Moving Mountains: 'Bleeding' vegan burger team make a meat-free hot dog - but does it cut the mustard?

Frankenstein frankfurter: Samuel Fishwick isn't wowed by the meat-free hot dog
Matt Writtle

Why would anyone want to bring another hot dog into the world? For Simeon Van der Molen, the answer was simple: to save the planet. His UK-based food tech company, Moving Mountains, has plated up what he claims is the world’s first “plant-based” hot dog, which appears — and tastes — just like its pork equivalent.

This is obviously a good look. Moving Mountains has enjoyed runaway success in the past year with a vegan burger that “bleeds” beetroot juice — a rare, fairly convincing impersonation of a beef burger that sells in 2,000 locations across the country. And it’s well-intentioned: meat and dairy have an outsized ecological impact, with livestock accounting for around 14.5 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases each year. Besides, it’s meeting a growing need from the UK’s estimated 22 million “flexitarians”, who are trying to reduce their meat consumption.

Looks aren’t everything, though. At a not-for-profit vegan restaurant in Hoxton Square, opposite a gleefully full-blooded burger diner called Meat Mission, I get my hands on the new £12 dog. It underwhelms.

Certainly, it looks terrific, truly a glorious fleshy pink. It’s also slathered with vegan-friendly mustard and ketchup, like putting lipstick on a pig substitute — but whoever said it tastes exactly like a traditional hot dog is telling porkies.

The chief ingredients are sunflower seeds, onion, carrots, paprika and coconut oil, which is “a medium-chain triglyceride”, as Van der Molen points out, adding that it’s “very good for you, as opposed to long-chain fatty acids, which you get in meat”.

Which is all very nice. But, much as I love the planet and am committed to keeping it in good nick, I have a soft spot for a greasy indulgence. I work hard(ish) and sometimes I deserve to pig out. You do, too. For aspiring flexitarians there are other slobbish substitutes that don’t cost the Earth. Leon’s soya-beetroot Love burger is a decadent masterpiece of haute trash, tasting far saltier and sloppier than the ingredients suggest; Dishoom’s jackfruit biryani, among other jackfruit wonders, is a creative update on a classic that exceeds the alternatives.

Pigging out: The meat-free Moving Mountains hot dog

The hot dog from Moving Mountains, by contrast, is admirable but at best a work in progress. Pre-cooked, marinated in a smokehouse like a traditional frankfurter, and shaped, it takes just 10 to 15 minutes to boil in a pot for the layperson cook. Admittedly it’s not a world away from the feel of a frankfurter — but who loves hot dogs for their texture?

Essentially, I’m not wowed by the flavour. I can’t pick out the smokiness, it is a mouthful of meh. Conscious that it is a Frankenstein frankfurter pulped from the aforementioned good stuff, that’s what my brain picks out. Van der Molen sportingly challenges me to a future taste test. On the strength of this version, you would have to get me up very early in the morning – before my tastebuds have woken up – and I might tell you, under duress, that I couldn’t taste the difference, but frankly it’s like Soylent in a bun.

Many disagree with me. Van der Molen says his inbox is cluttered with emails whose sentiments could pass for the titles of country ballads — “I’ve waited so long for this” and “after all this time, at last”. He’s poured millions of pounds into research and development, having formerly founded Ecozone, which manufactures environmentally friendly detergents.

So why not try forging brave, new recipes? “Since birth, we’ve been conditioned to associate certain shapes with types of food — a ring-shaped doughnut, you know immediately what that is; you see an apple, you know it’s an apple,” he says.

“If we started making hot dogs in the shape of frisbees we’d be reinventing the category but we wouldn’t sell many. But also we believe that food is to be enjoyed. When you have a hot dog it’s about that indulgence in food. If you’re going to pay good money, you want to enjoy it.”

Which is all great, and may save the planet. But I won’t savour it.

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