(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . What's For Dinner? v.17.32: Impossible & Beyond! Taste-testing unmeat in Mom's chili - and more [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-11 The historical aside that is mostly irrelevant to the taste test: Christmas Eve at pixxer-parents’ house was always a madhouse. pixxer and pixxer-sis were probably finishing sewing some gifts way past the last minute, and of course, everyone was wrapping everything that actually was finished or bought. (pixxer was thankful that the choir loft was up and behind the congregation so she could stitch between hymns during the midnight service.) So each Christmas Eve, pixxer-Mom would cook a simple, 1950s/60s chili she called “Janet’s chili,” after the lady* who gave the recipe to her. [This happened to be the wife of the doc who delivered all three of us kids, just for a really odd side-note.] The chili goes together in a few minutes, and then sits, bubbling happily on the stove, for 3 — 4 hours. Each person could grab their dinner when they were ready to. pixxer-bro now has moved back to the old house, where he gave our Mom the best end-of-life I can imagine for her. He prefers not to eat meat, so has not had the chili for many years. So I offered to redo the recipe using these remarkable, recent “fake meat” products. Since I had split the recipe in half for him, and there it was, all the clever calculations done already (2 cans / 2 = 1 can!) I thought why not try both of the recent pretend-meats — Beyond and Impossible — and do a taste test. *Archaic. Woman. RECIPE OVERVIEW (Complete recipe below) Cook chopped onion in oil, add burgerstuff and brown it, add cans of kidney beans and tomatoes and a few flavors. Simmer 3-4 hours. THE TESTS I cooked two half-recipes of the chili, side-by-side on the stove. Mr pixxer and I had a small bowls of each of the chilis for dinner, as did pixxer-son and pixxer-DIL. Mr pixxer knew what I was testing, but not which chili was which. pixxer-son and pixxer-DIL were told it was a taste test, but they were not told what they were tasting. All are familiar with the standard version of the chili. DIFFERENT BEHAVIORS DURING COOKING 1. In the initial “brown the ground beef” step, the Impossible seemed to me to look and act more like hamburger than the Beyond. Two reservations regarding this statement: After the second test, I’m not sure I was right. And the Impossible breaks up a bit more easily than Hb does, and becomes small particles. Beyond stays more in chunks that I had to cut with a spoon; the chunks seemed a little more like the way hamburger breaks up. 2. When I was browning the unmeats, the Impossible absorbed pretty much all of the the Wesson Oil, while the Beyond quickly gave up liquid and seemed quite soupy. This was the most obvious difference between the two and might account for the fact that the Beyond never got thoroughly browned, as the Impossible did. If the Beyond soupyness is a watery/aqueous liquid, which is what it looked like, this would keep the pan meat from getting to the high temperature one can get with hot oil. Beyond (left) and Impossible, 3/4lb each, browning for chili, each with a couple Tbsp of oil and half an onion, chopped. Note the great difference in liquid — Impossible drinks up the oil and Beyond releases ...water? Eventually, the Impossible browned a bit better; my guess is that the liquid in the Beyond pan prevented the direct high heat needed for good browning. 3. After addition of the beans and tomatoes, and an hour on low heat with several stirrings, the Impossible was about as dry as I’d want it to get during the entire cooking time — drier than hamburger — so I added ½ cup of water; this was the first of three half-cup water additions it required. The Beyond was still quite soupy at the same point — I’d say it was wetter than hamburger. After adding the canned beans and tomatoes, the greater liquid in the Beyond was still noticeable: Beyond chili (left) and Impossible chili ready for their 3-hour simmer. TASTE TEST So that Mr pixxer, [Mr p] as well as pixxer-son [p-son] and pixxer-daughter-in-law [p-DIL] (both carnivores, though DIL more devoutly so) could be given a blind test, I gave the two chilis neutral names — George & Martha. Texting with “the kids,” follows, starting with pixxer-son. [Cautionary note: pixxer-son tends to be on the emphatic side :) ] Comments added for this diary are in [ ]s, and relationships substituted