This is an open letter of sorts.
A couple of weeks back an anonymous person responded to a job posting I had online that enticed prospective cooks with the possibility of working with hydrocolloids if they were selected to join my team. It was roughly 1:00 AM when I opened the would-be applicant's email...fortunately I deleted the email despite my boozy inclinations to rain down a torrent of obscenity laden "who the f' do you think you are?" tirades.
So...what did this tough guy/gal who refused to give their name have to say? Well, it was 1:00 AM, and I had a few beers, BUT the gist of the "applicant" was this:
"I will cut off my pinky if you can find one cook who wants to work with hydrocolloids. No one in this area (Ithaca) has ever cooked with hydrocolloids. They are for foo-foo chefs in fancy restaurants in big cities..."
You get the picture; people are incredibly critical sometimes, especially when they have no idea about the subject that scares them so. And yes, I am making a grand presumption here, that my anonymous critic that evening has no idea of what a hydrocolloid even is. Here is why I have made such a grand leap: simply put, a hydrocolloid is a substance that forms a gel in water, most commonly used in the dental field for taking dental impressions.
A colloid is a substance that is dispersed throughout another substance; hydrocolloids are substances that disperse evenly throughout water on a microscopic level and form a gel.
Without going into shear rates and thermoreversability of different hydrocolloids, here is a short list of some of the most commonly used hydrocolloids in food, and my vindication:
Agar agar and carageenan, which are derived from seaweed; gelatin, derived from bovine and fish sources; pectin, which is extracted from citrus peels and apples. Other forms, including ones derived from microbial sources are xanthan gum, and guar gum, as well as cellulose derived varieties like alginate and starches (like flour, corn starch, and potato starch).
Some of these ingredients seem very familiar to anyone who has ever eaten a gelatin dessert, made a pectin thickened jam or jelly, or thickened gravy with flour or corn starch. Without xanthan gum, and other natural gums, your salad dressings would always separate into its two phases of oil and vinegar, pickle relish would not be diced pickle suspended in its brine, and your toothpaste would not come out of the tube as a paste. Xanthan gum is also used to replace gluten in many gluten-free baked goods.
Agar agar is used as a vegan alternative to gelatin, and to make dental molds. Carageenan is used to prevent ice crystals from forming in ice cream, and to allow lower-fat versions of the frozen treat to seem "creamy."
And yes, chef's do use some of these hydrocolloids as part of the modernist cuisine bag of tricks, (you may know it as "Molecular Gastronomy"...which is inaccurate nomenclature, boiling water or frying an egg are cooking on a molecular level, too...another debate for another day...) I have been known to take a soy-mushroom brine and thicken it with agar and make a savoury "pudding" out of it. I think that people who respect the process use it to enhance "real" cooking and not as a substitute for it or as a cheap parlour trick. Again, another debate...another day.
Where was I? Ah, yes...
So, my anti-modernist cuisine "friend," you are going to try and tell me that, in what could be considered as the "foodiest area in New York State" due to the highest number of restaurants per capita, Not. One. Cook. Has ever made a box of J-ello? Or helped mom bake an apple pie? (Fer chri'sake you're cooking with gelatin every time you roast meat).
I cry bull-shit!
I decry you as a sad little person...one who believes that just because you have an opinion, I want to hear it. And an even sadder one who has the blinders on so snugly that you are unable to see the truth beyond your version of it.
