TEL AVIV, ISRAEL — Israeli startup Redefine Meat is unveiling its first Alt-Steak plant-based products, created using the company’s patent-pending 3D food printing technology.

Set to test in select high-end restaurants later this year, the Alt-Steak products have the “texture, flavor and appearance of beef steak and can be produced in the volume and cost to enable large-scale market launch,” Redefine Meat said.

"Since day one of the company, we have been working on creating a tasty and affordable plant-based alternative to steaks, one of the most cherished food products and the driver of the entire meat industry," said Eshchar Ben-Shitrit, chief executive officer and co-founder of Redefine Meat. "To enable mass adoption, we knew that creating an alternative meat product that was both high in quality and nutritional composition would require new technologies and production processes never seen before in the food industry. Today's announcement marks the start of a new era in alternative meat — the Alt-Steak era — driven by production processes that will accelerate the development of a wide range of alt-meat whole-muscle products and create a sustainable alternative to raising and eating animals.

In collaboration with butchers, chefs, food technologists and flavor manufacturer Givaudan, Redefine Meat digitally mapped more than 70 sensorial parameters into its Alt-Steak offerings, including premium beef cuts’ texture, juiciness, fat distribution and mouthfeel. The company’s industrial-scale 3D food printers create the Alt-Steak products layer by layer using Redefine Meat’s Alt-Muscle, Alt-Fat and Alt-Blood plant-based formulation.

"The importance of using precision 3D printing technology to achieve texture, color and flavor — and the combinations between them — cannot be overstated,” Mr. Ben-Shitrit said. “By using separate formulations for muscle, fat and blood, we can focus on each individual aspect of creating the perfect Alt-Steak product. This is unique to our 3D printing technology and lets us achieve unprecedented control of what happens inside the matrix of alt-meat. Collaborating with an industry leader like Givaudan has led to the creation of an Alt-Steak product that is not only healthy and sustainable, but also offers the satisfying flavors, textures and aromas of eating actual meat."

Following testing at restaurants this year, Redefine Meat plans to incorporate feedback from chefs and butchers before ramping up production ahead of market distribution in 2021.