I finally agreed to have Burger King since my boyfriend has been craving for it for months. Nothing against Burger King, I was just trying to stay off fast food. I also spent a lot of time at home, cooking dishes like the Korean Army Stew and making Malaysian desserts like the Bubur Cha Cha. Lucky for him, there were two reasons I caved:

1. I found out about Burger King’s Impossible Whopper
2. I came across a podcast episode about plant-based burgers and knew I had to have one
3. Got to add the third reason, my boyfriend really wanted Burger King

Just being transparent here, this isn’t an ad and I don’t think Burger King needs me to write a post about their burger anyway lol.

How I Started Eating Beef After More Than 20 Years

Growing up, I’ve never had beef. It was not because of any religious reasons, it was simply because my mom just doesn’t eat beef. In fact, I had my first steak just two years ago. Also, I moved to NYC and fast food places like Burger King, Five Guys are famous for their burgers. So I opened up to eating beef. Plus, having beef slices during hotpot is just delicious.

I’m not sure if you guys have felt the same but for me, after more than 20 years of not eating a specific food, it certainly feels a little odd adjusting to the taste, flavor and texture of a beef patty. Opting for a chicken sandwich all my life where the meat is more solid, it is a little strange to have meat that is softer and breaks apart easier and greasier as I chew on it.

Not saying I hate it, just saying it definitely takes time to adjust to it.

Finding Out About Burger King’s Impossible Whopper

My boyfriend briefly mentioned this plant-based meat burger when he was going on and on about wanting to have Burger King. However, it was the podcast that really got me wanting to try Burger King’s Impossible Whopper.

How I Built This With Guy Raz’s episode with Pat Brown from Impossible Foods

One part that really motivates me – who says you can only start a business in your 30s? I see so many entrepreneurs on LinkedIn and Spotify podcasts talking about their businesses. Successful 30-year-olds, making me feel like “what the hell am I doing at 27?”. So learning that Pat Brown started his business at 60 years old, yeah, I don’t feel like shit now. I’m sorry, I digress.

Basically, all thanks to the podcast, my boyfriend got to have Burger King. It was also a very interesting podcast as I learned a couple of things from it.

Pat Brown’s and Impossible Food’s mission

To eliminate the needs of animals as a food technology because it affects our environment. I have never thought about it, never realized my love for meat can cause an impact on the environment.

The greenhouse gas footprint of animal agriculture rivals that that of every car, truck, bus, ship, airplane and rocketship combines. Animal agriculture pollutes and consumes more water than any other industry. Raising animals for food makes up the vast majority of the land footprint of humanity.

Pat Brown, CEO & Founder of Impossible Foods

You can’t just get people to give up on eating meat overnight

Education and public policy are of little help for people to completely give up on eating meat and miraculously start eating beans and tofu – he’s totally right. All my life I have been eating meat, I don’t know how I will just suddenly stop and have beans and tofu for dinner every night.

Instead, he worked on a solution, which is to create a product that can compete in the marketplace and give meat lovers what they love about meat – the sensory pleasure, the taste, the nutrition, the affordability. I think this is a genius plan. There is no point preaching about something you know that people can’t adapt to immediately so instead, finding a different way to get your point across is a better bet.

How Do You Make The Impossible Burger?

I’m not a food scientist and my last Biology/Chemistry class was almost a decade ago, it did take me a while to understand this. So I’ll do my best to explain what I understand.

What was difficult is replicating the texture of meat. As you cook meat, it gets firm and it smells good, unlike trying to make a veggie patty where it gets all mushy. The reason being, there is a sort of protein, which is also known as the heme protein is found in meat. It carries oxygen in the blood and it’s also what makes blood red.

You can find soy leghemoglobin in the root nodules of soybean plants which is an ingredient in the Impossible Burger. Basically, the DNA of soy leghemoglobin is injected into yeast and giant tanks of yeasts are grown fermented. Finally, the soy heme is extracted.

The protein and molecules in meat such as amino acids, sugar give off the flavorful aroma as you cook meat and heme is basically the catalyst of it. And that’s how you get the Impossible Burger which has pretty much the same texture and flavor as a meat burger. It’s all because of the heme protein.

How Did Burger King’s Impossible Whopper Taste

The texture is definitely what I love. I took a bite of my boyfriend’s meat burger after, just to try and compare both burgers. His burger definitely had a softer texture and was easier to chew. The taste, though, was so strong as compared to my Impossible Burger and that is exactly what is hard for me to adapt to since I rarely eat meat burgers.

I finished so quickly and did I mention we also had the Jalapeno Cheddar Bites? It’s so good having them together with our burgers, really delicious!

So we finally had Burger King, I won’t be hearing my boyfriend bugging me to have Burger King with him for maybe the next few months. Why didn’t I do this earlier?!

Have you tried Burger King’s Impossible Whopper? What do you think about it?

 

Tags: burger king, food, plant based food