Researchers in South Korea say they’ve developed a new way to make lab-grown meat taste like the real deal. It may look like a transparent, bubble gum pink-colored disc, but scientists hope it could revolutionize the meat on people’s plates.

Scientists have created everything from cultured meatballs to 3D printed steaks. While some previous iterations of cultured beef have mimicked the look and feel of the real thing, according to a new study, they’ve overlooked a key element: taste.

But in the study, published [July 9] in the journal Nature Communications, researchers say they have cracked the code, developing a cultured meat that generates “grilled beef flavors upon cooking.”

“Flavor is the most important thing to make cultured meat be accepted as real,” Milae Lee, a co-author on the paper and a PhD student in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Seoul’s Yonsei University told CNN.

To mimic the taste of conventional meat, Lee and her colleagues recreated the flavors generated during the Maillard reaction — a chemical reaction that occurs between an amino acid and a reducing sugar when heat is added, giving a burger that delicious, charred taste.

They do this by introducing a switchable flavor compound into a gelatin-based hydrogel, to form something called a functional scaffold, which Lee described as the “basic composition of the cultured meat.”

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here