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this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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As someone who grew up eating meat, and still eats meat for various reasons (though I'm trying to cut down), I'm not sure I agree with that statement.
Beef (the most environmentally unfriendly meat) is far and away more expensive than vegan or vegetarian substitute ingredients. Only cheap chicken and turkey grown inhumanely are comparably priced to most vegan sources of protein (Butler soy curls purchased in bulk are extremely affordable, as an example, and much healthier and tasty than the TVP of old).
All meat, at least without any seasoning, I personally find pretty darn bland. A steak with some salt on it does have some flavor, but nothing really worth writing home about (at least to me). The thing that makes a meal good is when meat is used to soak up some other flavor, or incorporated in dish to add texture, or again, to act as a sponge for flavor. I've found that same concept to apply to vegan meats, and when used in that way, It's actually fairly difficult to tell it apart from real meat. Adding a bullion cube of beef or chicken flavor isn't expensive, and after that's applied, you're pretty much at parity with real meat as far as flavor, often for less expense than using real meat.
I will admit this doesn't apply to more processed meat-substitutes, like impossible meat, which are generally quite expensive. But in general, veggies are pretty cheap compared to meat.
As an aspiring vegetarian, I'd agree that real cheese is... Likely not something I could replace right now.
I'd agree with you if you mentioned Beyond Meat, which I found to be... Terrible. It gave me horrible heartburn (the processed oils were likely oxidized inside it), and I'll never touch it again. BUT, I tried some premade frozen impossible patties from costco, and I couldn't believe how delicious they were. They didn't use easily oxidized oils in comparison to Beyond meat, and the flavor and texture were comparable to the finest burgers I'd ever cooked with expensive local ground beef. But that's just my opinion.
I also tried Impossible chicken nuggets and Trader Joe's new vegan Fish offering, and both were excellent. I would easily be able to switch to those alternatives and never feel deprived of the real thing.
A real foodie eh?
It's not as bad as that makes it out to be, lol. As far as flavoring these plant-meats, I'm just saying bullion cubes are very effective at imparting a rich meaty flavor (especially if the bullion is high quality).
I recently has a $120 filet from a premium steakhouse for a special occasion. I'm sorry, but in my lifetime of being an "try anything" foodie I've never tried a meatless dish that comes within $3-40 of creating a food experience worth that much money to me, and that includes some stuff created by amazing Indian or Lebanese chefs (where I got the best meatless food I've ever eaten).
And here's the thing. I can make that filet. If I hit a butcher and get a prime cut of angus filet, toss it on the grill, I can have that $120 filet in front of me. I went through part of a culinary degree, and my wife comes from incredible restauranteurs of two cultures. If I were to dream of coming up with a $120 non-meat meal, it would require such an immense amount of expertise and skill. That $120 filet I could have mostly managed wiith none of the experience I have since picked up.
On beef, I lean to the simplicity. You're right about the price, but a good steak is worth the price in terms of enjoyment. At least to this foodie.
I wouldn't call a little salt and pepper complicated. Would you? I wouldn't ever put more than that on a quality cut of beef. Compare that meat prep with, say, falafel.
A good head-to-head was creating meat toppings and creating veggie toppings. The fanciest meat topping I created was a delicious liver pate. Prep took me about 20 minutes. My wife's family has a meat-based cheeseball recipe that's about 30 minutes. Both are amazing. Compare to the excuisite mustardas and chutneys I've made, and the effort difference is an order of magnitude. For me, I'm talking hours of work, sauteing each ingredient and letting it cook down carefully to maximize flavor. And the latter start requiring more and more pricy specialized ingredients. Liver for pate is dirt cheap around here, and devilled ham (cheeseball) is pretty cheap, too. My chutney required specific harder-to-find breeds of fruit.
