by Jeff Potter
Domino sells a product called Super Envision® that is a blend of mostly sucrose, some maltodextrin, and "artificial flavor" at 10,000 ppm. It’s meant to be used at around a 1% concentration in the final product, so the 10,000 ppm becomes 100 ppm. (Gee, I wonder if that "artificial flavor" could be lactisole?)
Try tasting "anti-sugar" in caramel sauce (see Caramel Sauce in Chapter 4). Add a small quantity of Domino Super Envision to one bowl of caramel sauce, leaving a second bowl of caramel unmodified for comparison’s sake. The taste of the burnt compounds in the caramel sauce will be stronger in the adulterated bowl, because the sweet sensations won’t be masking them.
With lactisole, what was once perishable can be mass manufactured without the same worries about spoilage by increasing the amount of sugar and then canceling out the additional perceived sweetness. Some jams and jellies, for example, need a certain level of sugar to remain shelf-stable. Super Envision also shows up in products such as salad dressings, in which sweetness from stabilizers or thickeners would be undesirable, and in some mass-manufactured breads. Pizza dough, when baked, is more visually appealing if it turns golden brown. Adding sugar is an easy way to get a browning reaction, but sweet pizza dough isn’t so appealing.
For a list of industrial-style recipes—cereal coatings, instant chocolate milk mix, marshmallows, meringue toppings—see Domino’s Envision Applications page at http://www.dominospecialtyingredients.com/recipes/envision_more.html.
Savory French Meringues
Without sugar, meringues—well, egg whites—bake into a dry brittle foam that resembles Cheetos (but without the flavor): it’s extremely crunchy and, without any flavorings, not particularly pleasant. When sugar is added, the meringue turns into something light, slightly chewy, and delightful.
Try the following experiment to understand how sugar helps stabilize meringues and how lactisole masks the sweetness.
Start by separating six egg whites into a bowl and whipping to stiff peaks. Using a scale, weigh out into three small glass or metal bowls:
Standard meringues
50g whisked egg white
20g granulated sugar
Meringues sans sugar
50g whisked egg white
Meringues with "anti-sugar"
50g whisked egg white
20g granulated sugar
1g Domino Super Envision
Transfer each batch into a piping bag. (A plastic bag with a small cut in the corner works well.) Pipe onto a Silpat or a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
Note
Add in chopped nuts, dried fruit, and/or chocolate chips to extend it. Try dipping the baked meringue in tempered chocolate as well.
Bake the meringues in an oven set to 200°F / 95°C for several hours, until dry. (Trying this in the evening? You can set your oven to ~300°F / 150°C, pop the cookies in, and then turn the oven off and come back the next morning.)
Note
Don’t try baking meringues directly on the cookie sheet. Proteins are very sticky and will bind to it, making it hard to remove them without breaking them. Because it’s flexible, the Silpat or parchment paper can easily be peeled off the back of the cooked meringues.
You can see the difference instantly in the "meringue" made without sugar: the egg white doesn’t flow as smoothly out of the piping bag. The standard and anti-sugar meringues have the same texture, but the taste of the standard one is, as expected, sweet. The anti-sugar one tastes pretty much like nothing, as egg white doesn’t carry a strong flavor of its own.
Meringues sans sugar.
Standard meringues.
Anti-sugar meringues.
Meat Glue: Transglutaminase
One of the more unexpected food additives is transglutaminase, a protein that has the ability to bond glutamine with compounds such as lysine, both of which are present in animal tissue. In plain English, transglutaminase is "glue" for proteins.
Transglutaminase isn’t used to change the texture of foods or to modify sensations of flavor. Rather, the food industry uses it re-form scrap meats into large pieces (McNuggets!). You didn’t actually think that gorgeous hunk of ham at the deli counter was one piece of meat, did you? From the rare boneless pig?
Transglutaminase is also used to thicken milk and yogurts by making their proteins longer in the same way that adding longer polysaccharides in gelling applications makes things thicker. Additionally, it is used to firm up pastas, to make breads more elastic (able to stretch without tearing), and to improve gluten-free breads for those with celiac disease.
For food hackers, though, the compelling opportunities for transglutaminase reside primarily in meat-binding applications. Food hackers have, of course, seized the opportunity to use it to make Frankenstein meats (all in the name of fun). You can "glue" white fish to red fish, make a turducken (a turkey-duck-chicken dish) that holds together, and make a heatstable aspic, relying on transglutaminase instead of heat-sensitive gelatins or aspics.
The recipes that follow will give you some starting ideas, but really the concept of "meat welding" can apply to any meats that you want to stay together, including fish and poultry. You can glue scallops together in a long chain, wrap chicken around fillings (binding the chicken to the other end of itself), and wrap bacon around scallops.
The reaction occurs at room temperature and takes around two hours to set, so plan ahead. Use about 1% transglutaminase for the total weight of your food. You can sprinkle it dry on the food item or create a slurry (2 parts water to 1 part transglutaminase) and brush it onto the surfaces to be glued. Once adhered together, let the join rest for at least two hours; otherwise, you will shear and break the bonds as they’re setting.
