Fluid Gel Intro

Getting Started With Fluid Gels

Tackling Fluid Gels: What You Need to Know

Whether this is your first or your hundredth time making a fluid gel, you’ll be amazed by the flavorful punch this recipe packs. The finished product is deep burgundy in color and loaded with authentic earthy beet flavor. Xanthan gum thickens the gel, while low-acyl gellan gum creates a smooth, shiny product that holds together well and coats your tongue with flavor when eaten. We developed this recipe particularly for our [link /activities/blini Blini], but it’s extremely versatile. It works great as a spread, and you can easily pipe it into beautiful designs on a plate.

When we started working on our Blini recipe, we knew we wanted some beet component to complement the other toppings (crème fraîche and caviar). We played with a few different textures and flavor profiles, including a beet marmalade, before we finally landed on this fluid gel. Its extremely smooth texture and beautiful, bright appearance make it a perfect middle layer to transition from the tan blini to the white crème fraîche. 

Try this recipe with other woody root vegetables, like carrots, parsnips, or kohlrabi.

Beet Fluid Gel

Traditionally made by adding onion purée to béchamel, soubise is a creamy, heavy sauce that tastes stellar alongside meat, poultry, fish, and eggs. In 2005, inspired to create a lighter version of the classic Escoffier preparation, Heston Blumenthal developed an innovative onion-and-thyme fluid gel at his restaurant, the [link http://www.thefatduck.co.uk Fat Duck]. Blumenthal used the gel in a two-course creation called the Best End of Lamb, which also involved ice-filtered lamb jelly, braised lamb tongue, cucumber salad, and hotpot with sweetbread and oyster. Bursting with flavor, the gel showed off the pure intensity of its ingredients, making it a perfect component of the knockout dish. 

This inspired us, in turn, to come up with an onion gel that could be served cold rather than hot in a refreshing [link /activities/endive-salad Endive Salad] featuring slices of pork belly. The Fat Duck recipe calls for butter, but we found that it had a tendency to set when chilled, giving the gel a lumpy texture. So we left the butter out, and suddenly, we had a fluid gel that held up beautifully on a cold plate and gave the salad a delicious smack of unadulterated onion flavor. 

A final note: We found the flavors in the Endive Salad worked better without fresh thyme. If you want a sense of the Fat Duck’s version, go ahead and add it back in.

Soubise Fluid Gel

When developing this recipe, we were determined to retain the fresh, sunny quality of just-squeezed orange juice. But we also wanted to make a fluid gel using [link /ingredients/low-acyl-gellan low-acyl gellan], which would help us achieve the thin, brittle texture and fantastic flavor release we were after. To yield a smooth gel, the gellan needs to be hydrated to [c 95], but heating the orange juice along with it would muddle that unadulterated citric goodness. To get around this, we add the orange juice after hydrating the gellan in water, thus preserving its perfect flavor.

When you begin to create your own fluid gels, think about the flavors you are working with. As a general rule, if you are using products that have already been heat-treated—such as dairy—you can go ahead and heat them along with the gellan. But when you’re making a gel with fresh ingredients like fruit juice, you want to avoid heat and add the liquid after hydration. Plan accordingly, and be sure to [link /gallery?generator=Community&published_status=published&difficulty=any&sort=newest&premium=everything post your creations]. 

Meanwhile, try this fluid gel in our [link /activities/orange-creamsicle Orange Creamsicle], a deconstructed riff on the classic summertime pop.

Fresh Orange Fluid Gel

We developed this fluid gel for our [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/butternut-buttermilk-parfait Butternut Parfait], but the creamy-yet-acidic, smooth gel would work well in all sorts of dishes—use it to lend cooling contrast to gamey meat dishes such as lamb spiced with cumin and coriander, for instance.

This recipes calls for [link https://www.chefsteps.com/ingredients/sodium-citrate sodium citrate] and [link https://www.chefsteps.com/ingredients/sodium-hexametaphosphate sodium hexametaphosphate]—ingredients known in the commercial food industry as melting salts. You can thank melting salts for the creamy, clingy way in which Velveeta sticks to macaroni. 

