Redefined Meat, an Israeli startup specializing in alternative meat, recently unveiled what it calls the world’s first 3D-printed plant-based steak called Alt-Steak.

Using its own patent-pending 3D-printing technology, Redefine Meat has allegedly been able to create a meatless steak that features the appearance, texture, and, most importantly, the taste of the real thing.

The company was apparently to achieve all this by working with expert butchers, chefs, food technologists and Swiss flavor company Givaudan.

The revolutionary Alt-Steak is created by mixing Redefined Meat’s Alt-Muscle, Alt-Fat, and Alt-Blood plant-based formulations in several layers.

The end result is a sustainable, high-protein, cholesterol-free steak that looks, cooks and tastes like real meat.

“The importance of using precision 3D printing technology to achieve texture, color and flavor—and the combinations between them—cannot be overstated. By using separate formulations for muscle, fat and blood, we can focus on each individual aspect of creating the perfect Alt-Steak product,” Eshchar Ben-Shitrit, CEO and Co-Founder of Redefined 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,” the Redefined Meat CEO added. “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.”

Alt-Steak is described as an “extremely complicated food” where protein, fats, natural colors and flavors and more are arranged in a precise manner to make them perform like the equivalent elements in a cow’s muscle.

However, this alternative meat product comes with the advantage that it can be produced much faster than the real thing.

To promote its alternative steak, Redefined Meat recently invited Israeli chef Assaf Granit at its offices for a tasting. Granit said that the taste of Alt-Steak was “almost identical” to the original, adding that, in his opinion, eight out of ten people wouldn’t tell the difference between a real steak and an Alt-Steak.

Redefined Meat produces both the 3D printers and the edible “inks” required to “print” alternative meat products, which it aims to sell to meat distributors around the world.

The inks are made out of plant-based ingredients, proteins from legumes and grains, plant fats, and natural flavors and colors to mimic the juice and blood of an actual steak.

“It is very unique to us; we are the only ones doing this. We come very close to how the composition of meat is in nature, and our 3D printer essentially is like a very complicated robot that knows how to take each one of these ingredients and in a very accurate manner… builds a food product,” Eshchar Ben-Shitrit said.

Alternative meat is considered the future, so it’s no surprise that companies are racing to come up with the next breakthrough. In the past, we featured the now-famous Impossible Burger, as well as Nova Meat’s version of a 3D-printed steak.