Today I decided to play with some chemicals I ordered to try to spherify V-8. It’s the molecular gastronomy thing where you mix a liquid with sodium alginate, then drip it into an aqueous solution of calcium chloride to get the juice-alginate mixture to gel, forming a skin around a liquid center.
My first attempt did not produce the results I was shooting for.
First off, my kitchen scale, a lovely little device that measures with a precision of 1/8 ounce or 1 gram, is not great for measuring tenths of grams. Who knew that I’d miss Mettler balances (and weighing boats)?
Second of all, V-8, it turns out, is acidic enough that blending it with the sodium alginate thickens the vegetable juice up pretty quickly. This makes it hard to get the mixture into your syringe, and even harder to control its escape from the syringe into the calcium chloride solution.
So instead of ending up with nice, spherical V-8 “caviar,” I produced a mess of V-8 “vermicelli”:
Actually, once I gave up on spheres, making the vermicelli was kind of fun. It was almost like making funnel cakes without the hazards of the hot oil.
After rinsing the V-8 vermicelli in water, I chilled them for awhile. Then, I tossed them with some spaghetti (whole wheat), shredded lettuce, chopped cucumber, finely sliced scallions, capers, marinated mushrooms, olive oil, and grated Asiago cheese. (Toasted pine nuts were offered separately to sprinkle on top, as one sprog digs them and the other is more ambivalent.)
The spaghetti and “vermicelli” salad was judged a success. But next time, I’m going to be adding some sodium citrate to the V-8 to raise the pH and see if I can make some spheres.
V8ermicell salad, that sounds like a wonderful idea. I’ll have to try that out myself sometime.
Could you divulge your approximate recipe and source for food-grade chemicals?
Wouldn’t sodium citrate lower the pH?
I ordered my food-grade chemicals from L’Epicerie, but there seem to be plenty of online merchants who carry them.
For the V-8 vermicelli, I used approximately 0.75 g of sodium alginate to a little can (5.5 ounces) of V-8. This measure was *very* approximate (owing to the precision of my kitchen scale). The calcium chloride solution was about 2 g (again *very* approximate) CaCl2 in 250 mL water.
You’d think adding sodium citrate might lower the pH. But, citric acid is a triprotic weak acid that can be used to set up a buffer. (More on that here.)
Ha, I just had a similar failure with a non-spherical mojito. If I ever get it to work properly I’m going to try a bellini with peach “caviar” but I’m probably the only one who thinks that’s funny.
Woo hoo!
I have always wanted an excuse to order a decent scale for the kitchen. Now I have one, and the chemicals on the way! We already have ideas for dessert sushi and lots of other stuff.
Thanks for the inspiration!
Next is a lab of arcing bolts of electricity, knobs lining the walls, and ETD hobbling about with a loosely fitted fake hump* on her back cackling and intoning, “Yes master.” (It’s always “Yes master” regardless of the mad scientist’s actual gender.
Next? Next you bring the vermicelli to life! (Like who can tell the difference between the spaghetti and the worm?)
*”What hump?”
1. Dear Alan, As any Terry Pratchett fan can tell you, the proper pronunciation is, “Yeth Mathter”.
2. I’ve longed to mess about some of the molecular gastronomy stuff, but totally lack the skills. Janet, I’ll drive down and be your kitchen monkey if you want to try some more experiments.