for the names used in the conversation. Boldface also added. pix: Were they the same? p-son: No extremely different. pix: Oh, ok then. Look fwd to reviews... p-son: Both good. Martha tastes more normal, George reminded me of the Turkish lentil soup. [Good soup — I should diary sometime -pix] p-DIL preferred Martha. I’m not sure which I preferred since they’re so different. p-DIL thinks they were both fake meat, possibly 2 different types, and it wouldn’t surprise me. pix: p-DIL wins :) p-son: So was M Impossible? [Score! -pix] pix: George Beyond, Martha Impossible. Otherwise identical except that I could not cook in matching pans. [Oops. I mentioned the water additions later.] Moved to a mass text and it went on, after a description of the process: pix: Mr p thought Beyond mouth feel more like hb which cd be bc larger chunks. Impossible looks Just Like Hamburger when skoodgeled. Beyond not as much, tho if not side by side might be harder to notice. [...] p-son: Wow, we both find the squishiness of Beyond a major giveaway and failure of verisimilitude. I would not have necessarily read the Impossible one as meatless, except that it didn’t taste just like Nana’s chili always does. [I usually add garlic, but not this time, which could have made the difference. -pix] The Beyond reads as a totally different dish and doesn’t really taste like actual meat though it looks like it has some. Interestingly, Impossible in [p-DIL family recipe] spaghetti sauce is almost indistinguishable from meat. But that still has pork. pix: Mr p did prefer the Impossible overall. Re [p-DIL family] sauce, the more distractions, the less you notice. Hb wi bun mayo ketchup lettuce onion and mixed wi garlic and Worcestershire… no wonder you don’t notice. p-son: No, it’s still enormously impressive you don’t notice. Beyond seems very un-meatlike by comparison. pix: I do find the Impossible astonishing. I would disagree with “very un-meatlike,” though I did find myself slightly preferring the Impossible chili, mostly for the texture. The Beyond also reminded me a bit more of a canned chili, as the texture of the sauce seemed perhaps too creamy, relative to my experience of this chili. Again, both chilis were quite good. Beyond Impossible! (in that order :) Two good chilis! (Cute, handled bowls by the late Mary Grabill of Coconut Grove, Sign of the Sandpiper. They are also ovenproof, isn’t that neat? Placemat by pixxer-grandmother-in-law :) REVISITING — a different taste test Sometime later, I decided to redo the side-by-side and spring another taste test on p-son and p-DIL, but this time using actual hamburger for one chili and Impossible for the other. This is where I confirmed that the hamburger was also ...juicier than the Impossible. Both unmeats brag about how much lower in saturated fat they are, and I expect this might make the difference in this case. First, take a look when I had just added the (un)/meats and broken them up. Can you tell which is which without peeking at a later picture caption? One is actual hamburger, the other is Impossible. Which is which? There is a tiny tell if you know what to look for, but seriously… (Sorry about the oil spill.) The result of this one was a problem b/c I left the hamburger on too high a heat after stirring and reheating it, and the bottom burnt a bit. Ratz. This time p-DIL discerned that the hamburger version was, indeed, real meat, but both of them thought that the Impossible was Beyond. So, go figure :) I used a different copy of the recipe that called for more brown sugar, and they both noted the sweetness, which I think made a big (not necessarily good) difference. The hamburger (Barack :) is on the left, Impossible (Michelle) on the right. Again, the Impossible is the drier one. How did I manage to burn the hamburger instead?? JANET’S CHILI — The (undivided) recipe: 1-2 Tbsp oil, if needed [I use neutral oils to cook the onions, but olive works ok. Mom browned hamburger first or cooked onion at the same time; she used the 30% fat Hb, so no oil needed.] 1 onion, chopped 1 ½ lb hamburger ½ tsp salt [I usually add a couple cloves of garlic, minced or chopped.] 2 cans, ~1-lb each, kidney beans 2 cans, ~1-lb each, tomatoes [Or a 28-oz can, obviously...] [Properly, whole tomatoes, which you squash and break up with your cooking spoon. I cheat and use diced ones. Use the kind without seasoning or herbs.] 