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You can eat Impossible meat raw, though you may not want to.

I had this idea pop in my head a week or so ago, but kept forgetting to look up the answer. Not that I have any desire whatsoever to do so, just curiosity if something they did somehow made it dangerous to eat raw.

The short answer is yes, you can eat Impossible "meat" without cooking it. The better answer is you probably don't want to.

"Our products were made to be cooked, in order to achieve the best sensory, texture and visual experience," a spokesperson for Impossible Foods told The Takeout via email. "Impossible products should be handled with the same caution as any other raw protein, and it's important to remember that there are always risks to consuming raw or undercooked foods."

Although it's explicitly recommended that people cook Impossible Foods products, the spokesperson also said that chefs have successfully made tartare using Impossible products, following many of the same guidelines set out for serving the best animal-based version.

So, it's not impossible to enjoy this plant-based product in its raw form. It just might not be the best-tasting option, since the product is designed to be enjoyed with a bit of Maillard reaction. If you happen to share the same love of raw protein that my godmother does, maybe a nice Impossible tartare could satisfy your carnivorous cravings; just practice the same common sense you would with any food, and don't leave it sitting out too long.

"Beyond Meat Is Struggling, and the Plant-Based Meat Industry Worries"

What investors and others are debating now is whether Beyond Meat's struggles are specific to the company or a harbinger of deeper issues in the plant-based meat industry.

"At the category level, we're seeing volumes for plant-based meats down 22 consecutive months now," said John Baumgartner, a consumer food analyst at the financial institution Mizuho Americas.

A few years ago, investors expected the category to explode with growth year after year, Mr. Baumgartner said. Now, he said, those expectations are being reconsidered.

I have done exactly zero research on this, but I would bet it all is because of the cost difference and real meat still being the cheaper option.

Beyond Meat - End of Week Thoughts

So this week I made my lunch for the week. An orzo dish that I whip up and eat over the week. Normally I use chicken or Italian sausage and this week I decided to give Beyond Meat Italian Sausage a try. I'd never tried any form of Beyond Meat so I was going in blind. I also bought normal sausage (it was on sale) as a backup, so I was covered either way.

Cooking

I normally boil the sausages on the stove and then finish them as coins in the meal while the orzo boils. Can't do that with Beyond Meat, as I quickly realized. About 60-90 seconds into them heating up in the water I realized the water was getting extremely oily and my brain clicked that their casings wouldn't be meat, so were likely soy or something that was deteriorating in the water. So I pulled them out of the water. The casings felt like some sort of jelly. So I dumped the water and cut the sausages and cooked them in the pan with oil as coins. Cooking was fine, but it also was the first clear sign that this wasn't meat. It left a lot on the pan, more than I would expect from similar sausages. Is it a big deal? Not really, there was still plenty of meat, but was a bit of a pain to clean.

Once I was convinced they were done cooking I decided not to transfer them to the cooking orzo, for the same reasons I didn't boil them to cook them. I didn't want the boiling orzo to ruin the casings and the sausage to disassemble. Once the Orzo was mostly boiled, I added the sausages for the last few minutes of cooking.

Eating

The food was put into a plastic container and refrigerated overnight. The next day I reheated a portion for lunch. The meat reheated fine, and the best part of the Beyond Meat product is the mouth feel. It feels like meat when you bite into it. The sausage was supposed to be "Hot Italian" but it honestly barely registered for me. The flavor was muted, if anything. It didn't have the umami of sausage, but also, it didn't taste like anything else to me. So as a vehicle for other flavors, it works well enough. It held up through the week with no discernible shifts in flavor or texture.

Verdict

Overall, I'm a fan. I am not going to be giving up sausage all together, but in this recipe I think it works and I'll be trying it again when I make it for lunch next time. There's another brand friends recommended, Field Roast. I plan to give them a try next and we'll see.

The truth is I've considered going vegetarian for health and environmental reasons, but... I love meat. Steak is so delicious. Burgers. Sausage. Chicken... I love it all. But if I can begin to cut into the ones I eat and find the suitable replacements, that is exciting. Maybe one day I'll be a Vege-steak-tarian. We'll see.

First Try of Beyond Meat

I'm going to be making my week's lunch tonight, using one of my go-to recipes. It is an adaptation of a one-pot recipe I found that used orzo pasta. I use hot sausage with it, either Andoulli or hot Italian. And tonight I decided to give Beyond Meat's hot Italian sausage a try. I've never tried it in any form, so this will be interesting to try.

Beyond meat is composed of a bunch of things, primarily pea, beans, and brown rice for the protein of it. This page lays out their marketing of what goes into the meat.