tried making beet fluid gel...

was rather unsuccessful, although what i did get looks like it could turn into a decent sorbet of sorts. its in the freezer now.

anyway, the beet fluid gel and horseradish cream CS posted a while back gave me an idea for something and i finally got around to attempting it. however, problem one is i dont have gellan gum, but i figured i could use agar, thats also used for making fluid gels, CS just said they preferred gellan for that. so i looked around online for a ratio to use for agar and found a site that said for fluid gels agar is used at .1% to .3% for stiffer. i wanted it to be a bit more on the stiffer side, so i went with 2.5%. wow was that bad. it made crunching noises when i cut it with a knife to put in the blender. i had already tossed the rest of the beet juice i had tho, so i tossed most of it, added a mix of crannberry and grape juice and melted and reset it. much better...

the main problem tho is i have no juicer. no prob, i figured, tho, i can just use the juice from a can of beets. now, i doubt anyone remembers, but a few months ago i posted a pic of the result when i tried to puree canned beets and added the juice from canned peas - it foamed up and exploded everywhere making a huge mess. well, it seems that even just the beet juice will do that too when heated, although to a lesser extent. when boiling it to hydrate the agar it foamed up something fierce, although i was able to delicately boil it for a few min without it going over. (which it would have if i had just left it...)

i figured ok, tho, when i put it in the blender the bubbles will go away. nope. i had poured it into a container and put it in the fridge to set, which it did. most of it was a nice clear gel with a thin layer of set foam on top. now, im not sure what would have happened if i had skimmed that foam and blended just the clear part but this was the result of blending it all:

the whole thing turned into an opaque foamy fluid gel. the consistency is pretty decent overall, but the appearance is just not at all what i expected or wanted. perhaps if i had a chamber vac i could use that to remove the air and get it back how it should be, but alas i dont....

so the question is, should i just abandon this canned juice? any ideas how to get it to work right? what if i get some fresh beets and just stick em in the blender, would that work decent for juicing them?

thanks.

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Brandon_Byrd_40557

You could try running it through a sieve to pop the bubbles.

Blending isn't juicing; juicing removes most of the cellulose/fiber/solids in a product, while blending preserves it all. You don't want that in your fluid gel. Also, the juice in a can of beets isn't really the same thing as beet juice. If you're not going to use a juicer, you should try looking around for fresh beet juice at the supermarket. It's sort of trending right now as the next superfood beverage. My local sortacrappy supermarket makes it as well (as does the other gourmet grocer in my area). And it'll save you the mess of juicing beets, which can be a bit of a nightmare.

chefjeremy314

The juicer is the big key. When our juicer broke I did a combo of shredded (hand grated in small holes) beets and purée. Steeped this in a bit of water. Strained the liquid through a chinois and put the solids in cheese cloth. I strained this mixture and squeezed the excess liquid out to get more of a beet flavor.

reck.harm

You could just buy beetjuice, i suppose. I'm quite confident it would turn out better than using the liquid from a can

Daniel_Levy_59584

the sieve was a good idea - it helped some, but i dont have anything with small enough holes to get rid of all the bubbles.

and yeah, i know its not the same thing, but i had to make do with something.

i dont think the supermarket had beet juice, but maybe i can find some somewhere or find a place thatll juice em for me.

im still wondering why this even happened in the first place. if i remember right, the only ingredients is water, beets, salt - although i know certain things dont have to be listed. theres probably something else unlisted there thats causing this.

Brandon_Byrd_40557

It's hard to say, but you might still be using too much agar. It's difficult to tell since you started with an extremely high percentage and diluted it later. Next time try hydrating the agar separately in a small amount of water and then whisking it into the beet juice. Foaming can occur for a bunch of reasons, but many vegetable juices will foam when brought to the boil because they contain trace amounts of pectin, starch, protein, sugar. If you end up with a bunch of bubbles, you can pop them with a torch. Alternatively, you could bring the liquid to just below a boil and leave it there for five to ten minutes. Agar hydrates at around 90C, so you don't need to bring it to a rolling boil.

Regardless of how you hydrate it, I'd avoid using the liquid in a can of beets. It's not beet juice... it's water and salt that has pulled some beet flavor and pigment into it. Most of the juice itself remains in the beet. If all you've got is a blender, you could try pureeing the beets and hanging the puree in cheese cloth to get out most of the solids. But that would be a pain and your yield would probably suck.

Brendan_Lee_56950

Do you have a chamber vac at your disposal? Pull a few cycles and see if it impacts the color.

Daniel_Levy_59584

its botta be more than just the simple foaming of veg juices from pectin, as even the gel got foamy. which didnt happen when i ended up going the blender route. got a decent enough result with that tho. result to follow in a new post...