The process Ecovative uses to create its products seems to take inspiration from science-fiction. Workers covered in PPE gear, like plastic shoe covers, white trench coats and hairnets manipulate the growth of mycelium in cultivation farms.
Shelves stacked to the ceiling are filled with spongy-white mycelium.
The facilities look like a meat-packing plant but are as clean as an operating room.
The company in Green Island creates products like leather, packaging, and bacon from mycelium – the root structure created by mushrooms.
The funding will be used to expand its spin-off company MyForest. The spin-off company focuses on creating mycelium-based meat alternatives such as bacon.
The funding consists of a $1 million dollar loan and $680,000 in Sustainable Technology and Green Energy grant funding. The STAGE program invests in for-profit businesses that produce goods or services that benefit the environment, conserve natural resources or reduce greenhouse emissions.
That money is projected to create 160 local jobs over the next five years.
Giving a tour of the company’s Albany County facilities, CEO Eben Bayer says its farms can grow between 15,000 to 20,000 pounds of mycelium per week.
“This is the oyster mushroom mycelium, it’s got this texture we talk about, having a meat-like texture. This is exactly what we are talking about. This is what gets translated into bacon,” he said.
The fluffy white substance is created by mushrooms as they grow. By controlling environmental factors like mist and wind conditions at its indoor cultivation farms, the company is able to influence the shape the mycelium forms.
After the mycelium is grown, it is pounded down with a machine into large pillow-like sheets until it has the density of a pork belly. Then, it is sent to another machine that slices the mycelium sheets into bacon-sized strips.
Bayer says the process is unique.
“This is what really makes it special compared to all other plant-based meats and fermentation processes, they typically occur in liquid tanks and you get a powder at the end. You take that powder and you squish it back together that’s like soy powder, whey powder or fermented powders. Here we have actually grown a structure which is what nature does so nicely, whether you’re growing a pig or a cow or a mycelium steak. And ultimately this structure translates all the way down to how your uptake your marinade, your salt, your sugar and the mouthfeel,” Bayer said.
Adam Heinze is Director of Operations of MyForest Foods. He says four additional ingredients are added to the mycelium strips: sugar, salt, coconut oil and natural flavoring.
“The coconut oil is to sort of to make sure that it sizzles and you think it’s bacon; the natural flavor is so that when you smell it you think it’s bacon and the salt and the sugar, well who has had a good recipe without salt and sugar? So, I can’t help you if you can’t figure that one out,” he said.
Heinze says after he receives the mycelium strips from the farm, he has about four hours to create the finished product. He sorts through the strips, adds flavor and then cooks them in a pizza oven to reduce moisture.
“One of the only problems with our product is that consumers cook it exactly like they cook bacon. I’ve told them it’s bacon, it looks like bacon, it smells like bacon, it tastes like bacon, then why wouldn’t it cook like bacon? If I get it to them too wet then it takes longer to cook,” he said.
After cooking the strips in an oven, Heinze packages the bacon, checks for impurities with an x-ray machine, blast-chills the packages and then sends them to distributors.
Heinze said he can make about $15,000 worth of material on a good day.
“The list of items is very small and they’re very easy to see and I find it to be an amazing process,” he said.
The facility also has an executive chef – Nick Ruscitto. He helps create recipes for the bacon and other food-based products that MyForest is developing.
“So, I did a classic BLT to show off our bacon product, a little snack, rosemary cracker with brie and marmalade with bacon, a pancake with pineapple maple syrup and bacon,” he said.
It was good.
Every week Ruscitto cooks five batches of bacon for employees to sample and review.
“Cooks in like 6 minutes, you have to flip it a lot and then you get the texture of bacon where it has some pull from the mycelium fibers but it’s also crispy. I’ve tried all other products out there and this one most closely resembles pork bacon,” he said.
MyForest Foods has so far focused on bacon as its only mycelium-based food product, but CFO Stephen Lomnes says the company is looking to offer more products.
“Think pulled-pork sandwiches, or pulled pork over a bed of rice. Really meaty whole meal opportunities. So, this would be a pulled pork alternative that works in a wide-variety of applications that you might have at home,” he said.
Lomnes says the company plans to introduce its new products to retail locations this year.
