hell out of it, co-opt it, and profit. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. It’s a hell lot easier being a lazy vegan now than 10 or even 5 years ago.
Hopefully I can try one of these things soon. This kinda stuff is slow to reach the the flyover states. What I really look forward to is the lab grown meats. There’s no telling where that could lead. Better flavor, better health aspects, better environmental impact, better animal treatment.
I’m also looking forward to vat-meat. I’m curious about the impossible burger, but I doubt I’d like it. I’m pretty fussy about beef burgers, and don’t eat most fast food burgers, for instance. I also mostly eat my burgers with few condiments. Maybe a bun and some ketchup. At home, I often have just the burger on a plate.
Morningstar Farms makes (made?) veggie corndogs that are 100%, completely and totally indistinguishable from “real” corndogs, (although I am not sure that is something to brag about or not) but they are the most convincing “fake meat” product I have ever had.
They are also probably about 3x the cost of corndogs made with actual “meat”, or whatever it is that “real” corndogs are made with. I hate to admit it, but they are also pretty damn tasty drunk eatin’, especially slathered with some good spicey mustard…
This is my experience with it as well.
Priced and presented like a gourmet burger, with the taste and texture of a bowling alley snack bar burger. Granted, the snack bar uses 100% beef burgers, and the Impossible delivers on that flavor profile. It’s just not a “great” burger.
I’ll have to give these a shot if I could find them. (ETA: Hmm…looks like my local Target does stock them.) I don’t eat a lot of them, but I do love real corn dogs. I’m skeptical the hot dog part can be recreated to my satisfaction (regular hot dogs I eat a lot more of, and am somewhat particular about), but the picture looks fairly convincing.
So I just picked up a batch, and I do have to say, it is a reasonable simulacrum of a corn dog, much better than I was anticipating. Eating the hot dog part by itself, it doesn’t quite taste and feel like a real hot dog, but with the corn dog shell, I probably would not have noticed that it’s a veggie corn dog if somebody handed one to me without telling me what it was. Kinda of like the Impossible Burger. Not a “great” corn dog by any stretch, but passable as meat.