7 ms·

I love meat but I've always struggled to reconcile my love of eating it with my love of animals. I would be happy to pay a premium if it meant I could get meat-

I love meat but I've always struggled to reconcile my love of eating it with my love of animals. I would be happy to pay a premium if it meant I could get meat-like taste without the guilt

mrspeaker 8y ago
I'm more excited about where they go after they get passed the "uncanny valley of meat". If they can nail it, they'll get bored and move on to new and weirder flavors and textures. Hook it up to Watson and you don't just get new recipes, but they're combined with new meat! (https://www.bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/trends-news/article/how-ibm-chef-watson-works https://www.bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/trends-news/ar...)
- puranjay 8y ago
  I wonder if they can somehow replicate the flavor in bones. I'd love to make stock or a stew, but so much of the "meaty" flavor comes from bones
  - dashundchen 8y ago
    I eat plant-based and don't know what bone broth tastes like, but I assume very savory from the others descriptions When I want to cook savory foods, there's certain things you can look to: 1. Miso pastes. There's several kinds but in a regular American grocery with international sections you'll usually find a mild white miso and a slightly more pungent red one. Both are usually savory. I am sure Chinese and Japanese groceries will have more options. 2. Seaweed 3. Certain vegetable broth brands - "Better than Bouillan" vegetable stock, with the green label, is extremely savory 4. Less of an impact, but certain foods, like lentils and tempeh can impart an earthy, savory flavor You'd be surprised how many flavors you can get mixing these in various quantities, along with other seasonings such as liquid aminos, liquid smoke, nutritional yeast, roasted tomatoes, and soy sauce.
    - scrumbledober 8y ago
      are you telling me all miso pastes aren't savory? I love cooking with miso and if there is a world of non-savory miso out there that I'm blind to I would be very excited.
      - mikekchar 8y ago
        Not the OP, but while all miso is savoury you can mix it with a variety of different things. Some miso sauces in Japan have a lot of sugar in them and I've even had miso ice cream. It's very good.
      - spacemanmatt 8y ago
        i'm a lot happier calling miso umami than savory. i reserve savory for things more herbal flavors.
  - Matticus_Rex 8y ago
    With a combination of porcini powder (ground dried porcini mushrooms), nutritional yeast, MSG, miso, kombu, and something with hydrolyzed vegetable protein, you can make some almost-meaty tasting stocks that have as much richness/flavor/oomph as any bone broth. I'm not vegetarian, but I have friends and business partners who are, and I like a challenge. Any four of those six (careful with the yeast -- it gets overpowering quickly) can combine for a pretty powerful stock or sauce. I use most of them in my regular cooking, too.
  - semi-extrinsic 8y ago
    One trick I learned from one of Heston Blumenthal's videos is slowly caramellising onion together with star anise, it can add a lot of meaty flavour.
  - kraig 8y ago
    at what point is it good enough to change to an alternative consistently? for the most part we enjoy foods that we are used to eating, if you change your habits to a non-bone based stew in a matter of time you will begin to favor those flavors instead.
  - mikekchar 8y ago
    I originally learned to cook by going through the entire "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" (it took me 3 years). Later in life I was completely broke and had to give up either meat or beer. I chose to give up meat :-) Even later in life I figured I might as well go whole hog (hmm???) and become vegan. I learned how to cook again. My biggest piece of advice for anyone wanting to learn how to cook really good vegetable based meals (and who doesn't want to adopt an already established ethnic vegan diet) is to forget ingredients and instead focus on techniques. Cooking is applied chemistry. You need to understand why certain foods and certain preparations give certain results. You can then replicate similar results. It's not so much that you want to imitate the "meaty" flavour of beef bones, but rather that you want to create a similarly satisfying broth. If you try to imitate an existing food, you will always end up with a pale shadow of that food. Instead make something that has the same value, but with a different ingredient. It will be different just like chicken stock is different from beef stock which is different than lamb stock which is different than pork stock. But it will be just as good. For stocks, it's complicated because vegetables are sweet. You want umami for stocks. As much as possible keep the sweetness out of the stock (because it will get in there no matter what you do). Fermented proteins (miso as others have said -- but make sure to get the oldest you can find), beans/lentils, rice, etc. Stay away from things like a mirepoix because it will add too much sweetness. You can add onions, but caramelise them down to being black, etc, etc. To be honest, there is too much to making a good stock to explain here. You just need to practice and adjust until you get what you are looking for. Learning an ethnic cuisine that is already traditionally vegan will help a lot if you pay attention to the techniques they are using. At the same time consider what a bone stock is doing in a stock pot. What is meat? What is connective tissue? What is skin? What is marrow? What happens when you simmer that for 5 hours? You can make great vegan stocks and it is fun to learn how to do it, but it takes an inventive spirit.