Due to its low fat and high protein content, buttermilk can curdle when heated to near boiling. If we heated it without these salts, it would be impossible to then blend the curdled milk to a smooth consistency. The result: a gritty mouthfeel. The salts work by swapping sodium ions for calcium ions bound to the casein proteins in the buttermilk. In doing so, they loosen these proteins and make them water-soluble. In combination with heating and blending, we get a smooth buttermilk that makes for a tasty, delightfully textured gel. 

After experimenting with different buttermilks, we found our favorite results using 1% milkfat. You can use more fatty versions, but they will alter the texture of the fluid gel. Go ahead and experiment—and tell us about your results in the comments.

Buttermilk Fluid Gel

Coconut Cream Fluid Gel

Fluid Gel Recipes

Parfaits are the edible epitome of why we love fluid gels. You can layer liquids that stay separate until your guests start to dig in—so you have both a stunning presentation and a transfixing dish that offers a new experience with each bite. Win-win. 

This festively hued deconstructed-pesto parfait is vegetarian, but eaters of all stripes will delight in its playful textures and complementary and contrasting flavors, including firm chunks of [link /activities/cured-lemon-peel Cured Lemon Peel] and smooth [link /activities/butternut-squash-puree Butternut Squash Purée]. We make a foam out of our [link /activities/buttermilk-fluid-gel Buttermilk Fluid Gel]—because the foam is made from a gel, the composed dish will hold its form for up to 30 minutes. That means that despite its delicate appearance, this is a great pick for when you need to prep a bit in advance. Beauty, amazing flavors, and convenience? This may just become our signature party dish.

Butternut Parfait

Ever wonder why the belgian endive is white? The plant—a variety of chicory—is traditionally grown using a two-step process. First, gardeners plant the endives outdoors to develop their hearty roots. Before the first frost, the endives get transferred to a dark, indoor environment where they sprout pretty little pale heads without the greening benefits of the sun. (Fellow vampire vegetable white asparagus has a similarly shadowy upbringing.) 

Endive has a high-end reputation because it used to be shipped to the United States from Europe and was thus expensive and hard to come by. Today, domestic-grown plants stock the shelf at supermarkets year-round. The sturdy, bitter leaves make a great salad base. Here, we combine them with skinny slices of [link /activities/braised-pork-belly Fat Duck–Inspired Ultimate Pork Belly] and dress them with [link /activities/soubise-fluid-gel Soubise Fluid Gel]. The gel adheres winningly to the leaves, creating a great coat that reminds us of the best caesar salads. Serve this one al fresco at the height of summer or indoors on a dark winter’s day, when you’re feeling about as blanched and sun-deprived as an endive.

Endive Salad

We’re often inspired by the frozen treats we grew up ordering from a truck—Drumstick cones, soft serve, and of course, orange Creamsicles. Creamy, yet bursting with bright citrus flavor, this idiosyncratic pop is adored by flavor-conscious kids looking for something more complex and lively than your typical ice cream sandwich. (Got a Creamsicle fan in the family? Watch out—you might have a future chef on your hands.). 

The idea to create a deconstructed riff on an orange Creamsicle came about while we were developing our [link /activities/fresh-orange-fluid-gel Fresh Orange Fluid Gel]. What better way to showcase that intense citrus flavor and luscious texture than by contrasting them with cooling vanilla? We soon realized that our [link /activities/olive-oil-cake Olive Oil Cake], [link /activities/egg-free-vanilla-ice-cream Egg-Free Vanilla Ice Cream], and bittersweet, chewy [link /activities/half-candied-blood-orange Half-Candied Blood Orange] would work perfectly in the dessert too. Finally, we took half of the fluid gel and made a foam, so that diners could experience the flavor via two distinct textures. 

The result: a dessert that’s at once refined and playful, and a dish that will delight everyone who ever raced up to an ice cream truck, dreaming of something sweet.

Couple of notes: When making the candied orange, feel free to use any variety you have on hand. Navel oranges seem to work particularly well, we noticed. You can also use [link /activities/vanilla-bean-ice-cream Vanilla Bean Ice Cream] (or the store-bought stuff) instead of the egg-free version, but keep in mind that the rich, eggy flavor could potentially be overpowering.

