The juicy burger made juicier with bits of mushroom.
All right we're gonna flip this one over.
Rob Morasco heads product development at food service company Sodexo.
Normally when you cook a burger on a griddle, you'll see a whole lot of juice come out of it and flow around it, but this one as you can see not a lot of that happening,because the juice is staying in,because the mushrooms are pulling all that juice back in from the meat.
These patties are three-quarters beef, one-quarter mushroom, but not just juicier they're also lower in calories, fat and salt than a regular burger.
But Marasco says what really matters is the taste.
When you bite into it, it's kind of like a flavor explosion.They don't taste mushrooms either.
The mushrooms happen to add another benefit.
They also make the burger more planet-friendly,says Richard Waite at the World Resources Institute.
Beef is the most resource intensive food that we commonly eat. It accounts for about half of the land use and greenhouse gas emissions associated with the American diets.
Americans eat 10 billion burgers each year.
If all of them were blended with mushrooms,the greenhouse gas savings would be like taking 2 million cars off the road.
While burgers made from plants are becoming more popular,blended burgers can appeal to carnivores.
This is potentially a dish that could have broad mainstream appeal and also pretty big environmental benefits.So it's interesting to see food service companies and restaurants starting to pick this up.
About 400 school cafeterias, universities and hospitals are preparing more than just burgers with Sodexo's blended beef Morasco says.
With onion,chili,meatballs,meatloaf,all those different things you can make with that product, just like you would make with regular ground beef.
Sonic Drive-in is the first major fast-food chain to sell blended burgers.
A two-month trial is underway to find out whether customers think this lower impact burger is as good as its fans do.
Steve Baragona VOA news Washington