In Sweden we see a trend where the proportion of vegetarians and vegans in the population stays the same, but more and more consider themselves “flexitarians”. They still eat meat but less than before and more and more plant-based. This opens up for new food products that mix meat with more sustainable ingredients… like insects.
This is the idea behind Swiss company Entomos “Flexi burger” a burger with 50 percent beef and 50 percent mealworms (tenebrio molitor), making it more sustainable than a 100 percent beef burger but keeping a similar protein profile. The Flexi burger is pretty unique, but what makes it even more interesting is that it is freeze dried. This makes the burger patties really light, easy to send as post, and gives them a shelf life of at least 9 months. Jean-Yves Cuendet, founder of Entomos and Gourmetbugs.ch, says that they might even be good after 12 months, but they haven’t got enough data yet to prove it.
Two freeze dried patties soaked in water (the instruction says 70 ml… here I used more) and then fried in a pan (one of four we tried with cheese)
I must confess: Jean-Yves sent me two packs of flexi-burgers (containing two patties each) over a month ago… but unfortunately I haven’t had time to write this review until now. The burger was tested on two occasions, once with a couple of friends of mine (Hi Fredrik & Harald) and once with a journalist who had never eaten insect products before. I personally ate 1.3 burgers. Each burger weighs 125 grams when rehydrated.
The product is only sold in Switzerland so the packaging only contains instructions in French and German. But from what I gather the burgers should soak in 70 ml water for 3 minutes. I obeyed that instruction the first time, but the second time I put them in a bowl of water for about five minutes to see if the burgers would get a bit more moist.
Dry-ish but tasty
The reason for this is that the burgers after rehydration still taste a bit dry. Not dry like cardboard more like crispy dry mixed with yummy fat. I am not sure this slightly dry feel is all negative… in a way it concentrates the taste and makes the umami flavors pop. But when dressing your burger you really need a good sauce to make the experience more enjoyable. Adding cheese or vegan cheese is also a good alternative. The beef flavor is obvious, and there is a hint of a more earthy mealwormy flavor. Looking at the ingredients list I can also see that it is not 100 percent beef/mealworm meat. There are some spices (like mustard seeds) and glutamate to enhance the taste.
The burger is quite compact and slightly dry but tasty.
I have always made bug burgers mixing vegetables and insects, and have unfortunately never tried mixing beef and mealworms. So I can’t make a straight comparison, but my guess is that the freeze drying procedure changes the taste and texture a lot. Just like fresh crickets taste a lot different compared to rehydrated dried crickets.
I know that I above have used the word ”dry” several times, but thats more compared with a burger made with fresh minced meat (or one of my bug burgers). If you compare it with a prefab beef burger you buy frozen at the store the difference isn’t that big. I looked up a typical Swedish prefab-burger from Swedish meat giant Scan, and compared the nutrients profile: The prefab frozen burger contains around 80 percent beef which has been mixed with potato starch and fibres. The flexi burger has less calories, have about 25 percent more protein and less salt. The fat content is a bit higher: 19.4 compared to 18, but the flexi burger contains 25 percent less saturated fat. In this competition I would say that the flexi burger is a winner.
Would I buy it?
So would I buy this product if I could? Well, at the moment a pack of two flexiburgers costs 11.90 CHF from Gourmetbugs.ch, that is 11.39 euro (120 SEK). Jean-Yves explains that Swiss certified organic beef and mealworms are expensive and the production quantities small. He thinks the price could drop around 30 percent when quantities increase. That still makes it more expensive than for example Beyond burgers vegetarian meat analogue burgers (costs 56 SEK (5.30 euro) for two frozen burgers in my local store).
I think the price must go down even more to compete with other burgers, but I see big potential in freeze drying them. Could this be marketed as the perfect camping/hiking burger? I can really see myself hiking in the north of Sweden with a couple of flexiburgers in my backpack. Low weight, no need to keep them cool. In the evening we set up camp near a crystal clear stream. We rehydrate the burgers in the cool water, light a fire and enjoy a great burger meal hundreds of kilometers from the nearest burger joint.
More information (in French and German) on Gourmat Bugs website >>
Regarding this review:
This is not a payed post. The only bribe I got was the test products :)
If you have products that you want tested by Bug Burger, please contact me.
But beware: if I don’t like the product I will say so :)
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