This Is Officially The World's Biggest Vegan Burger
This past week, the Guinness World Records recognized the largest vegan burger. As seen on the official Guiness website, the burger in question — which was made by the Belfast-based company Finnebrogue Artisan — weighed 162.5 kilograms or 358 pounds and 8 ounces.
In a video recorded and posted to YouTube by Finnebrogue, the Guinness World Record adjudicator explained that for the burger to qualify it must have at least one vegan patty, a bun that can contain the whole patty, one condiment, and one vegetable. The last two were left to the whims of the burger makers.
While that weight is impressive, the amount of food that went into it might just be even more striking. The Irish News reports that the patty was made with the equivalent of 1,274 of the company's Naked Evolution Patties, 10 kilograms of tomatoes, 4.5 kilos of lettuce, 7 kilos of cheese, 5 kilos of gherkins, 5 kilos of Naked "without the oink" rashers — which is their bacon substitute – 2 kilos of tobacco onions, and a further 5 kilos of Naked burger sauce.
Before you get worried: None of that weight went to waste, thankfully, because what was left of the burger was given to the local homeless community ... after the staff took a couple of bites, of course. There was plenty to go around.
A massive launch
The record winning burger seems to be a way for the newest vegan burger to win headlines from its more established competitors. While Finnebrogue Artisan has been pushing for nitrite-free bacon for years, their plant-based Naked Evolution Burger was only launched in September of this year.
In the press release for the burger's launch, the company was quite explicit about how directly they'll compete with the better known Beyond Burger: "Finnebrogue say plant-based food should be no more expensive than the meat it is replacing, and without any compromise on quality, flavour or nutrition."
A newly launched burger will struggle against the established market players. So, some kind of headline grabber will have to occur. Cue the world record. However, to pass of the heaviest vegan burger as merely a marketing stunt would be to discount the actual effort that went into making the burger. "The team included representatives from NPD, marketing and engineering; and together we designed and built everything, including a swing to aid turning the patty during cooking," Sean Kearney, Finnebrogue's Innovation Process Manager, told The Irish Post. "That was perhaps the most challenging part of the record as we didn't want to break the patty." Moreover, they only had to beat 100 kilograms. The extra 62.5 came from enthusiastic additions.