Wwhether roasted, grilled, fried or stewed, the combination of fat, umami and texture in a premium cut of meat is hard to recreate. With sales of plant-based meat stagnate, the search for cruelty-free, sustainable and meat-tasting alternatives continues. Import lab-grown meat. Fermented in tanks, using cells from long-dead donors, it promises a more climate- and animal-friendly form of meat for the carnivore with a conscience.
Last week, researchers announced that they had created “beef cultured rice”, which, while not exactly replicating the taste of a pan-fried steak, offers a “pleasant and novel flavor experience” that could improve emergency food supplies or provide rations for astronauts and the military. At the other end of the spectrum, gourmet restaurants in the US and Singapore already serve farmed chicken to adventurous diners, while regulators in Singapore, Switzerland and Israel consider whether to approve further products.
Assuming that companies obtain the necessary approvals and can scale up production sufficiently, no-kill meat could become a mainstay on restaurant menus for years to come. But what does such a meal look like? Biologists and chefs share their ideas.
Amuse bouche: pan seared foie gras
With its rich, buttery flavor and delicate texture, foie gras is the quintessential French delicacy – for those who can stomach the production methods. For duck and goose-friendly foodies, the Paris-based startup Yummy may offer an alternative: foie gras produced from cells derived from white Pekin duck eggs.
Grown in a closed container and then harvested, “our culinary experts use a proprietary method to make it into a product that is rich and buttery, with a delicate texture in the mouth,” says Nicolas Morin-Forest , Gourmey’s co-founder and CEO. .
Pending the outcome of ongoing discussions with food safety authorities in various markets, particularly the US and Singapore, the company initially hopes to introduce its product to the fine-dining scene. “In presenting its debut on restaurant menus, we were able to envision a celebration of its unique flavor profile: a rich blend of grain and roasted top notes with a subtle sweetness hinted at by caramel undertones, all wrapped in a velvety texture which melts deliciously in the mouth,” said Forest.
“This opens up avenues for classic preparations with modern twists, such as the venerable tournedos Rossini, where our farmed foie gras can be grilled to perfection, accompanied by beef tournedos, truffle slices and a rich madeira sauce.”
Appetizer: duo pork and chicken dim sum
Several companies are creating cell cultured chicken and pork cuts, but scaling up production remains a major challenge. That’s why “blended” products—those that combine cultured meats and plant-based proteins—are a likely first step for many.
Rather than growing muscle tissue, London’s Hoxton Farms is focusing its efforts on growing pork fat, by growing pig stem cells inside large bioreactors. This fat can be added to pea or soy protein to create meat alternatives with a meatier taste. “What fat does is it creates the sensory experience that goes along with eating meat; fat is where the flavor is,” said Ed Steele, co-founder of Hoxton Farms.
Its no-kill menu will feature xiao lang bao soup dumplings – paper-thin wrappers traditionally filled with pork and a bag of flavorful soup – although this version will include lard in the dumpling wrappers, the sauce and a plant-based filling. creates a “fragrance explosion”.
Mixing smaller amounts of cultured meat with other ingredients is an alternative approach. “Culturized meat will still have fibers, so I think wrapping it around things, like a roulade, is a really cool way to imagine what cultured meat could look like on an innovative, upscale menu,” said the American said chef-entrepreneur. Philip Saneski.
His menu will feature garlic-rice-stuffed chicken wrapped in crisp yuba (tofu skin) to mimic the crunch of real chicken skin.
First course: pulpa a la Gallega
Creating more sustainable seafood is another priority. This includes octopus meat, which many avoid on ethical grounds because of these creatures exceptional intelligence. The Portuguese company Cell4Food is developing a product that can replace the chopped octopus pulp a la Gallega. “Seacat meat does not have the same textural elements as a [beef] steak does, so it can be easier to make,” says Dr Stella Child, a research and grants manager at The Good Food Institute, which works to promote alternative proteins.
Other companies are working on cultivation trout, sea bass, eel and sushi-grade salmon. One challenge is that the meat of different fish species has completely different textures and compositions, Child said. Also, because so much medical research has been done using mammalian cells, “we know much more about the growth of animal cells than we do about fish cells”.
Main course: steak tartare or petit steak with fries
A decade ago, the world’s first lab-grown beef burger was hissed and mocked in front of an audience of salivating journalists. Since then, the scientists who created it founded a company – Mosa Meat – and is about to introduce cultured beef burgers to consumers in Singapore, pending regulatory approval.
“One of the comments from people who tasted [early versions] was that it was a bit dry, so since then we’ve added fat, which is the flavoring agent and creates the right mouthfeel. We have also created a raw variation, which is a steak tartare,” said Tim van de Rijdt, Mosa Meat’s head of marketing.
Other companies focus on growing smaller cuts of steak. For example, the Israel-based Aleph Farms hopes to introduce a “petit steak” – a cut several millimeters thick, grown from the cells of a black Angus cow – in Singapore and Israel in the near future. It can be served with fries in a modern take on the French classic steak frites.
However, due to the product’s characteristics – “it cooks easily and it’s always juicy” – the steak can also be used to create dishes that are difficult to prepare using conventional cuts. “We believe we can use it to revive traditional dishes, which are becoming less and less common, just because it takes time and a lot of effort to prepare them, said the CEO of Aleph Farms, Didier Toubia. “For example, we can make dishes with a very short cooking time.
Cheese course: lo-cow camembert
If there’s one thing vegans report missing more than anything, it’s gooey, creamy cheese. While vegan alternatives abound, it’s difficult to recreate the flavors and textures of dairy cheeses because they contain different proteins. The Paris-based company Standing Ovation is one of several that is tackling this, producing the main proteins in milk – curds – through precision fermentation, where microbial hosts are used as “cell factories” to churn out animal proteins.
“Caesins represent 80% of milk proteins. The stretch you have in mozzarella is cheese; the air bubbles in ice cream are the result of kesiens; the creamy part of camembert is cheeses that have been consumed by [microbes in] the fermentation. If you have a [thick] yogurt with high levels of protein, you need casein because it is the protein that can clump. For all dairy applications, caesins bring the functionality consumers are looking for,” said Standing Ovation co-founder and managing director Romain Chayot.
So far, the company has successfully produced three of the four cheeses found in cow’s milk and used them to make camembert-like soft cheeses, Philadelphia-like cream cheeses and cheddar-like hard cheeses, yogurt, coffee creamer and sour. cream. It also develops caseins found in buffalo, sheep and goat milk and works with dairy companies including Call Group (which makes Babybell). The company hopes to gain regulatory approval for its cow-based casein in the US in 2025, and Europe the year after that.
Dessert: Baked Alaska
Ah, the sweet nostalgia of cool and creamy ice cream wrapped in a bite of warm meringue. It’s not obvious that an animal-free alternative requires egg whites and cream, but some of the key proteins in it are also now produced by precision fermentation.
Onego Bio in Finland is scaling up the production of ovalbumin, the main protein in egg white, inside fungal cells, which has “the same exact nutritional profile and taste” as ovalbumin from chicken eggs. “More importantly, it has all the functional properties that make eggs so special: it foams, coagulates, emulsifies and binds other ingredients,” said Maija Itkonen, the company’s CEO.
It is also partnership with the American biotech company Perfect day, which produces another milk protein – whey – through precision fermentation. This animal-free whey is already incorporated into ice cream available for consumption in the US.
