British supermarket chain Tesco was forced to recall meat-free vegan “burgers” because…wait for it…they might get a bit too hot in the middle.
Huh?
According to the British supermarket, customers were faced with a very real “burn risk’ when eating the product, even if they cook it according to the instructions on the packet. The company is urging anybody who purchased the Plant Chef “succulent & tangy’ meat-free burgers with melting middles to return the product to the store for a full refund.
The news comes after Britain’s Food Standards agency stepped up, describing the move as a “precautionary step” to keep people safe. According to an alert issued by the agency, the melting middle – which is not made of cheese, as would typically be the case with non-vegan products – reaches and maintains a high temperature after being cooked. Made out of a combination of gherkin cucumbers and mustard, the melting middle just doesn’t cool down like a regular cheese product would.
“Tesco are taking the precautionary step of recalling Tesco Plant Chef 2 Meat-Free Burgers with Melting Middle because the centre of the burgers may maintain a high temperature once cooked. This may result in a burn risk to customers,” the August 16 advisory note explains.
The product’s insanely hot center became a topic of discussion on social media in June, when Vegan Facebook users came together to discuss just how hot the middle of the burgers become after being cooked. Some users described the product as “molten lava,” while another said it was like “eating the sun.”
There’s a lesson here, isn’t there? If you want to eat vegan, it might be best to eat products that are naturally vegan. Whenever companies try to mimic non-vegan products, specifically with regard to more complicated meat products like this, they’re forced to use an enormous number of ingredients to make the texture and taste feel somewhat familiar.
Surely someone should have realized somewhere along the product development process that putting mustard in the oven would create a very, very hot substance…
