Rather than use Impossible’s burger patties straight up, Hsin Yao has brought his deep interest and knowledge about creating the perfect burger and made a patty that is, to us, the best of the Impossible Burger options available here.
The Impossible Burger is made from ingredients like soy protein, coconut oil, sunflower oil, and “heme” or legume hemoglobin. The latter contains iron, which gives the burgers that distinctive flavour of meat. We’ve had is straight up without anything added to it, and it tasted like lean beef without the mineral edge of blood.
To zhng Omakase’s Impossible Burger, Hsin Yao mixes the Impossible patty with a blend of “secret” plant-based ingredients like tomatoes and mushrooms to give it a more succulent, luscious texture. Additionally, these ingredients really up the umami quotient.
“Umami comes from glutamate and (the amino acid) guanylate. The usual suspects that carry these elements within plants are mushrooms, seaweed, konbu (sea kelp) and tomatoes,” the former banker explained. “The tricky part when it came to making our Impossible burgers was processing forms of these ingredients so that they would do well as part of a patty. For example, miso is super high in umami, but having it as a paste in the patty isn’t pleasant, so you might have to dehydrate it and turn it into a powder first, for example.”
The patties are “smashed” against the grill, just like Omakase does its popular beef patties, giving them a flatter surface and more area for caramelisation. The result: really tasty, juicy, plant-based faux beef patties that come as close it gets to real beef burgers.