Spherification

Spherification is a culinary process that employs sodium alginate and either calcium chloride or calcium gluconate lactate to shape a liquid into squishy spheres which visually and texturally resemble roe. The technique was documented by Unilever in the 1950s and brought to the modernist cuisine by the creative team at El Bulli under the direction of chefs Ferran Adrià and Albert Adrià.

]] Spherification is a culinary process that employs sodium alginate and either calcium chloride or calcium gluconate lactate to shape a liquid into squishy spheres which visually and texturally resemble roe. The technique was documented by Unilever in the 1950s and brought to the modernist cuisine by the creative team at El Bulli under the direction of chefs Ferran Adrià and Albert Adrià.

Reverse spherification

Reverse spherification, for use with substances that contain calcium (e.g. milk) or have high acid/alcohol content, requires dripping the substance (containing calcium lactate or calcium lactate gluconate) into a bath of alginate and distilled water. A more recent technique is frozen reverse spherification, which involves pre-freezing spheres containing calcium lactate gluconate and then submerging them in the sodium alginate bath. Basic and reverse spherification methods give much the same result: a sphere of liquid held by a thin gel membrane, texturally similar to roe. However, with the basic method the membrane will continue to thicken until eventually the whole ball is jelly, and so should be used immediately. The reverse spherification method gives far more stable results and can be stored for many hours.

References

Young, Chris (2013). "The Science of Spherification". ChefSteps.com

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1358750793 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.