A great intro to fluid gels

Just to take a quick break from my reports from the Fat Duck lunch, here is a post about fluid gels. Fluid gels (at least to me) is one of the culinary elements that defines or at least exemplifies modernist cuisine.

Some people will tell you that modernist cuisine is just a silly toy and is only about making food look or taste like something it isn't. My view is that modernist cuisine is about re-thinking traditional approaches using science in order to optimise cooking, for instance in sauces. Many traditional sauces are thickened with flour or other starches. This, of course, works, but the problem is that you need to add so much of the thickening agent that it clouds up the colour and dilutes the taste. Also, the result may not always have the silky smooth texture that you may want.

Modernist cuisine defines other ways of doing the same thing, but with new ways of thickening. And these new thickening agents are used in such low volumes that they do not interfere with colour or flavour. One of these new techniques is to make a fluid gel.

To make a fluid gel, you first make a gel, and then you blend it to get the pure or thickish sauce that you want. New gelling agents like Agar Agar and Gellan F allow you to make gels and subsequently fluid gels that do not melt when heated.

Here is a great introduction to the technique from the great people at ChefSteps:

http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/beet-fluid-gel

And while you are in there, have a look at the other stuff they do. It is a good site for learning new techniques in cooking.