How New School Foods uses new ideas to make raw plant-based salmon
Summary
The company uses freezing technology, scaffolding and R&D to create a fish analog that not only has the look and texture of actual seafood, but also starts out looking raw, made of uncooked plant-based proteins like potatoes or peas that change as they cook.Because most other plant-based meat products are extruded a process that uses heat and pressure to transform the appearance they start out cooked, Bryson said. Its only going to be the vegan audience that wants it.New School Foods, which is emerging from stealth, just closed a $12 million seed investment round with funders including Lever VC, Hatch, Good Startup and Blue Horizon Ventures. He looked at research projects at universities, and funded six that he thought could lead to technology to do something new in the plant-based meat space.The whole idea was, why dont we do a portfolio play around R&D? Lets do this moonshot kind of stuff that lets us create a whole new production technology that can create whole cuts of meat.One of the research projects led to its patented seaweed-based scaffold that makes New School Foods products unique.Basically, Bryson said, a base gel of seaweed-derived hydrocolloids is placed on an extremely cold surface, which has been chilled to a temperature below freezing. When that scaffold is filled with plant proteins, it looks, feels, flakes and tears like a whole cut of meat, he said, demonstrating on a test piece.When were talking about whole cuts, if you dont have fibers, it might as well be tofu, he said.After creating the scaffold, New School Foods turns it into a filet.They add plant proteins to the scaffold, which can range from canola to pea and potato, and are chosen used for their appearance, nutrition and relatively neutral taste.What Bryson is also looking for are proteins that bring the product a similar look, cooking behavior, texture and nutritional profile as the actual fish.