New Proteins.
The pink "bleeding" of a plant-based burger comes from leghaemoglobin, a soy protein made by yeast. It is the same molecule, more or less, that makes beef red — grown in a fermenter instead of a cow.
Plant proteins have fed people for millennia: tofu from soy milk curdled like cheese (XX.9), seitan from washed-out wheat gluten (VI.10), tempeh fermented with Rhizopus mould, and the pulses of India (XXIX.5). The new plant-based meats extend this: pea, soy or wheat proteins are extruded under heat and pressure into fibres that mimic muscle; coconut and other fats give juiciness and marbling; methylcellulose binds them so they hold together as they cook (XXXIII.2); beet juice or a heme protein supplies colour that browns on cooking; yeast extracts add savour. Mycoprotein — Quorn, sold since 1985 — is the mycelium of a fungus grown in fermenters.
Precision fermentation programmes microbes to make one specific protein — whey, casein, egg-white protein, or the leghaemoglobin of the Impossible Burger — which is purified and used like the animal original, with no animal involved. Cultivated meat grows animal muscle and fat cells in bioreactors; the first cultivated burger was cooked in London in 2013, Singapore approved cultivated chicken for sale in 2020 and the United States in 2023, while Italy banned its sale. Cost, scale and energy use remain the obstacles. For cooks, the questions are the usual ones: how does it brown, bind, hold water, season and cook? The workshop follows the timeline.
Below: the main kinds of alternative protein — what each is, an example and its status as of 2026 — the one you choose highlighted, with a timeline of dated moments.
- Describe traditional and new plant proteins.
- Explain how plant-based meats are built.
- Explain precision fermentation and cultivated meat.
- Cook with alternative proteins.
Cook it like what it is
Plant-based minces behave like lean minced meat with added fat: they brown well on a hot pan (VIII.1), but have no connective tissue, so they need no long cooking, and their methylcellulose binder means burgers hold together best when cooked from cold and not pressed. They are usually salted already: taste before seasoning. Tofu, tempeh and seitan reward the techniques of Chinese and Indonesian cooking — pressing, marinating, frying crisp, braising (XX.9). Precision-fermented proteins behave like their animal originals — whey whips, egg-white protein foams — but cost more.
Questions to ask of any new protein: what is its protein content and digestibility; how much salt and fat does the product carry; what allergens does it contain (soy, wheat, pea and mycoprotein can all cause reactions, XII.10); and how does it cook — browning, binding, water loss, doneness (plant-based burgers need no doneness for safety the way minced beef does, but follow the maker's instructions)? Claims about climate and health vary by product; XXXIII.9 looks at the evidence on emissions.
Cook a plant-based burger and a beef burger side by side on the same pan. Compare browning, shrinkage and juiciness.
Terms
- Plant-based meat
- Plant proteins engineered to cook like meat.
- Precision fermentation
- Microbes programmed to make one protein.
- Cultivated meat
- Meat grown from animal cells.
- Mycoprotein
- Protein-rich fungal mycelium.
Sources
- Quorn mycoprotein on sale in the UK, 1985; Beyond Meat founded 2009; the first cultivated-beef burger, cooked in London, August 2013 (M. Post); Impossible Burger launched 2016, with soy leghaemoglobin made by precision fermentation; Singapore approved cultivated chicken for sale, December 2020; the USDA cleared cultivated chicken from two companies, June 2023; Italy banned the sale of cultivated meat, November 2023.
- A teaching value chosen for the course: the right order of magnitude and shape, not a measurement of a particular food.