I come to you sleepy eyed and briny brained. This edition started with a vision for an epic valentines day treat and it ended with a silicon mold filled with gelatinized olive brine. Unclear if any progress was made. Welcome to Edition 8!!!
Play it back, DJ DPo.
On Sunday, I was ready to get weird and make some olive themed valentines day treats for readers. Planning ahead, ya know? It was an ode to the mediocre pun, “Olive You” with a flare of nostalgia. I wanted to recreate those cute little valentines day leaflets we got as kids, but instead of a sugary candy on the inside, it was an olive brine based lollipop. You could just dunk it into your next martini and a dirty one would magically unveil itself after a few stirs. The marketing slogan would be a replica of the Brush Ups one.
The concept would skirt the line between dark magic and child play. I meaannnnn, can you find a stronger intersection? There was so much going for it, really.
Sodium Alginate + Calcium Chloride: A Tale of Two Polymerized Reptilian Lovers.
I took my idea to the internet and started YouTubing. “Liquid to solid molecular gastronomy” ← YouTube Search.
The results were, ehhh, not what I was looking for, but tbh, I was in it anyways. There were tons of videos about “spherification”- a process to turn liquids into beads. Think ice breaker beads, but more fragile. The process to make them is pretty straightforward:
Take your desired juice and add sodium alginate (powder).
Put said juice (which now has sodium aliginate) into a syringe.
Drop dollops or strings into a calcium chloride bath. At this stage, a chemical reaction occurs (polymerization) and a membrane is formed around the droplets. You’ve got beads!
This is most certainly explained better through video or visual imagery. But for more reptilian-learning style readers, here’s what happens:
Originally I tossed this method thinking there’s no way it would stand the test of packaging or be shelf stable, but I’ll continue to explore this route and get back to you. I’m not ready to lose hope. This may be a good time to ask if any readers know molecular gastronomists or former Ice Breaker Liquid Ice Division employees????
Whether or not this lands in your fictional valentines day treat, this is objectively pretty cool (right???). And it’s not hard to buy these materials either to try it at home. Buy ‘em here and here. A scale would be needed too. And a syringe.
Olive Fun Fact Commercial Break
aka me trying to weave in more fun facts I picked up along the way.
The world's largest olive salad weighed in at 789.47 kg and took 12 hours to make. The record was set in Peru in 2017.
Welcome back to our reptilian lovers.
The plot thickened while deep in the spherification-youtube vortex (population=1). Specifically at 2:38 of this video. For my not-gonna-click-the-link-rn readers, here’s the spoiler:
The scientist on the news segment explains that sodium alginate is also used in olives!! Wait, what?! Yep. That pimento pepper red sliver in the olive is often a pimento jelly, thickened by our reptilian friend sodium alginate. *Sodium alginate is derived from seaweed, not lizards*
Where else is this stuff? The USDA has a loooong list. It’s used as thickener, texturizer, and a stabilizer in a ton of processed foods like Jell-O and Halo Top ice cream. I found it in a jar of olives too! Gratifying moment.
At this point I also needed to know more about calcium chloride. If sodium alginate was everywhere, is this stuff too? Well… Good news or bad news first?
Good news: calcium chloride is a super effective replacement to salt brining, especially for pickling. Not only does it make ‘em plumper and ferment faster, but it is significantly more environmentally friendly. This USDA lab has straight up revolutionized pickles and created this method of brining. I even spotted calcium chloride on my favorite fermented garlic dill pickles. Also a gratifying moment.
Bad news: calcium chloride is a big part of mass manufacturing of cocaine. 15-min ish documentary on it.
The Brine Olympics
During my internet voyage, I learned about Filthy brands, a trendy newcomer in the brine space. They’re making the capri-sun of brines! They claim that using the brine directly from the olive jar is not as tasty as a pouch of only brine. Too cloudy, they say. Too low quality, they say. Let’s test it (along with a handful of other olive brines).
I was able to recruit both a taster and a number-cruncher… on a MONDAY!? Yo, I got some dutiful (and very smart) friends. Thank you, Sam and Guy. We followed the 5:1:1 ratio (vodka: vermouth: brine) and measured them across a handful of metrics while only swapping out the brine.
On a scale of 1-10, we measured: Cloudiness, Overall Satisfaction, Dirtiness, and Olive Rating. Here are the results, chaotically explained:
Our Number Cruncher took his role seriously and threw down some statistics that had me LOLing for a solid hour. Honestly, this may be my push to finally learn Python. These charts just look so… legit?
Fig 1: “Correlations between user reports across different martinis. “Cloudiness” had the most robust correlation across users (r = 0.97), with dirtiness being a close second; however, all measures had relatively high agreement. Solid line corresponds to least squares fit (shading denotes 95% bootstrapped confidence intervals).” -Number Cruncher
Like any good experiment, we include some discussions:
Add more brine - we felt like they all needed more than the 5:1:1 ratio. How dirty do you make your martinis?
Garlic World should make a brine only line. Will mostly likely email them to inquire.
Filthy capri-sun is pretty tasty after all.
We should do this with other food related things. And maybe scale it up. Any ideas?
After everyone left, I tried one last experiment. Jello Olive Brine. This needs no discussion section. It was horrible. And didn’t dissolve in the martini.
What I’m Cooking
Woof, this week was a doozy and half of our household was sick, but of course, we found some time to fill our bellies with things other than olives.
Skirt steak with some delicious chimichurri (no recipe). Remember to slice against the grain! Kenji has a great piece on skirt steak too.
I had too much fun labeling juices and have decided to keep labeling things in the fridge.
That’s all for Edition 8!!! Here’s to more experiments in 2023!
-Chef DPo
PS- I’m planning on cooking with a friend and will record the conversation to include in a future edition. What should we cook? (She’s gluten free)