Cheese sauce texture strange

Hi,

I attempted to make a quick version of the New School Poutine by making the cheese sauce and putting it over some fast food fries. I just wanted cheese fries, really. Anyway, I halved the recipe and used scales (0.5 for the cheese and milk; 0.1 for the hydrocolloids and salt). I followed the recipe to a T. When I took the bag out of the sous vide bath, I put it in a Vitamix and started blending. It quickly came together but I could quickly see that the sauce was very thick and viscous.

When I poured it on the fries, it immediately set. Visually, it looked shiny and slick (not oily) like gravy. Things looked fine. However, the moment you tried to eat a fry or disturb the cheese sauce, you could tell it had immediately set. It sort of congealed in a giant blob. It was not running or liquid-y like in the YouTube video.

What did I do wrong? Is there some minimum (hot) temperature the sauce has to be kept before it starts solidifying? Remember, this was 30-60 seconds after coming out of the blender.

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Comments

ipreferale

@David - When you say that you halved the recipe what do you mean by "(0.5 for the cheese and milk; 0.1 for the hydrocolloids and salt)"..

Matt_67991

@RED I'll just guess from context that he meant that the scales he used for those ingredients are precise to 0.5 g and 0.1 g respectively.

@David Try warming it up. It sounds like you basically made processed cheese, which should melt nicely. You could also try blending a bit more liquid in if it is still too thick.

ipreferale

@David - The other thing that I noticed after making a batch, is that when I dumped it into the blender, I noticed that some of the salts and hydrocolloids did not dissolve completely. Mine did not turn solid but started to separate. So I adjusted with more sodium citrate and all was good. I would have thought that they would have gone into solution but that was not the case.

Jack_Mayer_85396

@David - I think that @Henri is probably correct. When I made the "fancy velveeta" from MC@H (no carrageenan, just citrate), it set up really fast when I poured it on the silpat. So fast that my cheese slices were too thick when I first did it.

sygyzy

@RED - Sorry the confusion. I halved the recipe and like @Henri suggests, I was just specifying what type of accuracy the scales I used had.

Thanks for the tips guys, I will try warming it up. It's strange that @RED's salts didn't dissolve. To be honest, I never inspected the bag carefully after coming out of the bath; I just dumped it into the blender.