Lab-grown meat, at its best, tastes remarkably close to the conventional meat it’s designed to replicate. The first cultivated chicken approved for sale in the U.S. was described by an Associated Press journalist as having the light, delicate flavor of a well-prepared chicken breast, with tender texture to match. But the experience varies widely depending on the product, how it’s prepared, and whether it includes enough fat to deliver the richness people expect from meat.
How Cultivated Chicken Tastes
The most detailed public tasting of lab-grown meat came when UPSIDE Foods served its cultivated chicken at a San Francisco restaurant in 2023. The AP journalist who ate it put it simply: “Tastes like chicken.” The aroma was described as enticing, comparable to any filet cooked in butter. The breast cut had a light, delicate flavor and tender texture. A darker “thigh” preparation was richer, with both tenderness and chew that matched what you’d expect from well-cooked dark meat.
Hybrid products that combine cultivated animal cells with plant-based ingredients have also performed well. One cultivated chicken product blending cell-grown meat with plant protein showed “remarkable similarities to conventional chicken in sensory attributes, including taste” in formal evaluations. The plant components help fill out the structure while the animal cells contribute the meaty flavor that purely plant-based products struggle to achieve.
How Cultivated Beef Compares
Beef has proven harder to nail. The very first lab-grown burger, unveiled in 2013, was famously described as dry and lacking in flavor. One taster said the bite felt like a conventional hamburger but the meat itself tasted “like an animal-protein cake.” That description captures the core challenge: muscle cells alone can produce something that chews like meat but falls short on the complex, savory depth that makes a burger satisfying.
The gap between that 2013 prototype and today’s products is significant, but cultivated beef still lags behind cultivated chicken in sensory quality. Chicken is naturally leaner and more uniform in texture, which makes it easier to replicate with current technology. Beef’s appeal depends heavily on marbling, juiciness, and the deep flavors that come from fat rendering during cooking.
Why Fat Is the Key Ingredient
Fat is central to how meat tastes. It carries flavor compounds, creates juiciness, and produces the rich mouthfeel that makes a steak or burger satisfying. Consumer tests with natural beef of varying fat content found that the highest taste scores went to beef containing 36% fat. That’s a high bar for cultivated meat producers, who have historically focused on growing muscle cells rather than fat cells.
Researchers at Tufts University have been working on growing fat tissue separately and incorporating it into cultivated meat products. The idea is straightforward: if you can grow animal fat and blend it with muscle tissue in the right proportions, you can replicate the richness and flavor profile of conventional meat more closely. Without that fat component, cultivated meat tends to taste lean and somewhat flat, which explains the “animal-protein cake” critique of early products.
How Texture Is Built
Getting the right chew and bite is just as important as flavor. Pure muscle cells grown in a flat layer don’t have the fibrous structure of animal muscle that’s been used throughout an animal’s life. To solve this, producers use edible scaffolds, essentially frameworks that give cells something to grow on in three dimensions.
One approach uses textured soy protein as a scaffold for bovine muscle cells. The porous structure of the soy allows cells to attach and multiply, creating a 3D tissue that mimics the layered quality of real meat. When volunteers tasted a product made this way, they noted its meaty flavor and said it replicated the sensation and texture of a real meat bite. The scaffold itself contributes some texture and nutritional value, so the final product is a blend of animal cells and plant material rather than pure meat.
Other scaffolding materials include proteins derived from wheat gluten, mushroom fibers, and even algae-based gels. Each one affects the final texture differently. The scaffold choice is part of why two cultivated meat products from different companies can feel quite different in your mouth, even if both are technically “lab-grown chicken.”
What Shapes the Final Flavor
Several factors determine whether a particular piece of cultivated meat tastes convincing. The species matters: chicken and fish are generally easier to replicate than beef or pork. The ratio of fat to muscle cells makes a major difference in richness. The growth medium the cells are fed during production can leave subtle flavor notes. And cooking method matters enormously, just as it does with conventional meat. The cultivated chicken that earned praise was prepared by a professionally trained chef using butter, sauces, and careful technique.
Seasoning and preparation can mask gaps in flavor that the meat itself doesn’t fully deliver. A cultivated chicken breast served plain with salt would be a harder test than one cooked in butter with a mushroom demi-glace. That’s not cheating, exactly. Conventional chicken is also improved dramatically by good cooking. But it does mean that early taste reports reflect best-case scenarios rather than everyday home cooking results.
The honest summary: today’s best cultivated chicken is genuinely close to conventional chicken in taste, texture, and aroma. Cultivated beef is improving but still struggles with richness and complexity. And the gap between a prototype and a product you’d find convincing on your dinner plate comes down largely to fat, the one ingredient that remains hardest to grow in a lab.