Tuesday 18 March 2014

Easy Spherification

Right then, its been a while since my last post so I thought i'd give you this! "Caviars" are usually found in high end restaurants and the like. It's not as hard or as expensive as it might sound and you can get all the gear you need from Amazon.

Basically you add 2g Sodium Alginate to your chosen liquid, you need to whisk it alot or shove it in a blender because the powder doesn't like to be rehydrated.
Let it rest a bit so the air bubbles go.

While its resting, dissolve 2.5g Calcium Chloride in 500g water.
This is the Calcium bath that will react with the Sodium Alginate to form a membrane round the outside of the sphere while the inside stays liquid. Your bath needs to be around 5cm deep so choose your bowl with this in mind.

You will need a dropper to squeeze your juice into the Calcium bath, but i knicked a syringe from a childs medicine bottle and it does the trick.

Now you are ready to start making your spheres.

Suck some juice into your dropper/syringe and gently squeeze drops into your Calcium bath. You will need to hold your dropper about 3cm from the bath to get the best results.

Once they are in the Calcium leave them for 2-3 mins to form them menbrane.

Fish them out and rinse off in fresh water.

They will remain a liquid centre for a few hours but because of the Alginate they will eventually form a solid ball.

Not the greatest pics but you get the idea.

I used mango juice but you can use any liquid you like.