I would be happy to volunteer as a taster!
Boffins solve bacon crisis with newly-patented plant
Months before the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared bacon a carcinogen, American boffins may have found a solution: algae that tastes just like bacon, but without the bad bits the Doctors at WHO say could cause your untimely demise. The eukaryote in question is called Dulse (Palmaria sp.) and, as explained Oregon State …
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Monday 2nd November 2015 06:30 GMT Phil O'Sophical
Dulse?
Nothing terribly new about it, it's seaweed and has been sold (together with Yellow Man, a type of very dense honeycomb) at the Auld Lammas Fair in Ballycastle, Co. Antrim, for centuries. See Lammas Fair. I've never heard it being described as tasting like bacon, though. Frankly it tastes like seaweed :)
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Monday 2nd November 2015 06:54 GMT Pascal Monett
What a convenient coincidence
Astounding that somebody just happened to fry seaweed and declare that it tastes like bacon. I'm sure that, with a bit of artificial flavoring, it just might.
I'm also pretty sure that it will never be as crunchy out of the pan. But hey, after months and months in space, it'll probably do.
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Monday 2nd November 2015 08:53 GMT jake
Re: What a convenient coincidence
"I'm sure that, with a bit of artificial flavoring"
Nope. Not needed. Seaweed has the elusive "umami".
"'I'm also pretty sure that it will never be as crunchy out of the pan."
Yep. It is. For values of "pan" that include "deep fat fryer". Knowing how to prep it helps.
Think outside the box. There is free food out there, if you look for it.
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Monday 2nd November 2015 23:33 GMT Martin Budden
Re: I've been drying seaweed in my smokehouse for decades.
Something else to add to the list of jake's many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many accomplishments.
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Wednesday 4th November 2015 10:39 GMT jake
@PNGuinn (was:Re: I've been drying seaweed in my smokehouse for decades.)
"Yes? Yes?"
Yes!
"Inquiring Commentards Need to Know what and why."
Where would I start ... Soups, salads, eggs, sausages, salsas, pasta, breads ... pretty much anywhere you would use fungi, really. Obviously, you need to know your local seaweed.
As for "why" ... because it's really fucking tasty, that's why!
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Monday 2nd November 2015 09:32 GMT Warm Braw
About that frying...
Any chance if produces acrylamide? Seaweeds typically contain non-starch polysaccharides - anyone know sufficient chemistry to advise whether this may be a false dawn for the safe sarnie?
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Monday 2nd November 2015 10:15 GMT allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
Re: About that frying...
Might depend on the type of fat used for frying? No idea, really. Wouldn't be surprised though if in, say, 15 years someone finds that this particular type of seaweed can cause cancer in laboratory animals, too. Cue Joe Jackson.
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Monday 2nd November 2015 10:09 GMT Mark 85
Ah... another fake bacon*.... just what the world needs. You guys go ahead and I'll just sit back have the real thing. including your share since you'll be eating the fake stuff.
*There's been fake bacon for years in the form of those jars salad crumbles. The label mentions "bacon bits" (or words to that effect) but there's no bacon in them.
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Monday 2nd November 2015 11:14 GMT Andy The Hat
Bacon with care ...
Take seaweed, as it's the US, fry in pork dripping and liquid smoke and, after only four hours of char grilling in the BBQ with the 16 hog carcasses it tastes like bacon ... not at all like wet lettucy, irony, snail poo.
Perhaps it's the Pringles crisp thing - tell them what it is supposed to taste like then people will agree just to not look silly?
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Monday 2nd November 2015 11:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
Good substitute for Real Bacon(tm)...
..until other earnest boffins discover that when consumed in excess (above a sarnie per month) causes nausea, hiccups, hallucinations, liver failure, eyeball worms, kidney implosions, irreversible impotence, brain rot, and a sudden, irresistible desire to watch Jersey Shore which may be related with the brain rot, so forget we mentioned it.
This and/or it costs four times the price of the porcine variant.
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Monday 2nd November 2015 12:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
As someone who doesn't eat meat anymore, but isn't an evangelist about it, all I can say is don't bother. All these so called substitutes for meat, like Quorn and other faux whatever products are crap. "It tastes just like....." No it doesn't.
If you like bacon then eat bacon.
if you don't want to eat it for whatever reason then just do without and don't pretend.
