Habanero Honey Caviar

We watch a number of different cooking shows, which leads me into all sorts of mischief.  Like making my own cheese.  Or grinding my own sausage.

We watched a series of Master Chef UK challenges recently, and I saw one of the contestants make a caviar out of a juice.  Call me intrigued!

So I did a little bit of research on molecular gastronomy {semi-fancy words that mean science in the kitchen to me} and purchased a starter kit from Amazon.  After all, I figured, "How hard could it be?"



Honey Caviar 

Ingredients:

• 110 g (3.9 oz) habanero (or regular) honey
• 90 g (3.2 oz) water (filtered water or with low calcium content)
• 1.6 g sodium alginate (0.8%)
  
• 500 g (18 oz) water
• 2.5 g calcium chloride

Directions:

Prepare the honey mix for the caviar. Mix the sodium alginate in the 90 grams of water using an immersion blender until the sodium alginate is completely dissolved. If this is your first time doing this, be aware that this will take longer than expected.

Mix the sodium alginate and water with the honey using the immersion blender. Let the mix rest in the fridge for 12 hours to eliminate the air bubbles created by the immersion blender.

Once the mix has no air bubbles remove it from the fridge until it reaches room temperature - this will help make the mixture easier to drop into the calcium bath.

Prepare the calcium bath in a bowl by dissolving the calcium chloride in the water.

Fill a syringe with the honey-alginate mixture and expel it drop by drop into the calcium bath. The syringe needs to be high enough (about 6 inches from the bath surface) for the drops to sink and to prevent the formation of a tail.  {I found the mixture to be very thick and used a knife to cut the drops.}

They come out like this!

Leave the caviar "cooking" for about 1 minute in the calcium bath and then carefully remove it using a sieve. Then rinse it very gently with water to remove the calcium.

Consume immediately since the jellification process continues even after removing the caviar from the calcium bath and will eventually convert into a solid gel sphere with no magical liquid inside.

This was a really fun experiment!  I served it with a spiced almond ice cream and it was fantastic!  The preparation was not that difficult {once I had made a few anyway} and I really liked the way it looked when finished.

Do you do science experiments in your kitchen?

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