When I became a vegetarian 10 years ago, I found it pretty painless to pass up on most animal-based dishes. The plant-based patties were plentiful and, for the most part, delicious. poultry? Easy: vegan chicken nuggets that look just like the real thing. pork? I was never a big fan to begin with. My only weak point was the sushi. No matter where I looked, I couldn’t find a satisfying vegetable alternative to my favorite seafood.
Now, ten years later, a new breakthrough in food science has finally made my dream of vegan fish a reality. Several alternative protein companies have launched or are already offering their first crop of plant-based fillets this year, promising to replicate the taste and texture of real fish. Why is it so difficult to make
I found the flavors to be the easy part. The fairly specific taste common to fresh fish stems largely from molecular combinations that scientists already know how to replicate in the lab. Long-chain fatty acids, such as omega-3s and omega-6s, give the fish an oily quality and taste, and volatile carbonyls give it a lighter, almost melon-like flavor. “When the texture is pleasing, the dish can go in many directions,” says chef Guy Vaknin, who heads four vegan restaurants in New York City, including Beyond Sushi. I’m here. “This is a great canvas.”
“Fish has a very particular texture. Most fish fillets actually have many layers of short-fiber muscle, connected by thin bands of connective tissue and fat. Inside, bundles of microscopic muscle fibers are arranged like the teeth of a comb, all pointing in the same direction, and it is this structure that gives cooked fish its unique flaky quality.
But most of the meat substitute-making processes aren’t designed to mimic muscle fibers. Instead, they aim for a much simpler consistency.The ground meat can be pressed into hamburger patties, sausages, or nugget shapes. ,” says van der Goot.
The food processing technique that best achieves the nugget texture in vegetarian meat substitutes is called extrusion. Raw food materials such as grains, vegetable proteins and various additives are ground into fine particles and the resulting “dough” is forced into a tube under high pressure. When forced out of this opening, the food slurry is simultaneously cooked by additional steam and its own frictional heat.
like Star Trek A “replicator”, an extruder can squirt an astronomical range of prepackaged foods. Everything from Cheerios to cheese puffs to chewing gum relies on this process. The problem is that all such products have similar textures and cannot be extruded raw. Most are denatured or decomposed and lose their shape somewhat. This is perfectly fine if people want to buy vegan crab cakes. If you do, you will have a problem.
Fortunately, food scientists are now finding creative new ways to recreate the complex sheets of parallel muscle fibers in fish. One such technique is called directional freezing. This process takes advantage of the fact that ice tends to form in certain directions. That is, starting at the coldest point and working outwards. It also tends to stick to itself, freezing in pure crystals of H.2O. Some food researchers have applied directional freezing to blocks of gels made from edible algae. When the gel freezes, the water in it freezes into needle-like ice structures, creating a matrix of thousands of tiny tubes. This perforated gel makes an excellent footing for uncooked fake fish.
This is the strategy used by Canadian meat alternative startup New School Foods to make plant-based raw salmon and tuna fillets. “It’s basically like a directional sponge,” says Auke de Vries, chief ingredient scientist at New School Foods. Adjusting the size of the gel matrix or fine-tuning the freezing temperature yields channels of different sizes or shapes.
Once the scaffold is in place, food science researchers can fill the channels by infusing them with the desired mixture of proteins, fats and flavors. proteins and, in some cases, actual animal cells grown in the laboratory. You can also add volatile flavor compounds that can break down in cooked products, says Chris Bryson, founder of New School Foods.
But there are multiple ways to skin a vegan catfish. Another method gaining momentum in the world of alternative seafood is 3D printing. Viennese plant-based seafood maker Revo Foods uses a 3D food printer to carefully build layers of pea protein, algae extract, and omega-3 fatty acids to create smoked his salmon fillets. Created from scratch.
If all these techniques sound elaborate, it’s because they are. But the technology to make vegan-friendly meat and seafood is getting cheaper by the day, and its proponents believe the environmental benefits far outweigh the manufacturing effort. “The impact of overfishing and harmful fishing on fragile marine ecosystems is very serious,” says Birgit Dekkers, food scientist and co-founder of Dutch plant-based meat company Rival Foods.
Overfishing and habitat destruction have depleted more than a third of the world’s fish stocks, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Not only would this wreak havoc on aquatic ecosystems, but it could also contribute to global climate change by reducing the number of species that can store carbon. “The overall carbon footprint of ocean trawl fishing is comparable to the carbon footprint of the entire aviation industry,” says Bryson.
Convincing more people to switch to sustainable, plant-based seafood won’t solve climate change. However, it may be a step towards ensuring that there are always plenty of fish in the sea.
