Kitchen Alchemy
The power to quick-freeze foods with liquid nitrogen opens up exciting new horizons in the kitchen

The most common culinary use for liquid nitrogen is making ice cream. All you need is a large bowl about halfway full of your favorite ice cream base, a wooden spoon or spatula, and some liquid nitrogen. If you're using a metal bowl you'll want to use a potholder to hold it in place. Carefully pour a small amount of the liquid nitrogen into the ice cream base and stir it in. If the ice cream is not firm enough when the nitrogen evaporates, simply add some more and continue stirring until it reaches the right consistency. Do not add large amounts of the nitrogen at once, because you will run the risk of splashing the nitrogen as you stir. If the ice cream gets too hard you will have to wait for it to defrost a bit before eating it. Ice cream that gets too cold can stick to and burn the tongue in a most unpleasant manner.

The beauty of making ice cream with liquid nitrogen is that you don't need to use traditional safeties to keep it from getting too hard. Sugar and alcohol are generally added to the bases to keep large ice crystals from forming and to help facilitate smooth, creamy textures. When using liquid nitrogen, the ice crystals are formed so quickly that they these precautions become unnecessary and smooth ice creams are a guaranteed result regardless of what is in the base.

Broken Honeydew:  Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot

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7 Comments

this sounds like a very fun thing to do. i should try obliterating raspberries sometime or tenderizing my broccoli

bishop0123

from Webster, Tx

I have heard that if you drop dry ice into rubbing alcohol you get an extremely cold liquid. Not as cold as liquid nitrogen, and you can't mix it with with food, but still interesting none the less.

At North Dakota State, we used to put marshmallows in a pool of liquid nitrogen and then give them to kids to eat in demonstrations. It's especially fun with the big ones becuase you blow "smoke" as you eat them.

drayegon

from Redding , CA

If you had done this frozen a marshmallow and given it to a kid to eat just how long did it take you to get him to the hospital to get the pain out of his mouth from your not know what you were doing. Didn't you read just how cold it makes things and just what some of this stuff can do. You do not freeze something like a marshmallow as it is dry and when you freeze it it becomes very very cold about 200-F to be exact. It will if put in the mouth at that temp freeze itself to what ever it touches. Great story but just a story.

Sorry but not something to tell people to do.
dray

Drayegon,

You have made a very good point about what to put in your mouth. Knowing what and how long and how much you're cooling it in liquid nitrogen (LN2), is very important.
Thermo-insulated food foams like marshmallows cooled just a very short time in LN2 are not the same as a liquid frozen solid which may need to "warmed-up" in the freezer for 1/2 hour before they can be eaten safely. Frozen food foams should only have a very thin layer that is frozen will thaw in the hand or in the mouth very quickly. While eating something solid at LN2 temp -320F will cause really bad burns, in the mouth.

Carl

From BT YAHOO news Tuesday July 14 @08;58 am Zulu.

Blumental-style chef blows off his hands.

A German chef has blown off his hands while experimenting with a Heston Blumenthal style cooking technique.

The man, identified only as Martin E, was working on a recipe involving liquid nitrogen when there was a "huge explosion" according to the Berliner Morgenpost.

One of the 24 year old's hands was instantly torn off by the force of the blast, while the other was later amputated in hospital.

playing with ice could be really dangerous :)

Maxson
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www.emailextractor14.com/?page_id=121

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