gadders 8y ago
I'm not sure if I'd eat this burger, but if lab-grown meat was available and as good as the natural alternative, I think I would definitely switch. Sadly if everyone did this it would probably mean we would only see cows, sheep etc in zoos, rather than grazing in fields.
- hombre_fatal 8y ago
  The industrial meat/ag complex loves that you think of their products as coming from the sort of happy pasture-grazing farms you see on the side of the highway.
  - deadmetheny 8y ago
    Most of them do. Chickens are the main exception, and I would agree that their conditions are pretty bad. Downvoters - I live in the Midwest. I grew up on a farm. Much of my family still farms and raises livestock. Factory farming of livestock is not the norm for non-poultry.
    - Broken_Hippo 8y ago
      I beg to differ - it has basically become the norm for pigs. It didn't used to be, but it has become so. I grew up in Indiana. Now, I've not lived there in 5 years, but I did live quite some time in a place that pigs outnumbered people in the county. The county seat was 3000. Even smelling pigs was becoming a rarity while out on a country drive and a flood meant that thousands of pigs drowned in a flooded barn ("pig factory"). Perhaps you are in a place where the pigs usually roam free, but I certainly wasn't.
      - deadmetheny 8y ago
        Hogs are not a very common livestock animal in my area, so I have no knowledge of their conditions. I do know that sows are commonly caged separately from their piglets to avoid the mother accidentally rolling over and crushing them while they nurse, but that's about it.
colechristensen 8y ago
You don't have to feel guilty. It is the disconnection between humans and animals that causes many of those feelings and if you shift your thinking, you can have a much better experience. When you participate in the process of raising, killing, butchering, and eating the animals which are your food you will appreciate them – love them – and the life they had and gave for you to live. Food encased in plastic from a grocery store really prevents this connection. Life both begins and ands and you don't have to run away from the end of things or think that making life as long as possible is necessarily better.
- sc4les 8y ago
  Please don’t love me then
- dsabanin 8y ago
  Do you usually kill all that you love for some fleeting pleasure, when pretty healthy alternatives are available?
- delecti 8y ago
  Unless you can argue that the cows don't mind anything about the way they're treated (including slaughter), then there's reason to feel guilty. If you can live without that (and you can, vegetarians exist), then there's reason to feel guilty about not doing so.
- yurishimo 8y ago
  I take a lot of inspiration from Native Americans on this topic. Eating is a part of existing for any organism and without life, there is no energy to transfer. This applies to plants and animals. Appreciation for the life that was given for my nourishment is important to me and I really take it seriously. I make an effort to not waste any meat I buy and I've definitely shifted to eating less than I used to.
  - devmunchies 8y ago
    >is important to me and I really take it seriously sounds like "we take security very seriously"
white-flame 8y ago
Consider that killing a living thing to eat its body is not unique to "meat", nor is raising it in a controlled environment for the purpose of consumption. Fish (as is sometimes classified separately) and vegetables are living things raised and killed for consumption of their bodies as well. I believe reconciling all of these as ethically equal (including raising the ethical weight of killing a plant as equal to an animal) is important for sanely dealing with our natural ecosystem of food. The "aliveness" of plants is continually researched and shown in a positive light, and it's hard to draw a clear and reasonable line between "life that is acceptable to eat" and "life that is not acceptable to eat". When you look at the spectrum of life and how ethically impactful killing it for food is, it tends to follow anthropomorphism and social compatibility with humans, which doesn't seem objective enough to be pursued for widely-accepted ethics, but merely for local cultural acceptability.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  The parent has specifically mentioned that they love animals, and it's pretty easily to see why: animals are much easier to relate to, can show pain easily, and are much more similar to us than plants are.
  - white-flame 8y ago
    Sure, but just because we relate to them more doesn't affect the ethics of killing other things that are just as alive but are simply less relatable. This has been a strong theme in the progression of civilization. Ending life to feed our own is how much of nature works, and we have to deal with being a part of that in our ethical thinking, regardless of how associated we are with the life we're ending. It's simply something to think about: Most people are as flippant about ending the life of a plant, as some are about ending the life of an animal (or various different species of animal, including fish & insects).
- gbear605 8y ago
  Animals, or at least cows, pigs, and chicken, clearly show a level of consciousness that plants do not
- 8y ago

