Here on WTF, we've covered emulsifiers, but today we're
going to cover a super emulsifier.
Today on WTF, we're gonna look at polysorbate 80 and how to make everything
from a vinegarette to a lobster roll and even a heat-stable beurre blanc.
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, one of the owners of Modernist Pantry.
So here on WTF every week, Scott and I, we take an interesting
ingredient or technique.
And we talk about how do you use it, introduce you to it.
And if you like what you see here, remember to subscribe and ring the
bell, because then you'll get our fresh content that comes out every Tuesday.
And today, we're going to be talking about an ingredient that's fairly
common in, I would say, the commercial production industry, but not so
much in the culinary world yet.
And that ingredient is polysorbate 80.
So we're going to cover what exactly it is.
How do you use it?
As well, we have a couple of fun little demos in order to get you
started in this particular ingredient.
So Scott, what is polysorbate 80?
Polysorbate 80 is a super emulsifier.
And what that's going to do is help water-based liquids and
oils mix together very easily.
And one of the ways we're going to do this is we're going to
show it in this vinaigrette.
But we're also going to show it in a hot emulsion and that it's also
going to keep that hot emulsion together at high temperatures,
which is extremely difficult.
Okay.
And now I know that before, you know, we started carrying polysorbate 80,
the only place where I've heard of it is really in the cosmetic industry.
So obviously, you know, there's differences between that.
What is the difference, I guess just briefly, between something
that we sell versus something that's used in cosmetic applications?
This is completely food-grade.
That's the biggest difference because if you're going to be using it in any food,
you want to have the food-grade version.
The cosmetics one is specifically made for cosmetics.
So if you're going to be using polysorbate 80 in foods, make
sure that it is food-grade.
That's the number one.
Yeah.
You want to make sure it's as pure as possible.
Right?
So if you are, you know, watching this episode and you do want to
try some, we don't sell ours on like sites like Amazon and stuff.
So just be careful if you are trying to get it elsewhere, or anywhere,
that you are reading the lines to make sure you get the proper grades,
to avoid any unwanted side effects.
Of course, everything we sell is food-grade here.
So, and you kind of mentioned it being a super emulsifier.
Now, what are some applications where having that, you know,
super emulsion might be useful?
So anywhere from a vinaigrette or mayonnaise base to a hot
emulsion like buerre blanc.
And then things like foams or even ice cream and breads.
So you can use this in many different applications.
Some people just, you know, the first time you can see it or read
about it, you hear ice cream.
'Cause that's probably the main one.
And what it does for ice cream is it holds those fat and water together really well.
It helps prevent a little bit of the ice crystal formation.
The biggest thing is that it's such a nice emulsifier, that
it will work with meltability.
So this is sitting under hot lights and we can watch it pretty much the entire time.
This is an ice cream that we made.
It's our ice cream.
We put polysorbate 80 in it.
And we've done other ice cream videos, but this one where the first time we're
putting polysorbate 80 and you can see that it's going to hold onto its shape
a lot longer than almost any other ice cream that you're going to make.
And that's used in a ratio of about 0.5% of the total weight of the recipe.
And that's where you want to kind of hang around with polysorbate.
Okay.
It does have a little bit of a flavor.
Yeah.
Okay.
And so speaking of flavor, that is a call that we get every once in
a while, where someone decides to purchase the polysorbate 80 and try it.
And they decide to kind of just dip their finger in it, to like, get
a little taste of it before they use it and they call it a panic.
What's that about?
So it does have a slight metallic taste, but if you're using it in
the proper ratio, the 0.5%, you're not going to get that flavor at all.
So if you start going over or if you go into the 100% ratio by just
tasting straight out of the bottle, you're going to get that flavor.
If you taste it straight.
But always, you know, mix it in the proper percentages and it's
going to do its job and it's not going to be flavoring your product.
Yeah.
And 0.5% is very small.
It's light it's 0.05.
So not five.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Good 0.5%.
Yeah.
Some people get, they think it's about half too.
I have a lot of people do that.
Where you say 0.5%, they go 50%.
No, no, no half of 1%.
So yeah, it's a very small amount that you're going to be
adding and that's all you need.
Yeah, that will work.
Trust us.
And if you do find that whatever you're emulsifying does taste
metallic, it means pull back, just pull it back and you'll be okay.
Yeah.
Especially with the lighter flavors or something like that.
You could potentially get a little bit in there, but you can
go lower and it'll still work.
Okay.
And I know that we have a couple of cool demos here.
Why don't we jump into one of those and see what's happening?
Yeah, by the way, I'm going to show off probably my favorite.
It's a mayonnaise-based kind of vinaigrette.
So there's a little bit of egg in there.
That's going to help with the emulsion, but the polysorbate 80 is going to
keep it extremely stable and it's going to hold on to a large amount of oil.
