PLANT-BASED burgers au naturel 34 THE NATIONAL CULINARY REVIEW • MAY/JUNE 2018 BURGERS AU NATUREL BY OFFERING A PLANT-BASED BURGER ON THE MENU, YOU TELL A GROWING NUMBER OF CUSTOMERS THAT YOU KNOW WHERE THEY’RE COMING FROM. BY JODY SHEE ith all the eating styles of the day, your customers don’t have Wto be vegetarians to appreciate a good non-beef, plant-based burger. Thus, it may be time to add one to your menu. But where do you start, especially considering that not all customers think the same way about what you might come up with? Chicago’s The Growling Rabbit has a large vegetarian and vegan customer base, so it was only natural for owner Laura Soncrant to develop a plant-based patty and offer it as a non-beef burger option. She came up with a pink bean and quinoa patty for her brunch-pub/supper-club operation. She began asking guests why they ordered what they did, and discovered that older consumers who choose to switch out the beef patty for a plant-based one do so for health reasons— Photo by Chris Casella/Courtesy of Melt Bar and Grilled limiting their meat for the day or for the week. Younger consumers who select the plant-based patty often do so with a mindfulness of excessive water use in beef production—a less environmentally sustainable practice than raising plants. Travis Johnson, CEC, executive culinary director of Sodexo- managed Seminole Dining, with 36 dining outlets at Florida State University, Tallahassee, believes that chefs’ sustainability ethos should extend beyond buying fresh and local ingredients to include exploring and incorporating non-animal proteins. “We know a lot of sustainable practices that are plant-based that carry as much nutrition, whether it be proteins, vitamins or minerals,” OPPOSITE: The Good Burger served at Melt Bar and Grilled is the restaurant’s vegetarian/vegan answer to McDonald’s Big Mac. ACFCHEFS.ORG 35 PLANT-BASED burgers au naturel a classic Thousand Island/Russian dressing made with soft tofu rather than mayo. The burger also has American cheese available as traditional or vegan. MORE BEANS At Temple Bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts, executive chef Richmond Edes’ veggie burger vision was to create something as healthful as possible that was a bit lighter and with Mediterr anean flavors. Thus, for the White Bean Burger, he went with a white bean/garbanzo bean base. He tried not to steer it too closely to falafel flavors. Other patty ingredients include shallots, onions, garlic and cauliflower—a vegetable to add texture and that he loves and believes is underutilized. Making it gluten-free, eh adds rice flour at the end and lets the mixture sit for a half-hour to absorb some of the natural moisture from the ingredients. He pan-fries the patty to sear on one side, flips it over for a short time and finishes in the oven. He serves it on a potato he says. “As culinarians, we have to start looking at how to bun with a sauce made of Greek yogurt, lemon juice, mint and integrate plant-based items into the menu.” parsley—like tzatziki sauce without the cucumbers, he says. He The how-to is a matter of finding the right ingredients and finishes it with sweet pickles. experimenting with combinations, consistencies and cooking Above all, the burger must have outstanding flavor, he says. methods—all the while keeping in mind the end game. Do you When he joined Temple Bar, it already had a veggie burger that want just a vegetarian burger, or would you like to make it vegan, he thought only tasted OK. “Start simple with an idea. You could as well? Do you want to also make it gluten-free to appeal to the make a burger out of anything,” he says. “Just find a way for it broadest audience? to hold together, and ultimately, how it tastes is the main thing.” For her plant-based patty, Soncrant with The Growling BLACK BEAN BURGERS Rabbit chose canned pink beans to give the beef color she Because of its growing emphasis on vegetarian and vegan wanted. The beans are meaty like kidney beans, but without the cuisine, Matt Fish and his culinarians at Melt Bar and Grilled, hull. “They are softer, younger and smaller, so it doesn’t take Lakewood, Ohio, developed a vegan patty in 2010 that customers as much to mash up,” she says. She also includes quinoa as a could order to replace the standard beef burger patty. Owner/founder protein that adds marbling, texture and consistency. Fish knew that the restaurant didn’t want to mimic the flavor and Soncrant already was making vegetarian/vegan sausage in- experience of eating real beef. When they decided to make it gluten- house that incorporated texturized vegetable protein (TVP), so free, as well, the ingredient possibilities narrowed further. she included that in the burger mixture to