From your explanation of meat, I think it's clear you're not a huge fan of meat in general or that you've often been stuck with bad cuts of meat. The way you described meat "absorbing other flavors" is the one thing we were taught in culinary school you never do with your protein. In French Style cooking at least, your protein is your star - it's the most important part of the dish, and it's the one thing whose flavor should SHINE. Properly cooked duck is perhaps the perfect example of that. Duck L'orange is one of my favorite dishes, but the orange sauce needs to be on it sparingly because the point of the dish is that amazing and irreplacable flavor of Duck. The orange is like a stairway to get the duck from "great" to "life-changing"
My wife puts it this way with scallops (the scallop industry is in our family, sorry). If you want to buy scallops somewhere far from the ocean, you buy fried scallops because the scallop is basically ruined and you're just trying to get a hint of the flavor you like and drowning it in flavors that are palatable. If you eat a scallop off the boat, you pan-sear it with a pad of butter and some crushed cracker crumbs for about 2 minutes.
I didn't love Impossible. But I like my food elevated. I will agree that Impossible compares favorably to a "Applebees" burger, but I haven't eaten at Applebees in 5+ years. If I compare it instead to some fresh 80/20 from the butcher, mixed with a little bit of pork, it's a different world.
I'll agree the best fake meats can beat the worst real meats. I don't think that's a concession for someone who teaches himself to cook things because he thinks good food is worth the effort.
Huh. We really do need a meat tax.
Cool thing is, a meat tax wouldn't even increase the price of meat if we take away the feed subsidy (which is financed for by what is effectively a VAT on first sale and then remitted to a few large companies).
I'll admit I've never had a single steak that was more than $30 uncooked, I simply do not have the disposable income to justify spending $120 on a single meal, so I'm not really sure what I'm missing out on there.
I love meat in other contexts, but I'm not super into it on its own if it's lightly seasoned. I have had steak from a local grass fed farm (Vermont), which, I have to imagine, was a very high quality piece of meat. I consider myself a fairly adept cook, and cooked the meat rare with salt and pepper and a healthy amount of fresh local butter. It was good, but... Overall, I found the complexity of flavor to be lacking, as I do with any lightly seasoned meat. For me, a regular old steak can't compare with heavily seasoned and flavored meat like BBQ pulled pork. I think we definitely have different preferences in that regard.
Luxury food has a logarithmic value increase. A $120 steak is as much better than a $60 steak as a $60 is than a $30, and so on. Compare the best steak you've had (about $30?) to the worst steak you've had (about $15?). A $60 is that much better than the $30, so a diminishing return. A $120 steak is that much better than the $60. It's incredible, but not something you would want to eat every day even if you were wealthy.
That's understandable. We cannot know how much is simply different tastes or how much is the quality you have never tried.
I, too, am from New England. There's a lot of gamey cattle around in the grass-fed world for some reason. I would wager what you had is better than some, still. Anything is better than frozen stuff that came out of a warehouse.
Interesting. You talk about steak the way so many people I know talk about Scotch. An A-B test could perhaps be a world-changer to you. That said, steak flavor is a little simpler in general. Expensive steak is usually more about texture, the balance of umami, and what flavor profile the cut has shining enough that you can tell the cut on taste alone. A good filet mignon has this tendency to melt in your mouth just a bit, like a marshmallow. No fat, no veins, no inconsistency in its silky texture. A good prime rib could be tougher, because there's that specific flavor you look for in the middle, and that specific marbling on the sides where you get these crunchy bacon-like ends sandwiched between paper-thin layers of fat, so thin as to not be off-putting to eat generously. The people I know who swear by Rib-Eye will drive 100 miles and pay $100 for the top tier rib-eye. I'm not a Rib-Eye guy, so as much as I enjoy it, I can't speak for it quite so well.
That's understandable. And I can imagine BBQ Pulled Cauliflour (or whatever) is a closer match to BBQ Pulled Pork than any vegan dish is to the meat dishes I like. My favorite pulled pork is marinated lightly in wine, so you're still tasting pork first, not some BBQ. We have a local meal in my area called cacoila, and it's both amazing with the spices supplementing the meat... and dirt cheap.