This Sriracha Spherification Caviar is a fun and simple way to use molecular gastronomy to spruce up your cooking! Perfect for sprinkling over salads, eggs, or pasta.
I’d never heard of “molecular gastronomy” until my fine-dining lover of a boyfriend introduced the concept to me. I’m still not entirely sure what exactly molecular gastronomy entails except fancy, scientific ways of preparing food.
So I was feeling especially adventurous and decided to try my hand at one of the molecular gastronomic (gastronomical? gastronomy?) methods known as cold oil spherification. You essentially drop some hot hydrophilic (water) stuff in cold hydrophobic (oil) stuff, causing the droplets of water to quickly close in on themselves into a perfect, hard ball, closely resembling caviar.
Supplies to make spherical sriracha pearls
- Agar-Agar (a substance derived from algae that acts much like gelatin): $4, find it in the Asian/Ethnic section of your grocery, or in an Asian supermarket. You’ll want the powdered form.
- Medicine dropper: $1, find it in the pharmacy section of your grocery or drugstore
Tips to make spherical sriracha
- Really cold oil. You’ll need to use a flavorless oil, like canola, and pop it in the freezer for a few hours until it’s thick.
- Hot agar solution. In this case we’re using a combination of sriracha and water to dissolve the agar-agar.
- The perfect height. You’ll drop the hot sriracha solution, one droplet at a time, into the cold oil. The height must be perfect; too high and your droplets shatter into baby droplets, too low and your droplets don’t sink below the surface. 5 inches above the oil seems to be a sweet spot.
- A tall glass. Your droplets need to cool completely before reaching the bottom of the cold oil. Use the tallest glass you have!
This (obviously) took me many attempts to finally get (sort of) right. And it works with sriracha, but I haven’t had the chance to experiment with other tasties yet.
And this is also a bit different than basic spherification, which involves submerging a substance with sodium alginate into a calcium bath. The spherification we’re doing today produces solid “caviar” balls, while basic spherification creates a solid coating around a liquid inside. Maybe we’ll try that one day too.
So if you’re ready to impress the hell out of your friends and win the hearts of sriracha lovers everywhere, whip up these sizzling sriracha science experiments…Sriracha Spherification Caviar!
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup sriracha sauce
- 1/4 cup water
- 1 Tbsp agar-agar
- 1 cup cold canola oil
- 1 cup cold water
Instructions
- Place oil in a tall glass and chill in freezer until a bit sludgy (about 3 hours).
- In a small saucepan, bring sriracha, 1/4 cup water, and agar-agar to a slow simmer over medium heat, stirring constantly. If mixture begins to smoke, remove pan from stove, reduce heat, then continue cooking.
- Simmer for about 5 minutes, then remove from heat and pour mixture into a small bowl.
- Draw sriracha mixture into your medicine dropper tool. Drop sriracha solution, one droplet at a time, into cold oil from about 5 inches from the surface of the oil.
- When you’ve used all your sriracha mixture, strain the caviar by pouring the oil + caviar glass over either a perforated or wire mesh spoon or bowl.
- Place strained caviars into bowl of ice water to remove remaining oil, then strain from water and serve!
Tips & Tricks
- You may want to keep a reserve glass of oil in the freezer in case the sriracha droplets begin to heat your cold oil. If you notice your caviars are starting to turn out funky, grab your spare cold oil and keep on going.
- Work quickly! As the sriracha mixture cools, the caviar strays further and further from the perfectly round form that you want.
Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. - Use to garnish any dish from eggs to Bloody Mary’s.
paola says
hola!!
y como conservo esto? ¿lo tengo que poner al frio? o se mantiene a temperatura ambiente?
me encanto!!
Sarah says
Hi Paola! Had to Google translate this to help you out, but yes, store these in the refrigerator in an airtight container 🙂
Meldina says
Hi Sarah,
Do these pearls have a liquid center or will it be solid?
Im so excited to play with these. 🙂
Sarah says
Hi Meldina! These will be solid all the way through. For the “pop in your mouth” spheres you’ll use a different process (that involves a bit more science-y ingredients).
Lisa says
Hi Sarah
These look amazing! Would they keep in a vinegar/pickling solution out of the fridge? I have a dozen idea running through my head of what I want to do with them 🙂
Sarah says
Hi Lisa! I don’t see them going bad too quickly out of the fridge, though I haven’t personally tried it so I’m not entirely sure. Would love to hear how it works out for ya! 😀
Michelle says
This mix didn’t work for me at all – it was way too thick. I found another recipe which was 1/4 cup sriracha, 1/4 cup water and only 1 tsp agar. That worked much better than 1 tbpsn. Not sure if your recipe has a typo?
Sarah says
Sorry to hear it didn’t work for you, Michelle! This is quite an old recipe so it’s in need of a revamp, thanks for bringing this up!
Adam says
Yeah the ratios in this recipe are not correct. I tried your way and it was the consistency of tomato paste in the pot. It wasn’t pourable or drippable. I washed out the pot and when the water touched it, it hardened to the consistency of a hard jelly candy.
As per another comment, I tried it again with a teaspoon of agar and it worked much better. Perhaps you have a typo in your recipe.
What I o agree with is to have a second cup of oil in the freezer, because the hot liquid does start to warm up the oil after a little while, so a second cup will ensure good shapes for the whole batch.
Sarah says
Thanks for letting us know, Adam!
Stuart says
Hi, thanks for the recipe, I too found a teaspoon of the powered was more desirable and tastes a lot better. Also a little extra salt enhanced the flavour