create the texture, pull They settled on a black bean and oat base—which helps the and chew she was after, while keeping it gluten-free—another patty hold its shape. Other ingredients include onions, garlic, goal of the burger. carrots and spices for flavoring, along with liquid smoke and As she developed the right ingredient mixture that also a vegan “beef” base. Workers in the restaurant’s production includes onions, garlic, liquid smoke, a spice blend and a veggie facility make large batches once or twice a week, form them broth in lieu of water, her R&D aha moment came when she into patties and send them out to the units fresh or frozen to be realized it was best to treat it like a dough rather than a traditional cooked at unit level on the flat-top. “It gets a nice crispy exterior, burger patty. Her bakery mindset took over. She included gluten- but stays a little soft inside with a good texture—nice and firm,” free flour with an understanding that in the humid summer it Fish says. “The exterior crust helps hold it together and gives it requires less water than in the drier winter. As with dough, she a good mouthfeel.” conducts the whole process by hand. In 2016, Fish decided to elevate the patty by making a vegetarian/vegan burger line item. “To be honest, we tried to PREINVENTION TO THE RESCUE create a vegetarian and vegan version of McDonald’s Big Mac,” Trial and error can be reduced by finding products or ingredient he says. The resulting Good Burger features that same black blends already on the market. When he developed the plant-based bean and oat patty topped with pickle chips, sliced tomato and Seminole Burger for Seminole Dining, Johnson utilized two onion, romaine lettuce and zippy sauce. The sauce is based on mixes from Bemidji, Minnesota-based InHarvest Inc., a supplier 36 THE NATIONAL CULINARY REVIEW • MAY/JUNE 2018 of rice and rice blends, exotic grains and legumes, that worked together to adequately offer protein, texture and flavor. The Black Forest Blend contains green lentils, split baby garbanzo beans, French green lentils and black beluga lentils. The Naked, Wild & Free blend features oats, wild rice, red sorghum and white sorghum. Besides the two blends, Johnson included parsley, spinach, onions, garlic, carrots, celery, shallots, panko breadcrumbs and fresh-squeezed lime. His trial and error to obtain the proper mouthfeel led him to hard-pulse about 65% of the ingredients in a Robot Coupe, light pulse 15% and keep the rest whole. “I ended up with a mixture fully blended that was binding,” he says. To top the burger, he made tomato and avocado relish with heirloom grape tomatoes quartered and tossed in fresh aromatics with a bit of garlic, salt and pepper combined with avocado. IMPOSSIBLE AND BEYOND Johnson advises chefs who would add a plant-based burger to the menu to consider the sustainability mindset of customers who PHOTO CREDITS Opposite: Courtesy of BOA Steakhouse; right, top to bottom: Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods Inc. IMPOSSIBLE BURGER BEYOND BURGER order it, and be prepared to tell a story that will resonate with them. For example, a mixed burger available on campus is made partly of With its sustainability mindset, Environmental sustainability and Impossible Foods Inc., Redwood animal welfare is the ethos behind beef and partly of mushrooms obtained from a mushroom farm 36 City, California, came at its plant- the plant-based Beyond Burger by miles away that the college partners with. Students go to the farm based Impossible Burger from a Los Angeles-based Beyond Meat. decidedly scientific approach. Its Company investors include Bill and pick mushrooms that will be eaten on campus. It becomes part beef-imitating burger patty is made Gates, Leonardo DiCaprio and former of the story, creating an experience for the customer. from such items as wheat, coconut McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson. oil and potatoes, but its burger- The product is cholesterol-, gluten- Michael Neflas, corporate executive chef of BOA Steakhouse mimicking magic ingredient is heme. and soy-free and contains pea with a location each in West Hollywood and Santa Monica, The company describes heme as protein among its many ingredients. California, was laboring in the kitchen trying to develop a a basic building block of life that The company aimed to give exists in plants and is also abundant customers the traditional burger portabella and quinoa burger with red beets for color and including in meat. “We discovered that heme experience from what looks, cooks coconut oil. He added nutritional yeast to achieve the umami is what makes meat smell, sizzle, and tastes like ground beef without bleed and taste gloriously meaty,” the cow.