Continuing from part I on spherification, above is an example of reverse spherification that doesn’t take a lot of effort: multi-colored yogurt drink spheres.
Here’s what you’ll need:
For the Bath
- 5g of Sodium Alginate
- 1L of distilled water
Take an immersion blender and thoroughly mix the sodium alginate with the distilled water. Tap water isn’t recommended as your local supply of water may already contain trace amounts of calcium that will react with the sodium alginate. Let the bath sit for awhile for the air bubbles to disappear. Note that the bath is much thicker than water.
For the Liquid filling
- 100 mL of yogurt drink – reduced (Vitagen, Yakult also work well)
- 2.5g of Calcium Lactate
- 0.5g of Xanthan
Thoroughly mix all three ingredients together, again you can use an immersion blender for this. Alternatively, you can also slowly heat the ingredients instead of blending to dissolve the xanthan without creating air bubbles. Strain your liquid through a sieve or hand strainer to remove any air bubbles. Check the thickness of your “yogurt drink”- it should be as dense or denser than the sodium alginate bath.
Take a small spoon – a bar stirring spoon works very well, and fill it with your yogurt mixture. Now this part will be trial and error- immerse the spoon into the sodium alginate bath and rotate the spoon to help create a spherical shape. The yogurt mixture should be staying together at this point with a visible membrane forming around it. After making a few, let them “cook” in the bath for a few minutes- the longer you leave them in, the thicker the shell. Take the spheres out with a slotted spoon and bathe them in a tap water bath. From there you can enjoy your spheres immediately or store them in a sugar water bath in the fridge- they’ll keep for hours.
