Do you want to know everything about the three types of
carrageenan and its controversy?
Get the carrageenan primer and lots of recipes today on WTF.
Hello, and welcome to WTF, where we transform food here in the
Modernist Pantry test kitchen.
I'm chef Scott Guerin.
And I'm Janie Wang, the owner of Modernist Pantry.
Today, Scott and I are going to be talking about carrageenan, or carrageenan,
depending on how you want to say it.
So we're going to do an entire primer on carrageenan.
So we're going to talk about what it is, what they do, how do you use it?
And then we're going to have a couple of really cool demos.
So definitely stick around for the entire video, because
this one is, it's a journey.
It's not a quick ride on here.
So let's first start off with, you know, we carry three
different types of carrageenan.
What are they?
And what are some of the differences between them?
So we have three different types, like you said, we have Kappa, Iota and Lambda.
And they are jelling agents and a thickener from algae.
So very similar to like an agar or whatnot, but they do have
different properties and they give different textures between the types
and from something like an agar.
Yeah.
So let's kind of break them down one at a time.
So let's first start with Kappa.
What is, what exactly is it?
What type of jelling does Kappa do and how do you use it?
Kappa provides a clear, brittle gel.
Okay.
So something you may be able to equate this to is gelatin.
It's clear when you look at it and when you go to cut into it, it
kind of splits or splinters, right?
That's a brittle gel.
Next we'll just go to Iota.
It's a opaque or cloudy, soft gel.
So it's almost, when you go to cut it, it kind of compresses
and it'll be able to spread.
That gives you a very different type of gel than a Kappa, right?
And then Lambda is more of a thickening agent.
And Lambda is used primarily for dairy or soy and nut milks to
kind of give a proper mouthfeel.
So it gives a creaminess without having to add any extra
calories or cream or fats to it.
So if you're looking, thinking about using carrageenan, the big question
you want to ask yourself is what type of effect you're trying to achieve.
Right.
And you can't really use them interchangeably, so you have
to kind of know ahead of time.
And when we do, people do want to start using carrageenan what's, you know,
the basics of hydration, temperature, you know, how do they get it in there?
So you want to take carrageenan and you want to heat it at least to 185 degrees.
So just below a boiling point, if you bring it to a boil, that's totally fine.
It doesn't matter if it goes over that, but you want to make sure that it gets
heated and that's a hydration temperature.
You can blend it in all you want, but it needs to be above 185 degrees
Fahrenheit for it to then cool.
And around 160 degrees Fahrenheit, it'll start to gel.
Right.
Yep.
Okay.
And is that true for all three of them, or just the two jelly ones?
So it's true for the two jelly ones.
That's a good question.
It's good for Kappa carrageenan or Iota carrageenan.
Like I said earlier, the Lambda is just thickening.
So if you take it and we're going to do it right here in this demo
of eggnog that we do, it's already mixed in with our eggs and our sugar.
And then we're going to add in some hot cream, and that's
only just to temper the eggs.
You don't have to bring it up to a temperature afterwards.
It's going to thicken.
So it's easier to do than a traditional eggnog, which you'd have
to blend, then heat again, then cool.
Which we can just blend it in there.
It tempers the eggs while the hot milk goes in.
And then we have a really beautiful consistency.
Yeah.
And one of the things that I think you brought up this point when you and I
were talking off camera that I thought was really valuable, is that a lot
of times when people are cooking on the stove top and they are adding a
hydrocolloid like Kappa or Iota to gel and they're wondering why it's not jelling
properly or they're like my gel's too soft, and my gel is just not setting.
But I think I have it at the right temperature.
So what do you, what is typically going on?
So a lot of people will stick a thermometer down and it it's
really close to the bottom.
Well, that bottom layer may be at, we'll just say 185 degrees,
the proper jelly temperature, or they don't even use a thermometer.
They look at it, they see a few bubbles come up.
They think the entire mixture is there.
They stop their cooking process, but the top can be at 160 degrees.
Right.
