Post Punk Kitchen Forum

My attempt to learn spherification: part two. If you have some kombucha, a bit of agar powder, vegetable oil and a pipette or squeeze bottle handy, you can make these little beauties easily. Simple and fun!

WHOA!

super cool!

That's awesome! And pretty photos, too.

I like your tiny balls. <3

um, what??! My mind is blown!

Why, thank you! :P

whoa. this is amazing! because of your first spherification post I have had stuff on my Amazon wish list that my husband keeps giving me odd looks about. you rock.

My husband gives me odd looks about it too -- but he liked the sushi! I get all of my molecular info off of the interwebs -- and if you already have a food scale and a few pipettes and a plastic syringe, that's all you need. That and agar powder!

Oh cool!

Beautiful! It looks just like salmon roe, which I used to love. Does it pop in your mouth? I am sooooo inspired to give it a try!

ooh, just got a scale for my birthday. always have agar (mmmmmm, pudding). the rest should be easy to obtain. yay!

Thanks! No, they do not pop -- they have the same soft jello-like consistency throughout. They do bounce, though!

What I learned from doing this: make sure your oil is super-cold -- 30 to 45 minute sit in the refrigerator. Use a tall glass so the balls have a chance to firm up before they hit the bottom. You have a small time window to work between the juice being just warm and the juice beginning to gel in the bowl. Scoop or strain the balls out of the oil a few times during this process -- you don't want too much weight on them in the bottom of the glass. They are strong, but will mush if weight is applied to them for several minutes. Good luck! I hope it gives you some beautiful balls! : )

So very cool!

I make my own kombucha (no store in my area carries the GT/Synergy stuff); do you think the resulting product would still be worth making with plain kombucha, or should I try and make my own version of ginger-infused kombucha first?
It looks so cool; I'm really impressed by this.

How cool is it that you make your own kombucha! Yes, plain kombucha would be fine -- you can actually use whatever liquid you want: carrot juice, mixers, juice from a juicer, etc. -- it really is more of a texture than a taste thing. Also! You don't need to put in in sushi -- I just did because I thought it would make a cool photo. But you can also put them on ice cream, a cupcake, martini, maybe use them to make a mini bubble tea, etc.

Wow, that looks amazing!

That is amazing! Beautiful job! :) I've always wanted to try this... Maybe I will now.

Thanks for the advice!
I only recently started brewing it, but it's actually quite easy. The only difficult part is locating a mother/scoby, but if you live in a big enough city there are probably plenty of people willing to give you one for free to start your own batches.
I usually have 2 litres on the go at once and just use an old, sanitized pickle jar. Here's a batch that just finished:


and then I use old, self-sealing beer or wine bottles to bottle it:

After you get a scoby (the main component to fermenting kombucha), each batch only costs cents (water+tea+sugar). I recommend looking into it; it's a lot of fun!

Those look awesome!

Thanks! Now I am definitely kombucha-curious. I will look into finding a scoby and seeing what happens -- thanks again!