You can use dry ice to carbonate fruits. The fruit will be filled with tingly carbon dioxide bubbles, like a soda. The fizzy fruit is great to eat on its own or it can be used in recipes. It’s refreshing, bubbly, and totally unique.
Before you start, you should learn some safety tips for your protection.
Fizzy Carbonated Fruit Safety Tips
a) Freshly frozen fizzy fruit is the same temperature as dry ice (around -109°F) so allow it to warm a bit before consuming it.
b) Dry ice is very cold, so don't handle it or eat it. Dry ice must never come in contact with the skin or any other living tissue.
c) There are videos that show people carbonating fruit by sealing dry ice and fruit in a plastic bottle. This is not a particularly safe method, since over-pressuring the bottle will cause it to explode. If you decide to try this method, make sure your bottle is plastic (less shrapnel in the event of an explosion) and use a minimal amount of dry ice. Experts do not recommend this procedure. You can get fizzy fruit without risking a trip to the hospital.
d) This goes along with the first point: don't seal dry ice into a closed container.
MATERIALS TO BE USED:
Materials to make carbonated fruit you only need to gather a few things:
Bottle or container—You will need a plastic bottle or a container to put the fruit into. A wide mouth Nalgene works best. You can use an empty 2-liter soda bottle however, just be careful not to add in too much dry ice, more on that later. DO NOT use a glass jar. The bottle will be under pressure and broken plastic is safer than broken glass. If you have a vessel that is designed to take pressure, like a beer keg or pressure cooker for example, then by all means, try using that.
Fruit—When making carbonated fruit it’s best to use firm fruits, like oranges, apples, and pears. If you try doing it with softer fruits like kiwis, strawberries, and bananas and it just doesn’t work as well. Apples in particular seem to work the best.
Dry ice—The final thing you will need is a block of dry ice. You will only need a tiny, tiny amount of dry ice to make the carbonated fruit, but it’s hard to buy less than a large block of the stuff. Now, chances are that you have never seen dry ice for sale. You can’t make it on your own and you might not be able to find it easily.
You can use the Dry Ice Directory (www.dryicedirectory. com) to find out where it was being sold locally— they have listings for all over the world.
Note: Before you obtain dry ice, you should review the Dry Ice Safety Info website at www. dryiceinfo.com/safe.htm, which includes detailed information about the safe handling, transportation, storage, and disposal of dry ice. This informational site is maintained by a group of manufacturers and sellers of dry ice.
PROCEDURE:
1) Cut the fruit and put it into the bottles. The first step is to cut up the fruit and put it into the bottle(s). Cut the fruit as if you were making fruit salad—no seeds or orange peels are wanted here. Cut smaller pieces to fit through the narrow neck of the soda bottle and bigger ones for the wide mouth of the Nalgene. I highly recommend using a Nalgene to make carbonated fruit.
2) Add the dry ice. The next step is to cut off a small chunk of dry ice from the block. You only need about two grams, or a piece about half the size of your thumb. There is no harm to putting in too little dry ice—you will simply end up with only slightly fizzy fruit. However, putting in too much dry ice is dangerous and could make a really big mess.
Dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide at a temperature around -78 ˚C (-108 ˚F). Dry ice does not melt but sublimates from a solid to a gas when the temperature rises. Unlike regular ice made from water, it goes directly from its solid phase to its gaseous phase with no liquid phase in between. Dry ice constantly sublimate from its solid form of CO2 to CO2 gas.
This gas is pure CO2, exactly what we need to carbonate the fruit. Follow the next steps to make the fruit absorb the CO2.
As a result, the dry ice block will produce gaseous CO2 until there is nothing left of the solid block. The bottles are going to be sealed tightly with their caps, so if too much CO2 gas is built up inside the bottle, they might explode (the soda bottle bursts at around 115 psi). We are looking for only 30 psi, so you must not use a big hunk of dry ice.
3.) Wait a day or two. As soon as you put the dry ice into the bottles and you seal the top, you can see it turning into its gaseous phase. Most of the dry ice will sublimate in an hour, so that’s all the time it will take for the bottles to fully pressurize. Waiting overnight is a good idea to let the CO2 gas work its way into the fruit. You can put the bottles into an empty drawer and closed it for the first hour. After an hour you will see that the bottles are under pressure, but not in any danger of exploding, so transfer it to the refrigerator for the night.
Remember that you can only carbonate things that have water in them.
4) Open, eat, and burp. Once the bottles have sat overnight you are ready to open, eat, and burp.
Bleed the pressure from the bottle by opening the cap like you would open a shaken soda bottle. Cut the top of the plastic soda bottle off with a sharp knife and poured it out into a bowl. You can simply pour the fruit out of the Nalgene bottle through the wide mouth of the bottle. Now that the fruit is out of the bottles it’s ready to eat. It loses its fizzyness pretty quickly, so make sure you chow down in the first 15 minutes after opening the bottles.
Carbonated fruit tastes like regular fruit, but it tingles on your tongue. It’s a totally unique eating experience, and makes you burp a whole lot if you have done it right.
If you have time, you should try more exciting recipes at Molecular Gastronomy Recipes
Serving Suggestions
- Try fizzy grapes with champagne or with cheese.
- Try carbonated melon with Prosciutto.
- Slice a banana. Make it fizzy then coat it with chocolate. Allow the banana to warm slightly before eating it.
- Try sangria with fizzy fruit.
Interesting Science Behind Carbonation
A) The colder the liquid the more CO2 that can dissolve in it. So if you want to keep your beverage carbonated for a longer period, just keep it cold.
B) Most beers have CO2 bubbles but Guinness beer bubbles contain nitrogen instead so it doesn’t taste fizzy. The nitrogen is also less soluble than CO2 which allows the beer to be put under high pressure without making it fizzy which enables small bubbles to be formed. Both effects give draught Guinness its perceived smoothness.
C) The fizzy sensation comes from the bubbles of concentrated carbon dioxide (CO2) which, as they burst in the mouth, they trigger a pain response from the nerves in the tongue and the mouth. This nerve response also intensifies the aromas and taste. This is why beverages taste blander after they lose its carbonation.
Quick Tips on Fruit Carbonation
a) Alternatively, if you have an ISI whipper, load the fruit into the chamber and charge with a CO2 cartridge, and let stand in refrigerator.
b) Do not use a small mouthed soda bottle. It is too difficult to get the fruit in and out.
Watch Related Video: How to Make Carbonated Fruit Video
Are you a avid fan of Game of Thrones, the critically acclaimed HBO TV series, then try this recipe Honeyed Chicken Medieval Recipe- Game of Thrones Food Recipes
Are you interested in Culinary Physics? Watch the FREE video tutorials at Culinary Physics Lecture Series. Get the recommended cookbooks by the expert chefs at Molecular Gastronomy Books.
interesting post... only today I knew how fizz in drinks really works and how taste is intensified (ie. pain receptor stimulation on the tongue). thanks...
ReplyDelete