Today’s Solutions: April 24, 2024

In recent years, an increasing number of startups have started working on accelerating the evolution of plant-based meat alternatives into something that consumers wouldn’t be able to tell apart from the real thing. Few, however, have ventured to find a substitute for more high-profile meat cuts such as steaks, with most of the innovations geared toward plant-based burger patties and sausage.

Enter Juicy Marbles, a Slovenian-based company that has created a vegan alternative to the crème de la crème of steak cuts: the filet mignon. According to co-founder Vladimir Mićković, the company’s goal is to bring a premium steak on the same access level as plant-based burgers and sausages.

Details about how the company makes the steak are still obscure because of the highly competitive market. What has been revealed for now is that the main ingredient is a soy protein also found in the Impossible Burger and other brands in the industry.

The journey towards the final product involves mixing that protein with oils, thickeners, beetroot coloring, and flavors, all of which then goes through a special, patent-pending 3D printer that uses heat and pressure to craft the steak.

More challenging, notes Mićković, has been the savory aspect, as well as achieving the distinctive visual qualities of the cut, including the strands of muscle fiber and the juicy fat marbling. This is something that Fast Company writer Talib Visram says Juicy Marbles has achieved with mathematical precision. The taste, on the other hand, is quite similar to Beyond Burger’s fake meat, minus the metallic aftertaste, reports Visram.

While the company has already launched the product within the EU, where customers can pay €30 (about $33.60) for four 113-gram (4-ounce) steaks. That’s about half as much as one would pay for the real thing, and Mićković expects the cost to decrease when production scales up. The company says that it is working on other steaks as well, including a plant-based ribeye.

Solutions News Source Print this article
More of Today's Solutions

Gamers revolutionize biomedical research via DNA analysis

In a remarkable study published in Nature Biotechnology, researchers discovered gaming's transformative potential in biomedical research. Borderlands Science, an interactive mini-game included in Borderlands ...

Read More

The ancient origins of your 600,000 year old cuppa joe

Did you realize that the beans that comprise your morning cup of coffee date back 600,000 years? Scientists have discovered the ancient origins of Coffea arabica, ...

Read More

World record broken for coldest temperature ever recorded

With our current knowledge of how temperature works there is no upper limit, this means materials can keep getting hotter and hotter to no ...

Read More

A youth-led environmental victory creates a paradigm shift in Montana’s...

A group of youth environmental activists scored a landmark legal victory in Montana, marking a critical step forward in the ongoing battle against climate ...

Read More