What's inside the Byron Bay Burger?
It’s important for you to know
Many people worry that plant-based meat products are overly processed and artificial and thus should be avoided.
Obviously burgers don’t grow on trees (now wouldn’t be a popular tree though!) so clearly we do need to some work to turn the raw plant ingredients into a burger that looks and tastes like a meaty “traditional” burger. However, the processing involved isn’t so complicated and isn’t any more involved than many products you will find in your local supermarket, such as breakfast cereals and packaged cakes (have you ever looked at the list of ingredients of a supermarket cake?).
So while we took a long time and experimentation to create something as delicious as the Byron Bay Burger – if you were to visit our kitchen in Byron Bay, you’d see that to produce your delicious burgers, we’re actually using the same type of equipment that you might use in your own kitchen – just on a bigger scale!
What’s more, the Byron Bay Burger doesn’t contain any artificial colours, flavours or preservatives – but we want to be completely open about what we put into our burgers, and why it’s there. So we’ve listed all the key ingredients below so you can see exactly what you’re eating.
But why do they taste so good, we hear you ask! Well, that bit is a secret 😉
Textured Soy Protein
Textured Soy Protein is made from soy beans and contains a high quantity of protein (as the name suggests!). We use it in the Byron Bay burgers to add both texture and nutrition to the burgers. The protein is “textured” by being forced through a very small nozzle at high pressure. Funnily enough, this is exactly the same way that many popular breakfast cereals are made!
Sunflower Oil
Oil is used to help bind the burger and also provides sizzle and mouth feel. Without our oils, our burgers would be very dry and tasteless!
Coconut Oil
As well as Sunflower oil, we also include some coconut oil. This melts when you cook the burger and what you see sizzling in the pan is the coconut oil. It adds juiciness and flavour!
Yeast Extract
Yeast really is amazing! As well as rising our bread and fermenting our wine and beer, yeast also creates lots of “aromatic” ingredients as it ferments – we use these to add flavour and depth to our burgers. Just think of Vegemite if you want to think of a concentrated yeast extract flavour! We use a combination of smoked and unsmoked yeast extracts to create a satisfying meaty flavour.
Vinegar Powder
Vinegar Powder (sodium diacetate) is the same thing that you’ll find on your salt and vinegar crisps! It’s actually made by heating vinegar with sodium bicarbonate (yes you can do this at home but we don’t recommend it) and we use it to help “regulate acidity” which keeps the pH down and makes it less friendly to nasty bugs – and taste great!
Stabiliser
In “food-speak” a stabiliser is something that helps a product retain its characteristics – to be fair it’s a bit of a catch-all term for thickeners, gels and similar ingredients, sometimes stuff that manufacturers don’t want you to know about. The stabiliser in the Byron Bay Burger is a type of cellulose made from plant cells – and it helps the burger bind together when you cook it!
Pea Protein
Pea protein is made by extracting protein from yellow peas. We use it to help boost the protein content of our burgers. Pea protein is a high-quality protein and a great source of iron and is also hypoallergenic.
Soy Lecithin
Lecithin is a natural emulsifier that helps oil and water combine and we use it to make sure everything stays together when you cook and take a big bite of your juicy Byron Bay Burger! Emulsifiers are used a lot in cooking – If you’ve ever made traditional mayonnaise with eggs, you’ll know that the egg yolks are needed to help make the oil and vinegar stay in a stable “emulsion”. No surprise that egg yolks contain lecithin! Obviously our lecithin is 100% plant derived.
Natural Flavouring
As well as the yeast extract we add some more natural flavours to give your Byron Bay Burger that irresistible flavour that you know you crave!
Salt
We add a pinch of salt to each burger to make sure that it is perfectly seasoned!
Fermented Sugar
YEs, those amazing yeast cells have been busy again! This time they’ve been fermenting sugars which adds flavour and adds some acidity to keep your burgers in perfect condition.
Beetroot powder
We use a pure dehydrated beetroot juice to give your burgers an appetising pinky glow! We wish you could see this stuff – it’s like beautiful pink sparkly glitter!!
Nutritional Info | ||
| Per Serving | Per 100g | |
| Energy | 1124.1kJ | 899.3 kJ |
| Protein | 14.1 g | 11.3g |
| Fat, Total | 19.1g | 15.3g |
| Saturated | 7.3g | 5.8g |
| Carbohydrate | 11.5g | 9.2g |
| Sugars | 2.3g | 1.9g |
| Sodium | 470.6mg | 376.4mg |
| Fibre | 1.5 g | 1.2g |