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Monday 2nd November 2015 15:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
Fellow vegetarian here
and yes, I eat Qourn and many other substitutes. For me it has absolutely nothing to do with the flavor, or supposed thereof, it has to do with protein intake; those "meat substitutes" are pretty much the only mainstream (readily available and purchased) high protein foodstuffs available to us.
Words cannot describe how tired I am of going into a restaurant that claims to have vegetarian food options available, only to find a list of side dishes and salads - where the hell is the protein?! I note that you add meat proteins to EVERYTHING yet there is none, not one, on the vegetarian list. Vegetarians are apparantly supposed to be able to subsist on carbs and fiber alone!
I work out and am constantly aware of my protein needs, I guess they figure most vegetarians don't bodybuild. So, therefore, all those "meat substitutes" are in my diet because that's the way the food industry, from producers to the sellers, wants to market any type of vegetarian protein to me, as fake "meat". I can't stand the ones that are very close to "real" flavor (don't know how else to say that) but the ones that aren't too close, or not meat flavored at all (like Morningstar Farms Veggie patties) are my favorites. Beans, nuts and legumes are protein sources, as well as eggs and dairy, but there is only so much of that you can eat every day (beans and legumes are bulky, nuts are fatty, eggs can change your cholesterol and I try to stay away from dairy).
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Monday 2nd November 2015 17:39 GMT Mike Moyle
Re: Fellow vegetarian here
"I can't stand the ones that are very close to 'real' flavor (don't know how else to say that) but the ones that aren't too close, or not meat flavored at all (like Morningstar Farms Veggie patties) are my favorites."
So, does one get these from the same Nutrimatic dispenser which produces a beverage which is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea?
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Monday 2nd November 2015 19:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Fellow vegetarian here - Nutrimatic
Not sure really, but most people discount vegetarian food before even TRYING it. Good vegetarian food will rock your world, it is SO much better than most meat-based dishes because it is far more complex - unlike meats, they is no 'primary' flavor so the taste profile is built up from many sources into complex flavor profiles. Almost every meat eater I've dined with, who tastes my food, called it astounding; one guy, an 'avowed meat eater', was so floored by the vegetarian restaurant I took him to that he tweeted it far and wide to his friends, saying it was one of the best meals that he had ever had.
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Monday 2nd November 2015 19:29 GMT Vic
Re: Fellow vegetarian here - Nutrimatic
Good vegetarian food will rock your world
Completely agree with you there.
it is SO much better than most meat-based dishes
But disagree with you there.
I've yet to have a veggie dish come close to a really good meat dish. Thaat, of course, is partly because I really like meat :-)
It is commonplace in the UK, of course, for meat to be mahoosively overcooked. It's not too tricky to make something taste better than that...
Vic.
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Monday 2nd November 2015 16:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
American Bacon?
Now there's an oxymoron
That grilled to death apology that is served in 99% of US food outlets is not proper bacon.
Sigh,
Just like US Cheese and ... and ....
Even their steak is full of Hormones and Anti-biotics.
Let them eat this stuff. You never know it might actually improve their diet.
McDonalds should not be labelled a Restaurant.
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Monday 2nd November 2015 13:16 GMT Grikath
And there's the problem...
If it tastes like bacon, instead of íts normal flavour, then that must be attributed to the stuff developing the same chemicals that make bacon taste so good...
Of which most are the exact (type of) substances that gave cause to the WHO designation.....
Bit pointless then, isn't it?
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Monday 2nd November 2015 15:30 GMT Rob Crawford
Balls Mr Langdon, simply balls
“When you fry it, which I have done, it tastes like bacon, not seaweed. And it’s a pretty strong bacon flavour,” Langdon says.
I take it when he says as I have done, it involved a large quantity of bacon and some imaginary dulse.
Unless of course their idea tasting like bacon involves simply being salty.
I have eaten dulse on several occasions (it's very commonly available here) and it's awful
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Monday 2nd November 2015 18:42 GMT John Savard
Ah, but it's unlikely to be nutritionally equivalent!
For vitamin B12, there are two choices: meat, or supplements created with bacterial cultures. Even though there are plant-based foods with complete protein - not just spirulina and quinoa, but even soya and buckwheat - if the difficulty of getting the larger numbers of essential amino acids that humans need, as compared to herbivorous animals, doesn't convince people that evolution expected us to include meat in our diet, vitamin B12 is the clincher.
Mind you, we have bacteria in our guts that make vitamin B12, just too far down to be of any use.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