So you have to really make sure that you're stirring and it comes either to
a full boil or, you know, or you have a very precise, you know, instant-read
thermometer or something like the Control Freak from PolyScience where
you can really measure the temperature of the entire batch that you're doing.
So you want to make sure it's heated properly all the way
through before you take it off.
Because a lot of people, we get questions like, oh, my vegan cheese isn't working,
which Kappa is a huge component of a lot of different vegan cheeses.
So if you take that, and you don't heat it properly, you're going to end up
with a vegan cheese spread as opposed to a meltable, sliceable vegan cheese.
Yeah.
And then it kind of question people think that it's because either they
didn't use enough carrageenan or that there's something wrong with the
carrageenan when it's really just kind of making sure that it's properly heated.
Yeah.
That's a good thing.
I generally tell people if you take you know, a hundred grams or, you
know, a few ounces of water and you sprinkle a little carrageenan in, you
mix it well, so that's another thing.
If you're going to mix it, mix it in a blender and mix it with a hand blender,
make sure it's either dispersed in some sort of sugar or other dry ingredient.
It'll just kind of help it from clumping.
Yep.
You take that.
You bring it to a boil, let it set.
And if it completely gels, your Kappa is fine.
It may be somewhere else that the issues are happening.
It's either too acidic, which is another thing we can talk about
with all these hydrocolloids.
Kappa isn't the biggest fan of acidity.
If it goes below a four pH, or the same with Iota, if it goes below that four
pH, they don't really like to gel up.
So you either have to buffer it or you can add the acidity later, which a lot
of people like to do with vegan cheeses.
So there's a lot of little things to know about it.
And we do have a chart so people can check it out on our blog that talks
about all the different carrageenans.
You know, kind of how to maneuver your way around, 'cause they are
finicky, so you can get them right.
And then on that chart we also have like usage ratios, making sure, just
reiterating the hydration temperature, dispersion techniques, so that
information will all be available.
So.
Since we were actually just talking about vegan cheese, do we want to start
jumping into a couple of our demos here?
So we did talk about vegan cheese and we can probably talk about this.
The vegan muenster we have and we have a recipe for it on our blog.
And we do have three kits of vegan cheese, but this is a kind of slightly
different, kind of a shout-out to Chef Skye who this recipe is from.
He's a good a fan of ours and we're a fan of his, and he does really
amazing, you know, things with vegan cheeses, all different types of
vegan recipes to mimic, you know?
Yeah.
Everything from beef to fish to cheese.
So, yep.
And we actually do have a WTF episode that we did about our vegan
cheese kits, so check that out.
But this particular muenster recipe is not part of that WTF, but it
will be available on the blog, so if you do want to make that.
So this is one of Chef Skye's recipes.
It's wonderful.
And it uses the Kappa carrageenan.
And so yeah, if you want to give it a try.
Yeah.
You could also take that recipe, mess around with it and try
something new for yourself.
And then we have, so our recipe here, I'd like to kind of talk about.
Well, we can get into our holiday season's here.
So we can turn on our blender.
Before we do that, what are we making here?
I was going to talk about it, but yes it is the eggnog
that we had mentioned before.
So it is egg yolk, carrageenan Lambda or Lambda carrageenan, and sugar in there.
That's the main ingredients that I want here.
And then my milk mixture over here, which is hot, or at least it was hot
when we began, but that's totally fine.
So this just has, you know, the infused spices.
It's got some clove, it's got some nutmeg, a cinnamon stick was in there.
I've taken all those out.
You can still see pieces of it, you know, little bits of the nutmeg.
That's good.
'Cause you want to be able to see it.
And this is nice and warm.
So as you can see, this is already starting to get nice and creamy.
You see how it's changed color from that really yellow, to kind
of a more creamy custard yellow.
So I'm going to slowly add in my milk.
So once I pour this in, it's just like a normal tempering.
Usually you do this with a whisk and a bowl.
I'm just going to use a blender here because it's really easy and
it helps activate that carrageenan.
So that Lambda is starting to absorb some of the milk and it's going
to start thickening it right away.
