The Awesome Burger came with handy-dandy cooking instructions. They are pre-seasoned and salted, but you can add your own seasonings, too. I chose to cook mine plain.
Straight out of the package, the burgers didn't quite have the look, texture, or feel of ground beef patties. They were stiffer, smoother, and pinker.
When they went into the pan, a delicious nutty fragrance filled the room. The scent reminded me of spam and pine nuts, or perhaps of meaty popcorn.
I was surprised by how much they frothed. Maybe I'd added too much oil, but the patties also produced their own oil.
As they cooked, they shrank much like real burgers, and a red oily film oozed from their skin.
There was a lot of foam as well as some globs of beef oil-like fat. They were starting to look crispy.
They didn't quite reach the dark brown of beef, but rather stayed a pork-like caramel brown.
There was a visible layer of crisp on the outside.
The patties actually reminded me of salmon burgers, which tend to have a similarly crispy outer texture and caramel brown color.
I plopped the Awesome patties onto toasted ciabatta and topped them with slices of tomato, onion, and avocado.
The Awesome Burger looked more like fried spam or a salmon burger than like a beef burger. But appearances can be deceiving.
Not in this case, though. The texture was very similar to that of a salmon burger, and the taste was very spam-like. The patty was very crispy on the outside, although that may simply be because I'd added too much oil.
It did taste vaguely meaty, but not at all like beef. I thought it tasted kind of like processed meat. As my ex-carnivore roommate Jen noted, it didn't burst with flavor the way beef burgers do.
It also tasted like Worcestershire sauce — somewhat wine-like and vinegary. But it wasn't as salty or flavorful as a beef burger. Jen felt it needed additional seasoning. Still, it was pretty satisfying in its own way.
I'd use it as a substitute for a salmon burger. I enjoyed its nutty, spam-like flavor and outer crisp, but it didn't imitate the taste and texture of beef as well as its competitors. For a year and a half of development, though, it's not bad. And hopefully Sweet Earth will make like Impossible and Beyond and continue to improve its recipe.
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