(lively music) - Anything that exists that's animal-based, whether it's dairy or protein, it's got a new plant-based counterpart.

We don't think that meat needs to exclusively come from animals.

In fact, we think vegetable or plant-based meat is excellent.

(bright music) I am Chef Tommy McDonald, I'm our corporate chef here at Field Roast.

- [Katie] And what exactly is your product?

And what is Field Roast?

- Field Roast is vegan grain meat.

So we call it vegan charcuterie, but what we're most famous for are our sausages and our cheese.

- Why plant-based meat?

I mean, what problem is this solving exactly?

- Everybody knows that to feed the animals that become our food, we first have to grow the food to feed the animals to then feed us.

And that takes a lot of resources.

So I think what we do is we kind of cut out the middleman.

- [Katie] The middle cow?

- [Tommy] The middle cow, or pig, or chicken.

You know, for every pound of beef that isn't sold or for every pound of Field Roast that is, that's a plant-based pound of meat that made it to the store shelves and onto your plate and a pound of beef that didn't.

- [Ray] Some forms of protein production are very, very efficient, and some produce a lot of carbon.

The majority of beef produced in the US are fed a combination of grasses and grains.

The farmer is basically cutting hay, someone's growing grain, then you've got a tractor that's using fuel.

They get fed, the process of eating, if it's beef, they are burping and farting, and that gives off a lot of methane.

Somewhere between five and 10 kilograms of carbon would be released in the production of a hamburger.

(light classical music) (food sizzling) - No animals were harmed in the making of this sausage.

This is very good.

(lively music) All right, you want to show me how the plant-based sausage is made?

- Sure.

This is where everything starts.

This is what we call the mix room.

We say what we do is a blend of European and Asian heritage, so what we've done is we've taken techniques from two different cultures.

So ancient China has this idea that you can make meat out of wheat.

So if you imagine a ball of dough, flour and water, and you take that dough and you put it in a tub of water and you work the dough, you're gonna have a dough that's 90% pure protein.

You steam that, and that's your meat.

So we've basically taken that idea and we've combined it with the traditional practice of making charcuterie, which is our European heritage.

- That's a lot of sausage.

Never seen this much sausage in my life.

Outside of gym.

- Fusing these two traditional techniques, we've come up with something that's completely, it's cutting edge while being a recreation or a fusion of things that have existed for a really long time.

- So it's futuristic, artisanal plant-based meat.

So why replicate meat?

I mean, why are people so attached to this idea that your plant-based item needs to look like an animal-based item?

- The experience of eating food is a huge part of our culture.

These are forms and recipes that are rooted in tradition.

They've been made over and over and over and over for generations, and we can't just throw our culture away.

Some of the forms that we use aren't exclusive to any one protein.

Like a sausage.

You can make it from all kinds of different things, and now we make vegetable sausage as just another type.

There was no cow that was ever born in the shape of a hamburger, you know?

It had to go through a process to get there.

- A painful one.

(Tommy laughs) I'm gonna just start a restaurant.

- It's gonna be called Salt.

- Yeah.

- It's gonna be called High Blood Pressure, your restaurant.

(electronic music) - [Announcer] This program is made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.