1 tsp chili powder [I use 1 ½ tsp or 2 tsp, and I use ancho b/c that’s what we have. Mom used something just called “chili powder” on the label. Both good.] 1 tsp — 1 Tbsp brown sugar [start small] Water as needed to keep the chili from drying out This is the recipe I work from, as I transcribed it, probably in the early 80s, while Mom dictated. Note: this recipe fills my 12” Revere frying pan. Brown the hamburger and onion. Mom did this all together or Hb first; I start with the onion in a bit of oil, then add the ground (un)meat. Salt the (un)meat early in the cooking process. Add the kidney beans and tomatoes, including all their liquid. Mix in chili powder and brown sugar. Bring to a simmer and cook on very low heat for 3-4 hours, checking frequently to be sure it does not dry out. Stir occasionally, and add water as needed. — OTHER WAYS WE’VE USED IMPOSSIBLE We’ve used the impossible ground unmeat for other things, and have also tried Impossible sausages, so I thought I’d add these in. I hope to try more things using Beyond, to find what its particular strengths are (and would love to hear about it, if you have used it). Lasagna! I adore lasagna! In the “the more distractions you have the less you notice the difference” vein, lasagna is an obvious contender for unmeat cooking. I cook onions and green peppers, add the Impossible and brown it, then my favorite tomato sauce, and cook to blend flavors. Repeated layers of sauce, fresh pasta sheets, mozz, cottage cheese, and then a bit of parm. Love it! “Paul’s Lasagna,” a variation on the recipe given to me by my boyfriend’s BFF junior year at Michigan. Reheated, leftover lasagna, chez pixxer. How to take up vertical real estate? Hmmm. BURGERS Then obviously, hamburgers! We found plastic bags of frozen Impossible patties at Costco, and they worked fine, but Mr pixxer likes to mix up burgerstuff with onions and garlic and Worcestershire sauce and the like, so we switched to making them from the bulk unmeat. They don’t hold together quite as well as hamburger patties made the same way, so are slightly more challenging to cook on a grill, but Mr p has made it work. Would be no issue in a pan. Grilled Impossiburger with lettuce and tomato, ketchup and mayonnaise, on an Acme Bakery soft round bun. Delicious! Also, WFD at pixxer house tonight. SAUSAGES Last, let’s move from ground meat style to sausages. Sausages With Grapes — made with Impossible mild Italian sausages. You can tell they’re Impossible — they’re not curved. A few weeks ago I diaried World’s Easiest Fall Recipe: Sausages with Grapes, and vowed to try the recipe with Impossible Mild Italian Sausages. It worked, but we did somewhat prefer real Italian sausages for this dish. This is probably b/c the sausages are more “naked,” and their flavor and texture differences from the original are therefore more obvious. However, I did like them fine when I made a bite out of a sausage piece with a couple cooked grapes all together — which is what I do with the regular sausages anyway. The sausages are a bit odd — of course, they’re not bound by twisty casings, so they’re straight! LOL! But wow, easier to cook on four sides, instead of just two like normal sausages. Impossible mild Italian sausages, cooking. They are easier to cook on four sides than real Italian sausages b/c they are straight — flat on all sides. The bubbles between the casing and the “meat” percolate during cooking. I have an oddly disconcerting video of this phenomenon. Here are the Impossible sausages continuing to cook with the grapes. See my previous diary for recipe. They worked well enough that I would certainly recommend vegetarians try this super-simple recipe if it interests you. Sausages with grapes — world’s easiest fall recipe. Serve with a hearty green — perhaps kale. Summary: Truly impressive achievements by Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, both of which stand in quite well, though rather differently, for hamburger. What’s for Dinner? is a Saturday evening get-together where friends share recipes, talk about good food and help others answer culinary questions. We welcome you to our virtual table every Saturday evening 4:30 PT/7:30 ET. If you would like to write a post for an upcoming date just send a message to ninkasi23! So, hey — what’s for dinner at your house? — [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/11/2135905/-What-s-For-Dinner-v-17-32-Impossible-amp-Beyond-Taste-testing-unmeat-in-Mom-s-chili-and-more Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/