So this is a scallion vinaigrette.
It's almost like a scallion Caesars.
You don't have to worry about the anchovy or anything.
You're getting a big, bright scallion flavor.
There's a lot of black pepper in this recipe.
So I have my scallions in here.
I'm just going to add in one whole egg.
The reason why I add whole egg to a, like, a mayonnaise base is that
I don't want to have to add water.
I just add in the white and there's enough water in there to work great with the egg.
So instead of just doing an egg yolk and water, I always just add the full egg.
I have some lime juice.
I have black pepper.
It's a lot.
It's about five grams of black pepper, but it needs it.
Salt.
I like pepper, too.
Sugar.
So there's a bit of sweetness to this recipe.
And then the polysorbate 80.
And you can see how little we're adding.
Right.
And it seems like hardly any at all.
It's less than a gram that we're adding.
So, I'm just going to put the top on and then we're going to make an emulsion here.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to blend this up until it
makes basically a paste and then I'm going to slowly drizzle in my oil.
The good thing about polysorbate 80 is that I've found if this does
separate, for some reason, if I just dump all the oil in and I expect
it to emulsify, it's not going to.
If you let it separate completely, you can turn on the blender
and it will then emulsify.
Interesting.
So it's really a forgiving product if you do mess something up.
So I'm going to start this and then we'll make our, our dressing here.
And then we'll go on to make a lobster roll, because we're in Maine.
And why wouldn't we make a lobster roll here?
Right?
WTF.
So it's that simple.
You just allow it to make that kind of paste and then you emulsify in your oil.
I like to bump it up just a little bit at the end to really
kind of whip it in there good.
If there's any little pieces that didn't get blended, then it gets blended.
Now we have a really nice dressing that we can then add to our lobster roll.
So instead of having to add on too many like scallions or anything
to it, I can make it all in a big, beautiful dressing, and then I can put
it right on the lobster roll itself.
So if we want to move the bun in, we can talk a bit more.
Yeah.
And while we're talking about this, I know that because we do a lot of different
emulsifiers and stabilizers in here.
And polysorbate 80 being like a super one.
So before we jump into lobster, I know that like, sometimes like some
of our other customers will use it for more unconventional uses where
they have a hard time emulsifying.
What do people call you, call and email in about?
There's numerous different things.
One is the ice cream.
And actually, right now, it'd be a great time to bring in the ice cream because
it's starting to melt a little bit.
But we can see how it's holding the shape of the ice cream.
Right.
And there's just a little bit of runoff on the side, but it's
holding that shape so well.
And also people, with emulsions, there's a lot of things, that
people are making nowadays.
Some people call in about vape juice.
Some people call in even using it with cannabis.
So a lot of the times that people are calling in, it's where, you know, I
actually just yesterday I was able to tell people, if you're working
with cannabis, you know, it can be a really hydrophobic kind of oil.
And then you have polysorbate 80 into it and it's going to mix in really well.
Yeah.
I like that because it's a food application.
It's obviously not something in our particular wheelhouse, but I like knowing
what other people are doing with it.
So it's pretty unique stuff.
Yeah.
And we're getting more and more calls about it.
So me knowing about it and being able to help people is, is a big thing.
All right.
Back to back to lobsters, which is why we're all here.
One more thing.
Another really common use.
And I kind of want to say this just because foams.
Okay.
So last week on WTF, we went over a foam that we put on our
orange creamsicle cocktail.
So I took that exact foam recipe and then I made it with polysorbate.
So I substituted out the foam magic and I put in polysorbate, and actually have some
right here to show you how well it works.
Foam magic is probably our best foaming agent.
But if I add in polysorbate, it works great with foams.
I can make this style of foam.
I can make a lacy foam using something like the magic air maker.
So it works amazing with foams.
And as you can see, yeah, that's a really nice foam, too.
It's a nice, beautiful, stable foam.
So it was just for that versatility.
So if you buy polysorbate 80, you're not like, oh, I can only do one thing with it.
It is really nice that way you can emulsify it, you can foam with it.
So it's kind of cool.
Yeah.
You can make a beautiful foam just like this, and it's just versatile.
That's the biggest thing with polysorbate that people don't quite understand.
They, they see it for foams or they see it for ice cream, but
there's more things that you can do.
So I'm going to take this lobster roll here, or this hotdog bun,
new England style, flat sides.
We toasted it.
I'm going to put a little bit of our scallion dressing on the inside.
Just kind of coat the sides.
You can put it into a squirt bottle if you want.
The green color looks really nice against the bun.
And we can always drizzle a little bit on top too, against
the, the red of the lobster.
So then right here, I have a buerre blanc.
And I kind of wanted to stress test this buerre blanc as much as possible.
