# Help with Frozen Pomegranite Spheres



## hrmn (Feb 8, 2017)

We recently added a poached pear dish to our dessert menu where I work. The CDC and I would like to make it so that the included sauce for the dish will ooze out of the center (where seeds were) as the guest forks into the pear. We are following the basic concept for frozen purée spheres from this video.






It is a frozen liquid then encased in cocoa butter. Using a spherification mold, the chef and I tested the concept by freezing raspberry coulis into the molds and attaching two half spheres together at their flat side. Then melt the cocoa butter and dip the sphere in it and allow to cool.

This worked ok, however we are facing two concerns. The frozen sphere would benefit from several layers of cocoa butter, rather than just one, as well as a lower temperature / thicker consistency so the outer layer holds up (I may have just answered that one myself?). Secondly, our chosen sauce for the dish is actually not a purée at all. It is simply a pomegranate drinking vinegar to which pomegranate seeds are added. We have found that the vinegar does not freeze in either of our freezers (something like 0-5*F in the walk-in, and 7*F on-line), however from my research, all results are saying that it should (solute of 5-6% acetic acid in water at 28*F).

I conducted an additional test in order to reduce the acetic acid to just 2% by combing 1:2 ratio vinegar & water in a small ramiken in hopes of ice crystal formation. The vinegar settled to the bottom while the water stayed on top and froze to a very brittle layer (kind of like a half-frozen lake in the winter). I understand this to be the case because vinegar and water do not form a proper emulsion alone.

How can I form a better emulsion without loosing the intense flavor of the vinegar? Could I possibly add in some ultratex and spin it in the VitaMix to thicken? Or would another process more efficiently create the result I'm looking for?

Thanks for the help in advance.


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## hrmn (Feb 8, 2017)

After some further research I’ve found a pretty obvious reason for why the vinegar is not freezing at these temperatures. I checked the company website for Pok Pok Som drinking vinegars and the one we are using contains sea salt in the list of ingredients (not listed on the actual product label). It seems this would require liquid nitrogen in order to freeze properly. We don’t have that available where I work so I may have to try another sauce instead of the drinking vinegar.


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