I love meat but I've always struggled to reconcile my love of eating it with my love of animals. I would be happy to pay a premium if it meant I could get meat-like taste without the guilt

mrspeaker 8y ago

I'm more excited about where they go after they get passed the "uncanny valley of meat". If they can nail it, they'll get bored and move on to new and weirder flavors and textures. Hook it up to Watson and you don't just get new recipes, but they're combined with new meat! (https://www.bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/trends-news/article/how-ibm-chef-watson-works https://www.bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/trends-news/ar...)

puranjay 8y ago
I wonder if they can somehow replicate the flavor in bones. I'd love to make stock or a stew, but so much of the "meaty" flavor comes from bones
- dashundchen 8y ago
  I eat plant-based and don't know what bone broth tastes like, but I assume very savory from the others descriptions When I want to cook savory foods, there's certain things you can look to: 1. Miso pastes. There's several kinds but in a regular American grocery with international sections you'll usually find a mild white miso and a slightly more pungent red one. Both are usually savory. I am sure Chinese and Japanese groceries will have more options. 2. Seaweed 3. Certain vegetable broth brands - "Better than Bouillan" vegetable stock, with the green label, is extremely savory 4. Less of an impact, but certain foods, like lentils and tempeh can impart an earthy, savory flavor You'd be surprised how many flavors you can get mixing these in various quantities, along with other seasonings such as liquid aminos, liquid smoke, nutritional yeast, roasted tomatoes, and soy sauce.
  - scrumbledober 8y ago
    are you telling me all miso pastes aren't savory? I love cooking with miso and if there is a world of non-savory miso out there that I'm blind to I would be very excited.
    - mikekchar 8y ago
      Not the OP, but while all miso is savoury you can mix it with a variety of different things. Some miso sauces in Japan have a lot of sugar in them and I've even had miso ice cream. It's very good.
    - spacemanmatt 8y ago
      i'm a lot happier calling miso umami than savory. i reserve savory for things more herbal flavors.
- Matticus_Rex 8y ago
  With a combination of porcini powder (ground dried porcini mushrooms), nutritional yeast, MSG, miso, kombu, and something with hydrolyzed vegetable protein, you can make some almost-meaty tasting stocks that have as much richness/flavor/oomph as any bone broth. I'm not vegetarian, but I have friends and business partners who are, and I like a challenge. Any four of those six (careful with the yeast -- it gets overpowering quickly) can combine for a pretty powerful stock or sauce. I use most of them in my regular cooking, too.
- semi-extrinsic 8y ago
  One trick I learned from one of Heston Blumenthal's videos is slowly caramellising onion together with star anise, it can add a lot of meaty flavour.
- kraig 8y ago
  at what point is it good enough to change to an alternative consistently? for the most part we enjoy foods that we are used to eating, if you change your habits to a non-bone based stew in a matter of time you will begin to favor those flavors instead.
- mikekchar 8y ago
  I originally learned to cook by going through the entire "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" (it took me 3 years). Later in life I was completely broke and had to give up either meat or beer. I chose to give up meat :-) Even later in life I figured I might as well go whole hog (hmm???) and become vegan. I learned how to cook again. My biggest piece of advice for anyone wanting to learn how to cook really good vegetable based meals (and who doesn't want to adopt an already established ethnic vegan diet) is to forget ingredients and instead focus on techniques. Cooking is applied chemistry. You need to understand why certain foods and certain preparations give certain results. You can then replicate similar results. It's not so much that you want to imitate the "meaty" flavour of beef bones, but rather that you want to create a similarly satisfying broth. If you try to imitate an existing food, you will always end up with a pale shadow of that food. Instead make something that has the same value, but with a different ingredient. It will be different just like chicken stock is different from beef stock which is different than lamb stock which is different than pork stock. But it will be just as good. For stocks, it's complicated because vegetables are sweet. You want umami for stocks. As much as possible keep the sweetness out of the stock (because it will get in there no matter what you do). Fermented proteins (miso as others have said -- but make sure to get the oldest you can find), beans/lentils, rice, etc. Stay away from things like a mirepoix because it will add too much sweetness. You can add onions, but caramelise them down to being black, etc, etc. To be honest, there is too much to making a good stock to explain here. You just need to practice and adjust until you get what you are looking for. Learning an ethnic cuisine that is already traditionally vegan will help a lot if you pay attention to the techniques they are using. At the same time consider what a bone stock is doing in a stock pot. What is meat? What is connective tissue? What is skin? What is marrow? What happens when you simmer that for 5 hours? You can make great vegan stocks and it is fun to learn how to do it, but it takes an inventive spirit.

