Agar Clarification –


(Clarified Orange Juice on the left, the original Juice on the right)

Agar is Available from -

www.Modernist-Chef.com

I think this is one of the most exciting things you can do using agar. Really quick, really effective, yet simple clarification of liquids. All you need to clarify juices or stocks is some Agar powder, a whisk, some cheesecloth and that’s about it (I’ll assume if your reading this you own a sauce-pan). Dave Arnold developed this technique and you can see his detailed blog on the technique here.

One of the huge advantages of this is not only the clarity achieved and the fact that its vegetarian but also that its really quick, it can be done start to finish in less than an hour which is super quick compared to gelatin filtration which can take a couple of days!

So here I’m going go through the process of how to clarify orange juice as an example. This principle can be applied to other juices and stocks. One of the brilliant things about this technique is there is almost no loss of flavour. Blind Tasting the clarified juice next to the original juice its not easy to pick them apart.

Clarified Orange Juice.

750g Orange Juice
2g Agar (roughly 0.25% of the total weight – This is a tiny bit higher that Dave Arnold suggested using but it worked best for me – this might just be down to using different brands of Agar)

Pour 250g of the Orange Juice into a pan and whisk in the Agar. Bring this to a simmer whilst stirring.

Remove the pan from the heat and slowly pour the other 500g of room temperature Orange Juice into the hot Orange and Agar mix whilst stirring.

Then quickly pour this mixture into a bowl over an ice bath to set to a gel.

Once completely set gently break up the gelled Orange Juice with a whisk into ‘curds’ of gel.

Place the broken gel into a double layer of cheesecloth (or a tea towel). Lift this up over a coffee filter above a bowl where the clarified juice can collect and gently squeeze the cheesecloth. You should get a steady thin stream of clarified juice coming from the cheesecloth bundle.

And there you go, it’s that easy – you’ve now got clarified Orange Juice (or what ever you have decided to clarify).

Pretty Cool!

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