Orange Creamsicle

A tiny blini with all the fixins is the embodiment of posh (think czars and Fabergé eggs) and a longtime fixture of Russian cuisine. The pancake itself is soft, springy, and mild, a perfect vehicle for creamy toppings like crème fraîche and [link /activities/beet-fluid-gel Beet Fluid Gel]. Pile a little salmon roe and fresh chervil on top, and you have a sweet, salty, and sour treat with amazing textural complexity. These blini work great as a one-bite amuse-bouche, and in our humble opinion, they’re best washed down with a glass of Champagne.

But don’t stop there. There are a million different ways you can dress up your blini—if you prefer a different kind of caviar, sub it in. If you want smoked salmon and dill instead of Beet Fluid Gel and chervil, give it a shot. If buckwheat flour isn’t your thing, try pastry flour in its place. Heck, drizzle these babies with butter and syrup for a delicious breakfast treat. It really is hard to go wrong, but in general, it’s best to keep it simple so each flavor you choose can really shine. 

What You’ll Learn

* How to make our Blini recipe topped with Beet Fluid Gel, crème fraîche, and ikura
* How to make blini with other toppings and ingredients
* How to troubleshoot when your blini go wrong
* How to choose and use caviar

If your blini don’t turn out perfectly, ask a question in the comment section below, and we’ll help you out.

Blini

Dishes

How long has humankind been cooking with gelling agents? A very long time, as it turns out. Seaweed-derived agar is among the oldest—cooks in Malaysia, Japan, Thailand, and Korea have used it for centuries. An algae-derived product called carrageenan is named for an Irish town where red seaweed has been used to gel traditional milk-based desserts for hundreds of years. Then of course there’s gelatin, the collagen-derived substance responsible for everything from the lobster [link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspic aspic] chaudfroid that Louis XIV gobbled at Versailles to the whipped cream–crested Jell-O rings that graced picnic tables in the 1950s. But how did we go from milk-based desserts in old Ireland to deep-fried mayo cubes in modern-day Manhattan? Let us explain.

Fluid Gels: A Culinary History

How can a food be both solid and fluid? Simple: A gel, by definition, is a liquid-turned-solid. A fluid gel is a gel that will flow when disturbed. At rest, it is able to just hold itself together as a solid, but given a spin in the blender (or in your mouth), it flows more freely. That’s because a fluid gel’s structure, by nature, is weakly held and thus easily interrupted when disturbed. However, the magic of fluid gels is that the molecules spontaneously reconstruct themselves into a solid when at rest. 

Fluid gels are renowned for their excellent flavor release and clean—never cloying—mouthfeel. They offer the adventurous cook a way to thicken nearly any water-based liquid without lots of extra “stuff” that muddles flavor and texture. Starches, along with many other conventional thickeners, tend to require higher concentrations to achieve a similar result—this dulls the underlying flavor of the sauce and leaves a lingering coating in the mouth. 

Check out the graphic below for more details on the differences between traditional thickeners and modernist fluid gels, and read on for the four steps to gelling success—plus a fluid gel vocab lesson for the nerds among us.

The Science of Fluid Gels

Fluid Gel Discussion

Nerd Out! Learn More About Fluid Gels

It’s a solid. No, wait, it’s a liquid. Great god of super-cool science, it’s both. In this class, you’ll learn the basics of fluid gels—substances that act like a solid when left alone but become liquid when stirred or blended. You’ll use fluid gels to form liquid layers in a verdant vegetarian parfait. You’ll create a deconstructed Orange Creamsicle dessert that presents Fresh Orange Fluid Gel in two ways—in gel and foam form. You’ll learn how fluid gels make great salad dressings that coat vegetables completely, and you’ll create a Beet Fluid Gel that lends a pop of color and flavor to delicate blini hors d’oeuvres. Enroll with ChefSteps for helpful step-by-step demonstrations of the relevant techniques (including detailed plating tips), showstopping recipes that have been thoroughly tested in our kitchen, and access to our community of chefs and home cooks. Break out the blender and start drafting that guest list—by the time you’ve completed this class, you’ll have all the makings of a magical modernist dinner party.

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