gadders 8y ago

I'm not sure if I'd eat this burger, but if lab-grown meat was available and as good as the natural alternative, I think I would definitely switch. Sadly if everyone did this it would probably mean we would only see cows, sheep etc in zoos, rather than grazing in fields.

hombre_fatal 8y ago
The industrial meat/ag complex loves that you think of their products as coming from the sort of happy pasture-grazing farms you see on the side of the highway.
- deadmetheny 8y ago
  Most of them do. Chickens are the main exception, and I would agree that their conditions are pretty bad. Downvoters - I live in the Midwest. I grew up on a farm. Much of my family still farms and raises livestock. Factory farming of livestock is not the norm for non-poultry.
  - Broken_Hippo 8y ago
    I beg to differ - it has basically become the norm for pigs. It didn't used to be, but it has become so. I grew up in Indiana. Now, I've not lived there in 5 years, but I did live quite some time in a place that pigs outnumbered people in the county. The county seat was 3000. Even smelling pigs was becoming a rarity while out on a country drive and a flood meant that thousands of pigs drowned in a flooded barn ("pig factory"). Perhaps you are in a place where the pigs usually roam free, but I certainly wasn't.
    - deadmetheny 8y ago
      Hogs are not a very common livestock animal in my area, so I have no knowledge of their conditions. I do know that sows are commonly caged separately from their piglets to avoid the mother accidentally rolling over and crushing them while they nurse, but that's about it.

colechristensen 8y ago

You don't have to feel guilty. It is the disconnection between humans and animals that causes many of those feelings and if you shift your thinking, you can have a much better experience. When you participate in the process of raising, killing, butchering, and eating the animals which are your food you will appreciate them – love them – and the life they had and gave for you to live. Food encased in plastic from a grocery store really prevents this connection. Life both begins and ands and you don't have to run away from the end of things or think that making life as long as possible is necessarily better.

sc4les 8y ago
Please don’t love me then
dsabanin 8y ago
Do you usually kill all that you love for some fleeting pleasure, when pretty healthy alternatives are available?
delecti 8y ago
Unless you can argue that the cows don't mind anything about the way they're treated (including slaughter), then there's reason to feel guilty. If you can live without that (and you can, vegetarians exist), then there's reason to feel guilty about not doing so.
yurishimo 8y ago
I take a lot of inspiration from Native Americans on this topic. Eating is a part of existing for any organism and without life, there is no energy to transfer. This applies to plants and animals. Appreciation for the life that was given for my nourishment is important to me and I really take it seriously. I make an effort to not waste any meat I buy and I've definitely shifted to eating less than I used to.
- devmunchies 8y ago
  >is important to me and I really take it seriously sounds like "we take security very seriously"

white-flame 8y ago

Consider that killing a living thing to eat its body is not unique to "meat", nor is raising it in a controlled environment for the purpose of consumption. Fish (as is sometimes classified separately) and vegetables are living things raised and killed for consumption of their bodies as well. I believe reconciling all of these as ethically equal (including raising the ethical weight of killing a plant as equal to an animal) is important for sanely dealing with our natural ecosystem of food. The "aliveness" of plants is continually researched and shown in a positive light, and it's hard to draw a clear and reasonable line between "life that is acceptable to eat" and "life that is not acceptable to eat". When you look at the spectrum of life and how ethically impactful killing it for food is, it tends to follow anthropomorphism and social compatibility with humans, which doesn't seem objective enough to be pursued for widely-accepted ethics, but merely for local cultural acceptability.

saagarjha 8y ago
The parent has specifically mentioned that they love animals, and it's pretty easily to see why: animals are much easier to relate to, can show pain easily, and are much more similar to us than plants are.
- white-flame 8y ago
  Sure, but just because we relate to them more doesn't affect the ethics of killing other things that are just as alive but are simply less relatable. This has been a strong theme in the progression of civilization. Ending life to feed our own is how much of nature works, and we have to deal with being a part of that in our ethical thinking, regardless of how associated we are with the life we're ending. It's simply something to think about: Most people are as flippant about ending the life of a plant, as some are about ending the life of an animal (or various different species of animal, including fish & insects).
gbear605 8y ago
Animals, or at least cows, pigs, and chicken, clearly show a level of consciousness that plants do not
8y ago