So I made this buerre blanc yesterday, right?
So I was able to take a buerre blanc, which is a completely
unstable butter sauce.
So it's a very small amount of liquid with a whole pound of butter mixed into it.
I made it yesterday.
I put it into a bag.
Vacuum sealed that.
And I left it in an immersion circulator overnight.
All right.
So it was at about 140 degrees.
Most buerre blancs would have split.
Okay.
Right.
Then I was able to take it on here and it's at 150 degrees.
And it's holding beautifully.
This looks like a buerre blanc that you could put on a plate.
Right.
So it's nice.
It nappes the spoon.
It coats it.
It's exactly what you want from a buerre blanc.
So it's completely stress tested.
It works.
Okay.
And just like for, for home cooks, like me watching, who don't
understand why that's a big deal.
They're like, all right, you got it.
So what, why is that a big deal?
So you're basically able to hold butter that is melted without separating.
Right?
So when you draw butter, let's say, just for lobster, you'll get that milk solids,
that water that sits at the bottom.
And then you have the clarified butter on top.
That's what would happen here at 150 degrees.
Polysorbate 80 mixed in there.
There's a little bit of wine, a tiny bit of cream.
Now we whisk in the butter, the whole butter, and it makes
this nice creamy sauce here.
And it's just a much more even flavor.
So you get all those milk solids, which have all the salt and anything
in them distributed throughout the fattiness of the butter.
I've also taken this and then brought it all the way up to 180 degrees.
So that's near simmer, right?
That's almost impossible for a beurre blanc that I've ever heard of.
I've never been able to heat one that high without it splitting.
And if you're in a restaurant setting, or even if you make a beurre blanc
for dinner guests, if you break it, it's over, that's the worst part.
If it breaks, you throw it out, you start over.
There's a lot of crutches that you can do to try and bring it back.
But really at that point, you're on borrowed time
because it's pretty much over.
Yeah.
And you're in the middle of service and you're trying to rescue something.
So, so with this, I was able to, you know, I had some lobster.
I like to brine it, then just steam it off, quickly, take it out of the shell.
And then I was able to pop it into this beurre blanc
right before we were shooting.
So I can take some pieces out.
And we're actually going to have a guest here in a little bit who likes lobster.
I'm gonna pull this down.
Okay.
So I can fill this lobster roll.
It looks super tender.
Yes.
It's all claw and knuckle meat.
So someone's eating good today.
And kind of what I like about this approach is that it's, you're getting
a lot of extra flavor in there.
Right?
I mean, I don't know we all, but like being in New England, we run
across lobster rolls all the time.
And they're basically, I'm going to, I might get a little pushback on this, but
I think they basically are all the same.
They're all good and delicious, but I know, but you know, like, like you
put a little bit of butter on it or you put a little bit of mayo on it.
Right.
Which is delicious, but you don't see a lot of, kind of different
plays on the lobster rolls.
I'm happy that we're doing one here today.
Yeah.
So I like a warm lobster roll.
That's why I did it like this because you have the toasted bun and you want
to keep that bun still nice and warm.
I also don't like it when it's too much lobster.
I know that might be blasphemous, but when there's too much lobster on it
and really you have to take it out before you can eat the lobster roll.
Yes, a very controversial WTF.
People are like, what are you saying about lobster?
So with this, I have just some, some scallions that are chopped up and
I can put them right on top here, just to kind of show off that there
is some scallion in it when they get that scallion dressing at the bottom.
And then we have some fried garlic for texture and a bit more flavor
because garlic is delicious.
Well, that looks delicious.
Should we get our special guests down here?
Okay.
So we have a very special guest here in the test kitchen who's going to live
taste test Scott's scallion lobster roll.
So you're going to get her original reaction here.
So come on over, Chloe, come on over here.
Let me put this a little bit more of the scallion dressing on this.
If you've ever bought anything from us, you probably got a Chloe card.
So this is Chloe, like seven years later.
And so she's my daughter.
So Chloe is going to taste test our lobster roll.
Go ahead, Chlo.
Take a bite from one side, try and get some lobster in there.
Or just get some of the lobster.
Okay.
All right.
Give us a thumbs up.
What do you think?
Really good.
All right.
Chew it up.
While she's choking here, she can stay.
You can stay if you want.
All right.
So while you're staying here, so hopefully today we've shown you some
versatile uses of polysorbate 80.
You can do ice creams, you can do like sauces.
You can do lobster rolls or buerre blanc that doesn't break,
which is like magic and tons of.
So, if you like what you see here today, remember to subscribe.
Also leave your comments below for what you'd do with it.
And we look forward to hearing from you.
So from here in the Modernist Pantry test kitchen, I'm Janie Wang.
And I'm Scott Guerin.
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