Oil Spherification

Lauren_64433

Has anyone attempted to spherify olive oil before to create "caviar"? I know that Ferran Adria has a technique for this. He uses a machine, but is it possible to do it by hand? Other ideas about encapsulating oil?

Chris_Young_80640

One very simple way is to drip olive oil into liquid nitrogen, it will quickly freeze into solid pellets of frozen olive oil. You can let these temper in a very cold domestic freezer and use them for a garnish.



Otherwise, what you're looking to do requires you to form a drop of oil inside a drop of a water-based gel, which is what Ferran and a few other chefs like Wylie Dufresne have done in the past (and this is a really finicky thing to do in a restaurant, let me tell you).



One possibility, that occurs to me, is that you might be able to do small-scale reverse spherification. Freeze olive oil drops with liquid nitrogen, then drip them into a warm alginate bath and strain them out. It should work, but will require a bit of practice and will probably be very tedious.