Meat free burger bois. Gave ’em a fair go. Clickbait excerpt to make you click through to the review.

In a rush? tl;dr: Yea they good. Try them. 10/10

In case you’re here without knowing who in the heck I am - background story, I’m a meat eater. Hopefully not one of the “hurr but bacon tho!!1” types if you are already on the vegan train but thought I should just mention it for the later comparison.

I also think eating meat is the most morally wrong thing I do, but I’m vaguely allergic to anything that even thinks it’s related to a bean. Soy, haricot, lentil, broad, red, black, kidney, .. if it’s a bean I’ll probably have some form of reaction to it.

It’s an easy go-to excuse if nothing else. Moving on.

So first up, I burned one of them. You gotta shallow fry these bad boys colder than you’re used to doing meat I think, either that or I’m just used to searing a steak in the pan. I’ll try grilling them next time but I wanted to follow the cooking instructions as best I could for the first go of it and didn’t have a barbeque handy.

I had two of them on the go so I ended up with at least 1.8 Beyond Burgers once I was done trying to cremate them. I was planning on trying them 100% vegan but realised the buns I got weren’t vegan friendly so fuck it. Doubled down and chucked a load of cheese on ’em. Dribble of ketchup n’all. Gotta give them a fair shot against legacy burgers, ’eh!

Deeped up some fries so I had something to eat in case they turned out to be horrible. Also because I’m a fat bastard.

Man. These things are actually good. There was a bit of a hash brown texture going on but I imagine this wasn’t the norm, more because I’d all but ignited them as I say. Interesting feel honestly, I’ll try them again on a lower heat next time but if it’s not as good I might toast them off a bit as standard.

I think if a restaurant had risked its food license and served me up one of these instead of a legacy burger I wouldn’t have noticed the difference. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t exactly the same, but it wasn’t different enough for me to call it out as having no meat. You could have got away with saying it had some fancy spices or something mixed into it. That’s not to say it’s spiced or anything, I just mean I’d believe you.

I didn’t see of the “actually looks like it’s bleeding!”, just to mention it. I’ve read elsewhere that they cook like regular burgers but I don’t think I’m qualified to comment there yet because I seared the life out of them by accident.

Of course in the past I’ve had veggie burgers, honestly not sure what they’re made of but I always thought they looked like someone had already eaten them once and decided to re-cook them. The Beyond Burger is not that. It’s.. good! No word of a lie, I believe these things are definitely in the running for replacing meat in a handful of years.

Usual meal review stuff - tasted great, went down well, stomach full. I was so into eating the burgers that the fries went cold and forgotten.

As for the allergy thing earlier I’ve had a nose into it and they’re essentially made from peas when you drill it down. I don’t usually have a problem with peas but that’s mostly because I shovel them down whole because I don’t like the taste of their inside bits. I had a very slight vague feel of a reaction to something but it was probably in my mind, nothing a hayfever tablet placebo can’t sort out.