How to Bring Authentic Taste to Plant-based Meat | Kerry (2024)

Taste is more than just flavour – it’s what will make or break the success of plant-based meat alternatives

According to the Good Food Institute, plant-based meat is currently worth US$1.4 billion annually in the United States alone. While the category is poised for growth, taste remains the number one barrier to consumer adoption. To win over consumers, plant-based meat needs to be healthy yet delicious.

Matthew Walter, Vice President of Taste for Kerry’s meat business, sat down with KerryDigest to answer questions about the role of taste in plant-based meat and why it’s crucial for success in the plant-based category.

KerryDigest: Why is it so hard to make plant-based meat that consumers crave?

Matthew Walter, Kerry Vice President of Taste, Meat: Great taste is at the core of all delicious foods, and plant-based meats are no exception. There are several challenges to overcome when using vegetables to create a product that tastes and functions like traditional meat. For instance, when formulating with pea protein, undesirable tastes such as bitterness, astringency and dusty cardboard off-notes are typical. Also, plant proteins alone can’t bring juiciness and depth of flavor to a burger.

In addition to delivering a meat-like taste, plant-based meat companies are being challenged to meet the texture, performance and nutritional expectations of meat while also maintaining a clean label. So, strategies to continuously improve on product attributes across the board will be imperative to success in this rapidly growing category.

KerryDigest: When consumers think of a juicy burger or steak, the taste experience is typically influenced by the fat in the meat. How do you replicate a fatty taste in lean, plant-based meat?

Matthew:The industry has largely been adding in saturated fats to mimic the mouthfeel of animal fat. These fats do not deliver on the eating experience consumers expect from a meat alternative. For example, the melting point is far higher than in its meat counterparts, which means you don’t get that juicy explosion of fat in your mouth. So, they don’t deliver the taste or mouthfeel of meat, and these fats also have a negative impact on label, nutrition and cost.

To solve for this, our teams have deconstructed how fat behaves in the mouth. Through flavour design, we’re able to mimic the melting properties of animal fat in plant proteins, releasing flavour over time in a way that creates a much more authentic mouthfeel and eating experience.

KerryDigest: What other factors create an authentic plant-based meat experience that’s closer to animal protein?

Matthew:Beyond fat, we also must understand the role ofumami. Umami is what gives savoury dishes that meaty, brothy taste – typically found as MSG. Some manufacturers will use what you might call an “umami bomb” to give plant-based applications the hearty, meaty taste consumers want from traditional meat. However, they’re just adding a high level of non-declarable MSG source to the product to give it more intense flavour, versus an authentic taste experience. While the first bite may provide a punch of flavour, the level of umami is far too high, creating a negative impact on the overall eating experience. By the time you’re done eating, the plant-based burger probably tastes a little fake.

Umami-rich foods like parmesan cheese, miso, shiitake mushrooms and meat stocks all have that addictive, savoury taste consumers want. Finding the right balance of umami in plant-based meat can be challenging as you need to get the right flavour without the final product tasting artificial. Having a deep knowledge of fermentation and flavours allows us to add richness, juiciness and succulence to plant-based meat with ingredients consumers recognise and understand.

KerryDigest: We’ve covered fat and meaty notes – what about solving for chargrilled or smoky flavours that consumers often associate with traditional meat?

Matthew:A soybean on the grill obviously isn’t going to taste like a grilled steak – a lot goes into creating that real smoky, meat-like taste and even appearance. To fully understand the challenges in taste with plant-based meats, we need to look at how raw meat develops its flavour as its cooked, which depends very much on the cooking technique being applied. Is it being grilled, roasted, charred, smoked or braised?Smoke and grill flavourscan replicate the experience of cooking with fire, imparting delicious and craveable flavours and aromas not found in plant-based meat alternatives.

Our food scientists have a great understanding of the Maillard reaction – the process that gives browned foods their flavour – and work with our customers to create the same sensory experience more associated with the cooking of beef, chicken and pork but with a vegetarian or vegan label declaration.

KerryDigest: How do you manage off-notes like bitterness, “cardboardness” and “beaniness”?

Matthew: Getting taste just right is a balancing act. For example, in plant-based burgers, consumers want chargrilled and caramelized notes. This creates a more authentic eating experience – as if the burger is fresh off the grill. Unsurprisingly, bitter plant-based notes are rejected by consumers. Many products will overcompensate with too much salt or an excess of flavour, resulting in a taste that lingers for too long and can be perceived as artificial or even unpleasant.

Before adding meaty flavours like umami or smoke to a plant-based base, you need to address off-notes so you can start with a clean slate for flavouring.

We approach masking differently than many other flavour houses, which tend to focus on overwhelming products with flavours to cover up plant protein off-notes. In contrast, we work to understand the off-note sources and neutralise them. That allows us to eliminate undesired off-notes and bring balance to the overall product with taste masking solutions.

To learn more about creating plant-based meat alternatives that taste great and perform just as well meat, contact us.