The only issue with this is that you may get a little bit of air bubbles on top.
With that, you can scoop them off, or you can pass them through a Superbag
and it'll knock down those air bubbles.
So it's very simple.
We've got to keep pouring this in.
You can get this recipe on the blog as well.
Finish that one up and it should be up very soon if it's not already up.
And you can see it has a beautiful consistency.
I might pop this top off so we can get a good look at how that
almost looks like an ice cream base.
Let me turn that off so we can actually hear again.
Yeah, it's still, it's still nice and warm.
So you can serve this directly.
Yeah.
Over time, it should slightly thicken up a little bit more
because that's how Lambda works.
It doesn't work immediately in here.
Over a little bit of time, it'll start to absorb and thicken a little bit more.
Okay.
Totally.
Yeah.
So if you make it and you're like, it's not where I want it to be.
Don't put in more Lambda.
Just give it a little bit of time.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
You can keep blending it as well.
If you want to let it blend for 10 minutes, I don't necessarily find there's
any benefit to that, but yeah, over time and I'm talking about a very small amount.
It's not going to thicken up, you know, to the point of where it's pudding,
but you could do a little bit more.
Right here.
We can see, we have a beautiful eggnog that we made earlier and
I'll pour it into this cup for me.
We also have a second demo that we're going to be doing.
Isn't that right, Janie?
Just when you're kind of excited about it.
While you're talking about that, I can't do the eggnog because of the dairy.
So it is, that's a proper eggnog.
Yeah, there's actually rum on the recipe too.
So a little bit of rum can go in there and mixes in beautifully.
I did try this the other day.
Like, I couldn't really drink it.
Like I had a little sip and the rum really, like for, at least
for me, it really brought out like a strong vanilla flavor.
Yeah.
Super good.
And then I had to stop, so I don't die.
Delicious.
Can I have that little plate right there?
Absolutely.
So the next demo is vegan flan.
So a lot of the recipes I see online use corn starch to make vegan flan.
Yeah.
Or agar, yeah, exactly.
And agar can give a really off-putting texture.
It's a bit too chewy.
It's a bit too brittle.
Yep.
So when you're taking these ingredients like an Iota or a Kappa, you can kind
of find a good balance between the two.
And with our vegan gelatin, which we use in this flan, and it's a proprietary
blend that makes things you can replace it one-to-one for actual gelatin.
So if you have a recipe that is for Knox gelatin or for a powder gelatin that,
or even sheet gelatin, if you're doing it by weight, you can then take the
vegan gelatin and replace it by weight.
Yep.
It's a one-to-one replacement.
The one thing you don't want to do is try and bloom it like a
traditional gelatin, because it's not.
It's, it's a hydrocolloid.
So you want to blend it just like I said, with the other carrageenan.
Yeah.
So just like the Kappa and Iota and Lambda, the dry
blend and not the wet blend.
Yeah.
And I've found that this, I've found that this has a really, almost creamy
texture too, so did a little playing around with it and I was able to
make a beautiful vegan flan recipe.
Yeah.
If you've ever made flan, usually you have to bake it.
It's a baked custard, you have to make the caramel.
This one, if you make it and you can have it in a few hours,
if you just do it perfectly.
I like to let it sit for a little bit longer, 'cause I like a lot of
that caramel sauce to come out of it.
Yeah.
So I put it into a Mason jar.
It's just really easy for storing.
You can put it into whatever container you want.
And I'll just simply go around the outside.
And you can see it's already starting to pull apart.
The best thing you want to do here is not trying to flop it out, but invert.
Flip it over.
May take a little bit.
Sometimes I have to get it in there with my spatula again,
make a little air bubble.
There we go.
Perfect.
Yes.
So this is a great dish.
I don't know if it's, I feel like I've been eating a lot of sweets on camera,
but I do have a total sweet tooth.
And I love this flan because it tastes exactly like normal flan.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Like it's hard to describe.
So we're just going to like, live scoop it here so that you can
kind of see how it separates.
Yeah.
