Hot and Iced Tea - again

Morten_Moen_29418

Hi, all,

I have just tried out Heston Blumenthal's Hot and Iced Tea. I covered it in my blog at

http://morten-moen.blogspot.no/2014/01/food-from-fat-duck-hot-and-iced-tea.html

I am a bit curious about the inner workings here. In this recipe, the two weak liquid gels are mad in two steps:

- First the Gellan is hydrated with sodium citrate

- Then the setting of the gel is initiated by adding calcium chloride

From an earlier discussion in the forum I learned that

"the sodium citrate acts as a sequestrant for the Low acyl gellan, so that when heated to a simmer, the gellan is able to hydrate without the impediment of ions. Only then is the calcium chloride added to provide the necessary calcium ions for the gellan to form a gel"

Now, how does the sequestrant thing really work? And why go to all this trouble here? I have seen other recipes where you just put gellan in the liquid, bring to a simmer and it sets.

Anyone having ideas about this?

--Morten

michaelnatkin

Hey Morten - sequestrants basically act like insurance policies against there being any free calcium ions in your water. If you were using distilled water, you wouldn't need them.