Consisting of 28% pork fat, bulked out with textured pea, chickpea, soy and wheat protein, these mini-bratwursts would happily sit inside a hotdog or next to a plate of mashed potato. But these are no standard bangers.
Cultivated from cells plucked from a fertilised pig egg and grown inside steel fermentation vessels like those used to make beer, these slaughter-free sausages are being touted as the future of sustainable and ethical meat production.
I’m at Meatable’s laboratories in the Netherlands, attending one of the first legally approved tastings of cultivated meat in Europe – and the first of a cultivated pork sausage.
Such tastings are considered a crucial step on the road to commercialisation of lab-grown meat, providing a rare opportunity for a handful of people – including the company’s co-founders – to sample the product and provide feedback on its taste and mouthfeel, before a final recipe is submitted for regulatory approval.
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I put it in my mouth and chew. The texture is meaty, and the taste is, well, sausagey. It feels somewhat underwhelming because it tastes and feels just like eating a regular sausage.
[Meatable co-founder Daan] Luining laughs when I tell him this. “How many times has your mind been blown by eating a sausage?” he says. “The answer is never. And that’s the point.
