BRB w/ Nathan P – Impossible's Heme, Levain's Walnut Chocolate Cookie & Mission in a Bottle (repost)
The technology behind Impossible's bloody heme ingredient, how to make Levain's walnut chocolate cookie at home, and the Honest tale behind the organic tea brand.
Hi all,
Welcome back to BRB w/ Nathan P — a weekly newsletter featuring 💥1 Breakthrough, 🥘1 Recipe, and 📚1 Book on food & climate.
Before we get started, here are some highlights of food & climate in the news this week:
Impossible Foods Launches the Indulgent Burger as Its Boldest, Most Decadent Patty Yet (Vegconomist)
Upside’s Cultivated Chicken Debuts at Bar Crenn: ‘The First Meat That I Feel Good About Serving’ (Green Queen)
Happy 4th of July to those who celebrated! 🇺🇸
I am toasting to the occasion from Italy. Please share any recommendations for Cinque Terre or Milan :)
As Impossible Foods recently released their Indulgent Burger in the past two weeks, I wanted to repost BRB #1 on Impossible’s key ingredient: heme.
The Indulgent Burger is a restaurant-style 1/3 pound burger that allegedly better retains its weight during cooking. It is more decadent and caloric than ever – on purpose.
Impossible is saying: if beef burgers aren’t meant to be healthy, why should plant-based ones have to be? If you try it, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Ciao,
Nathan
💥 Breakthrough: Impossible’s Heme
The secret sauce to Impossible’s bloodiness and meaty flavor is an ingredient called ‘Heme.’ ‘Heme’ is soy leghemoglobin, which shares the red color of human hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells. However, it doesn’t come from soy – it is produced using a technology called precision fermentation.
Precision fermentation is a controlled process that uses microorganisms to secrete a target molecule. Impossible uses a strain of engineered yeast – called Pichia pastoris – to make ‘Heme.’ Pichia is popular in the synthetic biology world for its easy manipulation, high protein expression, and non-toxicity. In the SynBio world, we call molecules like Heme recombinant proteins.
Impossible brought precision fermentation to the limelight with Heme. However, it is by no means a new technology – enzymes from precision fermentation are already involved in >80% of the world’s cheese production.
With advances in synthetic biology and biomanufacturing, the floodgates of precision fermentation are just opening. Products in market already exist with animal-free egg protein, cow-less dairy proteins, and spider-free silk proteins (what a relief).
Precision fermentation has the potential to decrease our reliance on animal- and petroleum-based products, using 19x less land, 30x less water, and producing 3x fewer emissions in the case of dairy proteins.
Lots of exciting breakthroughs in this space – more to come on other applications of this tech in future editions.
🥘 Recipe: Levain’s Walnut Chocolate Cookie
This week, make Levain’s warm chocolate chip walnut cookies at home (my mouth’s watering, too). Find the detailed recipe at the end of this post.
If you make it, please send pictures :)
📚 Book: Mission in a Bottle
Ever heard about Honest Tea’s inspiring origin story? Mission in a Bottle: The Honest Guide to Doing Business Differently- And Succeeding is an entrepreneurial tale that’s Just a tad sweet™.
Yale School of Management Professor Barry Balebuff and his student Seth Goldman couldn’t find organic, freshly brewed, and low-sugar bottled teas in market. As they source fair-trade leaves, unlock manufacturing scale, and remove billions of calories from the American diet, ‘Honest’ becomes their operative ethos over ‘Tea.’
In addition to its original story, this is a business book in an original format: a graphic novel.
It is brimming with stories of creative problem solving, personal crisis and perseverance, and approaches from which data-obsessed conglomerates should learn. If you are short on time, the epilogue itself is well-worth the read.
Some favorite passages as a teaser:
“I went to business school with the mindset of being an activist. I wanted to get more skills to lead a nonprofit. And I sometimes joke that I did lead a nonprofit for the first five years of Honest Tea. But you can really have a public agenda while pursuing a business. It’s a vehicle for change.”
On the stress of the first year: “…I cracked a tooth, went to the dentist, and he said, ‘You’re gnashing your teeth at night. Are you living with any stress?’ And I said, ‘I guess you can say that.’ He said, ‘Well, you either need to find a way to reduce your stress, or I can tell you about a mouth guard.’ I said, ‘You better tell me about the mouth guard.’”
Thank you for reading – BRB next week ✌️
🥘 Recipe: Levain’s Walnut Chocolate Cookie
Ingredients:
150g dark chocolate (60-70%)
1 cup or 80g of rough chopped walnuts
5/8ths cup or 120g of unsalted butter
5/8 cup or 140 brown sugar
1/4 cup or 60g of granulated sugar
3/4 cup or 125g cake flour
1 cup or 135g of all-purpose flour
1 egg and 1 egg yolk
1 tsp or 3g of kosher salt
1 tsp or 4g of corn starch
1/2 teaspoon or 2g of baking soda
Instructions:
Heat butter in the microwave (about 1 minute) until just melted. In a medium-sized bowl, mix together the brown sugar and granulated sugar. Stream in the butter and whisk until creamy. Set aside.
Chop the chocolate, with variations in size.
In another larger bowl, combine the cake flour and all-purpose flour. [If you do not have cake flour, take a deep breath. Mixing 100g all-purpose flour and 25g corn starch is a great substitute.] Add the kosher salt, corn starch, and baking soda. Mix thoroughly.
Add in the egg and the egg yolk, and mix thoroughly. Add in the dry mix and whisk until forming a smooth and even dough.
Add in the rough chopped walnuts and the chocolate. Mix until evenly incorporated.
Use an ice cream scoop to make cookie dough balls weighing around 180g or 6 oz. Place on a baking tray with parchment or wax paper and put in the freezer for 20 minutes.
10 minutes into the cooling, preheat oven to 425F. Bake for 10 minutes or until slightly golden brown then lower to 350F for 8 minutes. Let cool and enjoy :)
About Me
Hi there! My name is Nathan Paumier - I’m an avid reader, food enthusiast, and climate optimist. I started this newsletter after frequent questions on food tech, reading recommendations, and my secret recipes.
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