Chicken and steak bonded together with transglutaminase. Mmm, Doublemeat Palace!
Keep in mind that, because you’re made of protein, you should take care to not get it on your skin or inhale the powder. Unlike real glue, transglutaminase is actually a chemical catalyst that literally bonds the two sides together at a molecular level. Gloves and a respirator mask are good insurance. Since transglutaminase is a protein itself and has the same structures as the amino acids it binds, it’s also capable of binding to itself. After a few hours at room temperature, though, it loses its enzymatic properties, so it’s not a huge deal if you spill a bit on your work surface. Once opened, store it in your freezer to slow the rate of the binding reaction.
Instructions for use. Create a slurry of water and transglutaminase and brush it onto the surfaces that you want to join. Press them together and wrap with plastic wrap. Store in fridge for two hours or longer.
Note
Try vacuum-packing the food. This will improve the fit between the two pieces of meat.
Uses. Protein binder. Used by the food industry to take scraps of meats and form them into a larger shape, such as deli-style sliced turkey, and to thicken dairy products such as yogurt.
Origin. Manufactured using the bacteria Streptomyces mobaraensis. The main producer of transglutaminase is a Japanese company, Ajinomoto, which sells it under the name Activa. (This is the same company that originally formed to manufacture and sell MSG.)
Chemistry. Transglutaminase is an enzyme that binds the amino acid glutamine with a variety of primary amines. Any place where glutamine and a suitable amine are present, transglutaminase can be used to crosslink the two. Transglutaminase is itself digestible (it’s a protein) and the enzymatic reaction ceases after a few hours, so there’s no danger of it "gluing" your insides together (once it has set, that is, which would happen during cooking anyway). Transglutaminase acts as a catalyst on glutamine and lysine, causing the atoms composing the two groups to line up so that they form covalent bonds.
Note
A covalent bond is one in which two atoms share an electron, resulting in a lower energy state. Electrons are "lazy" in the sense that they prefer states that take less energy to maintain.
To visualize the reaction, imagine spreading apart the fingers of your left
and right hands and touching the tips together, left thumb to right thumb, left pinky to right pinky, etc. Without some amount of coordination, getting the atomic "fingers" to line up just doesn’t happen. Transglutaminase helps by providing the necessary atomic-level guidance for the two groups to touch. And once they touch, they can form covalent bonds and stick. Continuing the finger analogy, it’s a bit like having superglue on your fingers: once they are lined up and are touched together, they stay together.
Before interaction, strands of proteins with glutamine and lysine groups are unattached (left); after interaction, the glutamine and lysine groups are covalently bonded wherever transglutaminase has a chance to catalyze. Note that transglutaminase itself does not remain as part of the bond after the reaction.
While you can pull apart items joined with transglutaminase, the individual meats themselves may be weaker than the join.
Technical notes
Concentration
~0.5% to 1% of meat weight.
Notes
Cold-set for at least two hours—that is, apply to meat and let rest in fridge for two hours. Reaction time is correlated with temperature, so it takes longer to set at colder temperatures.
Temperature
Heat-stable once set.
Bacon-Wrapped Scallops
It’s cool to see bacon-wrapped scallops where the bacon just sticks to the scallop. It’s also a good example of how to work with transglutaminase.
In a small bowl, mix roughly 2 parts water to 1 part transglutaminase to create a slurry.
On a small plate that will fit in your fridge, lay out:
8 scallops as large and as cylindrical as possible, patted dry
8 slices bacon, cut in half so that they can wrap around a scallop one time
Using a brush, coat one side of each piece of bacon with the slurry. Place a scallop on the bacon and roll the bacon around the scallop. Repeat for each scallop and transfer to the fridge for at least two hours to allow the transglutaminase to set.
After resting, the bacon should be well adhered to the scallops.
Preheat your oven to 400°F / 200°C.
Place the scallops in a hot frying pan lightly coated with oil or a small amount of butter, with one of the "exposed" ends down. This will cause a Maillard reaction and develop a nice layer of flavor on the scallops. After a minute or so, flip the scallops over so that the other exposed side is in contact with the pan and immediately transfer your frying pan to the oven.
Finish in the oven for about five to eight minutes, until the bacon is done and the scallops are cooked.
Note
Use only an oven-safe frying pan in your oven. Some commercial frying pans have silicone handles—typically blue—that are oven-safe.
Use a brush to coat one side of a strip of bacon with transglutaminase. (If you don’t already have a pastry brush, consider getting one made with plastic bristles, because that type will not leave strands behind.)
Carefully roll the bacon around the scallop. The transglutaminase will not bond instantly, so you will need to pinch and press the items together. Let set for two hours in the fridge.
Pan sear the scallops on high heat, flip to sear on both sides, and transfer to the oven to finish.
A cross-sectional slice of the finished product shows the joined surface of the bacon and the scallop. (Shown on top of a leaf of bok choy.)
