Most of us don’t know how our food is made. We don’t know much about what our burger ate when it was part of a cow, where that cow lived, or how it died. The same goes for the wheat in our bread or the leaves in our salad. For us, the food system is mostly a black box.
This disconnect is why the farm-to-table program has been so successful: it seeks to reacquaint us with our food and consider the water, emissions, labor and care that goes into our meals.
Now, I’m all for this, but there’s one area where I wouldn’t mind hearing less about how our food is made: plant-based meats. I’m convinced we need plant-based alternatives to animal products, but I suspect that alternative protein companies sometimes get too caught up in how these meats are made: fiber spinning! Aerial fermentation! Strange extrusion shapes! And forget about the flavor.
I focus on nerdery food. After all, I am a WIRED journalist. But when I hear the buzz of technology frenzy at food conferences, I have only one question: Is it delicious?
Which is why I was quite taken aback when someone offered to send me a bunch of 3D printed meat from a company in israel. Then again, I thought, plant-based meat has been stagnant recently. maybe it is did We need a technological breakthrough to take it to the next level. Plus, 3D printing a steak is kind of cool, and these test kits were apparently “quite expensive” and not yet available to the public. I asked the PR to send them.
Plant-based meats must be more than just rumors, says Arik Kaufman, CEO of Steakholder Foods, the Israeli company that sent me the 3D-printed meat. “You need to eat a product that is surprising,” he says. The interested party sent me some different vegetable meats. There were 3D printed whitefish fillets, 3D printed filet fillets, and 3D printed marbled fillets. There were also burgers and fish kebabs, neither of which were 3D printed. In a clear sign that the future of food had arrived, the cuts were packed in a medical box filled with dry ice that quickly filled my kitchen with fog.
floppy fish
The advantage of 3D food printing lies in creating delicious structures, says Kaufman. His company has made two different printers: one that prints fish and another that makes cuts of meat, both using a premixed mixture of ingredients. The meat printer can produce around 500 kilos of plant-based meat per hour, and the fish printer 100 kilos per hour.
I cooked the whitefish fillet as directed on the leaflet inside the box: I brushed it with oil and then roasted it for 10 minutes at 180°C (360°F). The steak still looked a little pale after 10 minutes, so I gave it a little more time until it had some color on top. I suspected that pan-searing the steak would have added a nicer crust, but I feared it wouldn’t have the structural integrity to withstand that flipping. Then, when my steak disintegrated on the journey between the baking sheet and the plate, my suspicions were confirmed. To the supple fillet I added lemon butter (vegan) and caper sauce, sprinkled a little parsley and served it with couscous.
Kaufman says 3D printing the whitefish recreates the flaky texture of a fish fillet. That was not my experience eating it. When cooked, the fish had a thin outer layer that fell away, but inside the fillet had the texture of mousse, with the slightest hint of fishy flavor.