The best part about this is you're never going to get that flan that
gets overcooked and gets gritty.
So you're always going to have that nice, beautiful creamy look.
Look how nice that is.
It separates with an agar, or like some other, oops, jelling agent,
it's just going to all fall apart.
Yep.
So it's creamy, custardy just like a traditional flan would be.
Good.
Great.
So definitely, the recipe's on the blog for this one.
Okay.
Yeah.
I'm a big fan of that recipe.
When I made it, it took a lot of kind of tinkering to get it right,
because flan is a great thing when it's, you know, done properly.
And obviously with a vegan alternative, you want it to
be just as good if not better.
Yeah.
So, you know, if you want to download all these resources,
they're all available up on the blog.
We're going to try to do like a couple mini videos, maybe, on some of these.
So, and if you do want to see us do more like recipe-type videos or
shorter-form videos or any other type of videos, leave comments and mail in,
because so that, you know, if there's demand for it, we'll definitely do it.
I love it.
Yeah.
Send some snail mail here to Modernist Pantry.
Postcards.
Yeah.
One more thing I just want to make sure that people understand, Kappa
makes that brittle clear gel.
Yep.
Iota makes the opaque soft gel.
Lambda is a thickener, use for dairy, soy or nut milks.
With, you know, something like the vegan gelatin, or if you wanted to make
your own, you know, kind of blends, you want to take the Kappa and Iota.
You can get a best of both worlds between that, you know, brittle and soft.
So you can really test out and do things on your own.
I've never tested every single ratio of these, but you guys can
try, and you can send me stuff and then we can talk about it together.
Absolutely.
And before we wrap up, I just kind of want to, we're going to do
like a little mini lightning round of a couple of common questions
that we do get about carrageenan.
So we're going to just hit Scott with them real quick.
So the first one that we get regular inquiries about, which is that people
will buy carrageenan from other places.
Yes.
And they will be brown.
So they will be like, why is the carrageenan that I already have brown,
but the one that I got from you is white?
So that is a very common question that we get.
So the reason why it's brown is it's just a less refined product.
So there's more, you know, impurities in it.
And if you're going to use that, you may have to use more because those
impurities take up space and weight.
So I would definitely suggest ours is a very refined it's,
it's almost completely white, you know, perfect white, slightly off.
But if you use ours, you're going to have to use less and you may not get a,
an off color or an off flavor from them.
And also a more consistent jelling strength as well.
And then the other big question and kind of the controversy about carrageenan is
that some people think it's carcinogenic.
And you know, there's a lot of brew haha about it, but what's,
what's really going on there?
So carrageenan makes, as we see, we have three here and then a blend of our three,
or our two, whatever it happens to be.
But it's a secret.
There's so many different types of it.
And the one that people found could be, could be is the key, is
a degraded quality of carrageenan.
So that is one that, you know, someone wrote could be carcinogenic and then
everyone, you know, they saw carrageenan and they assumed it's every single type.
And that that's just not true.
Yeah.
So it's important when you're looking for different ingredients like these,
you have to make sure they're food-grade.
Because some of these products you have, there are versions of
them that are industrial-grade.
And that's fine for industrial purposes, but you don't want to
be putting that into your body.
Right?
Correct.
So, easy comparison is like, we sell calcium chloride.
You can get calcium chloride at Home Depot to spray on your driveway,
but you're not going to want to use that for spherification.
So it's kind of like that in a sense, you know, like they're not all created
equal just because the names are the same.
So, well, hopefully that addresses that.
And if you do have any more questions, actually Chef Skye on his website has
a wonderful article where he goes a lot more in-depth about carrageenan
and, and the myths behind it.
So I recommend checking out his website, if you are curious more
about, you know, about this issue.
Yeah.
And you should be able to find that in the information below.
So great.
Yeah.
I guess that wraps it up for us, for the carrageenan primer.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Get all our recipes online.
And from here in the Modernist Pantry test kitchen, I'm Janie
Wang and I'm Scott Guerin.
We hope you enjoyed today's episode.
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