BLUF: the Impossible Foods bratwurst isn’t awful, but it’s a pretty solid miss.
This is the first Impossible Foods product I’ve tried since the burger (in the forms of an Impossible Whopper and the Impossible taco salad at CHOP N FRESH). The burger is an analog of surprisingly high fidelity. The bratwurst is not, and I suspect my opinion of it suffers a bit because the burger set my expectations too high.
As you might expect, most of the bulk of the Impossible bratwurst is soy. There is also ample nutritional fortification, which is perhaps a bit more of a surprise. However, this product will find itself outside several sorts of folks’ lanes. It’s not a short ingredient list, and there is a prominent BIOENGINEERED badge.
I generally cook fresh link sausage slowly in a skillet over low-medium heat, so that’s how I prepared these. I’d guess they spent 25 minutes in the skillet, and I turned them six or seven times. (I went straight from frozen, so I’d have shaved 5 or so of those 25 minutes coming out of the fridge instead.)
I noticed two things while they were cooking. First, the smell wasn’t bad, but it seemed excessively artificial. Perhaps this is just an artifact of bratwurst spice smells that aren’t moored to actual animal flesh. Second is that after they were thawed, but before they really started cooking, they were unpleasantly mushy, and didn’t really rebound after I released them with the tongs. It was almost like squeezing toothpaste. This was a bit more offputting than the smell was.
They firmed up reasonably as they neared completion, though not to the degree that actual bratwurst would have. I had no trouble cutting them with a fork, and there was no snap as the casing was pierced, despite the package advertising such.
The most complimentary thing I can say about the taste of Impossible bratwurst is that I ate them. They were salty and mildly spicy, as actual brats are, but I’d classify the taste as more in the vein of a jerkyish sort of snack, like a Slim Jim (and not one you’d necessarily get again). The texture, while firmer than during cooking, is still spongy and isn’t close to the real thing.
Impossible bratwurst is also a) not meaningfully better for you; and b) twice as expensive as actual bratwurst. The moral/ethical vegan who has retained a taste for fatty meat and finds this product palatable is the best customer, but as I said in the Impossible burger review, that doesn’t seem like much of a Venn diagram to me.
I may thaw the other two and grill them to see if that makes them any better. If I discover anything notable, I’ll add to this post.
Not a disaster, but my view is there is no compelling case for this product.