Shrimp Roll-up
Since transglutaminase binds proteins at the molecular level, you can also use it as a binder to form ground meats into a solid form (Spam!). Imagine taking wood glue and, instead of gluing two boards together, using the glue to re-form a piece of wood from sawdust. Yes, just like particleboard or chipboard. The next recipe demonstrates this concept.
Purée with an immersion blender or food processor:
175g shrimp, raw, peeled, and deveined
50g water
10g transglutaminase
Transfer the purée to the center of a large sheet of parchment paper. Using a spatula, fan out the purée so that it’s flat enough to place a second piece of parchment paper on top of it. Using a rolling pin, roll the purée out to a thickness of 1/8″ / 0.3 cm, just as you would for a pie crust dough. Transfer the "sandwiched" purée to the fridge and let rest for a minimum two hours, preferably overnight.
In a large pot, bring salted water to a rolling boil.
Fill a large bowl with ice water.
Using a sharp chef’s knife, cut a portion of the sandwiched purée down to a size that will fit in your pot. Carefully slip the sheet into the boiling water. The parchment paper should detach from the shrimp purée; this is expected. After 30 seconds to a minute, use a spider (or slotted spoon and tongs, if you’re careful) to fish out the shrimp sheet from the boiling water, and transfer it to the ice water bath to stop the cooking process.
You should now have a "sheet" of shrimp that you can slice into noodles or use as a wrap around food items. To make shrimp noodles, slice the shrimp sheet into thin slices, which can then be floated in seafood broth or tossed with seared tofu, sesame seeds, sautéed green onions, and soy sauce. Or, try making "reverse sushi," using the shrimp sheet as the wrapper for the rice in place of the customary nori seaweed wrapper.
You can use rubber bands on the edges of your rolling pin to achieve a consistent thickness. This photo shows the shrimp and transglutaminase purée sandwiched in parchment paper.
A spider is a handy tool for fetching delicate items from boiling water. Note that the shrimp noodles and parchment paper have separated in the boiling water.
Liquid Smoke: Distilled Smoke Vapor
Smoking—burning wood chips and directing either the hot or cold smoke vapors to come in contact with items such as meats—is a method for curing and preserving foods. Smoking also deposits a number of flavors onto the food that are generated as byproducts of the chemical reactions that occur when wood is combusted. The commercial food industry uses liquid smoke to infuse smoke flavor into foods that are traditionally smoked, such as bacon, and into foods for which the flavor is enhanced by smoke essence, such as "smoked" tofu.
The simplest way of creating a smoked flavor in your cooking—besides actually smoking it—is to include ingredients that are already smoked and contain those chemical compounds. You can infuse smoke flavors into your dish by adding spices such as chipotle peppers or smoked paprika, or by using dry rubs with smoked teas such as Lapsang Souchong. Tobacco, too, can be used to similar effect; some novel restaurant dishes include components like tobacco-infused crème anglaise. However, including smoked ingredients will also bring along the other flavors of the substance being used. Some dishes can use smoked salts, for example, but for many applications, this will contribute too much salt. This is where liquid smoke comes in.
A cook can use liquid smoke to highlight the smoky "toasted" flavors of foods, especially those that have similar molecular compounds to smoke, such as coffee, peanut butter, or Scotch whisky. You can also use it to impart smoke flavor in those situations where grilling isn’t an option—say, on the 27th floor of your apartment complex.
Note
When buying liquid smoke, look for an ingredient list that reads "smoke, water." Try to avoid products that have molasses or other additives.
Some of the more unusual uses allow for bringing smoked flavor to foods that can’t normally be tossed onto a wood-burning grill, such as tofu, ice cream, or liquids (along with some sandalwood incense and Chanel N°5, if you’re Maggie from Northern Exposure). Butter also has some of the same phenols as smoke; try adding it to butter for table service with bread.
The big long evil list of nasty chemicals and ingredients that one would expect to see on a liquid smoke bottle? "Water, smoke." In and of itself, liquid smoke is not artificial. It does not undergo any chemical modifications or refining steps that alter or change the compounds that would have been present in traditional smoking.
In theory, some of the mutagenic compounds (those that cause cancer)
normally present in traditionally smoked foods are present in much smaller quantities in liquid smoke, meaning that liquid smoke might actually be somewhat safer for you than traditionally smoked foods. However, be aware that liquid smoke will have some amount of mutagenic compounds present. As a substitute for smoking foods, it should be as safe as traditional smoking, but you probably shouldn’t douse a teaspoon of it on your morning eggs every day until further research is done.
In addition to the following two recipes, consider revisiting the Salmon Gravlax recipe from earlier in this chapter (see Salmon Gravlax) and adding liquid smoke to give it a cold-smoked flavor.
S’mores Ice Cream
This recipe uses liquid smoke to impart the toasted flavor of campfire-roasted marshmallows. The concept was inspired by a demo by Kent Kirshenbaum of NYU’s Experimental Cuisine Collective.
