Now this video is a little bit off the wall and you can thumbs it up if you like it
and tell me if you don't but this is a little
look into Steve's Kitchen world and how my process the thought process goes
and we're doing that popcorn series Graydon
and Emily have asked for salt and vinegar
popcorn and I'm really intrigued because I love salt and vinegar chips or crisps as we
call them
and I've often wondered how they get that flavour on there
now when I was younger we would make chips or crisps
and I tried putting Vinegar on them and salt
and you just get soggy chips
I've seen a lot of recipes where people are making popcorn and they're adding
salt and vinegar on and it really isn't going to work you're just going to get wet
soggy popcorn so the mind the old grey matter starts
flowing around and I'm thinking well if those corporations can make salt and vinegar
flavoring
we can make it and we can probably make it better so lets start experimenting
lets start exploring how did they discover
the flavorings for salt and vinegar now to find that out
you've really got to look at the history of food there are recipes going back
many centuries that will tell you how to make traveling vinegar or dried vinegar
now I didn't really know a lot about this but what they would do
is they take strong vinegar now I've got myself
apple cider nice strong apple cider get something really good if you want to
follow along with this
this has still got the mother in there now mother by the way
and I'm going to side ramble here you often see this blue bottle on my kitchen side over
there
this is red wine vinegar and the mother in here I've had
for a long time every time I get a little bit a red wine leftover
you can pour it in here and the mother will turn it
into a beautiful red wine vinegar so you are looking for a strong vinegar
apple cider vinegar is fantastic because it packs
a lot of flavour how are we going to make this vinegar
into a powder many years ago what they used to do is they grind down some corn
or grain of any sort
until they got a fine powder and they'd add the vinegar in with it to make a paste
and then they would roll it up into little balls and let it dry out
and that would give you a powdered vinegar
that you could take with you and season food with fantastic idea
let's give it a try so here's what I'm thinking
we'll take a a couple of heaped teaspoons of cornflour
which is the same as grinding it yourself I guess now we call this corn flour I
think the Americans call it corn starch
then taking my wonderful strong
apple cider vinegar I'm just going to pour in
maybe three or four lets you see how we go there's three in there
start to give it a little stir through I don't want it too be too wet
but I also don't want it too dry lets put another couple of teaspoons in there
so what I'm going to get is this newtonian fluid now you can look that up if
you don't know from your science days what that was
or if you use to make custard at home you might also know it
its almost solid almost liquid
so what does that taste like lets just give that little try
yep that's pack some vinegar in it
lets leave this to dry now turn it into a powder now take a look
at that you see that has set I've had it out in the garden just for about 15 or 20
minutes
so that really didn't take long just come down and have a little look If I push my
finger into that now
you'll see that it's a powder it's starting to powder up nicely
I'll just take a spoon and we'll just it's almost like a chalk
so what I reckon is we'll just crumble this up a little bit
it still feels a little bit damp but I reckon half an hour or so that'll start to dry
out
even more now lets have a little try of
this because basically all we've got here now is
a strong vinegar and a corn flour cornstarch
that is got a real vinegar kick to it so is that what they do
to make salt and vinegar crisps well it might have been one of the things they used to
do
in the old days to put vinegar seasoning on to things but if you look at
the ingredients that are
listed on a lot of salt and vinegar product's you'll see
all sorts of strange chemicals on there which
replicate the flavor of vinegar and the salty flavors sometimes
a little bit of sweetness one of the most common things you'll see is a powder called
citric
acid and occasionally something similar to
tartaric acid now they're not as scary as they sound they're really are just the
acids that come out of fruit like lemons and the zests and things
these replicate that vinegar that sour
flavor of vinegar and I've always used them for baking so I know they're fairly safe
so what sort of flavour are we going to get from tartric acid or citric acid
let me have a little try so you don't have to tiny tiny little pinch here
talk about warheads that is sour
citrus and a little vinegary
I can see why they use it but the underlying flavor is not vinegar to
me
its it's getting towards those citrus sort of flavors
so I reckon what we've got to do is combine one of these
fruit acids with this vinegar powder that I've made here
a little bit of salt perhaps maybe even a little bit of sweetness
and then we're going to have that salt and vinegar flavor we find on our favorite
snacks
maybe let's give it a try so the experimenting begins
I'm going to take a little of our vinegar powder just pop it down there it's not quite
dry yet
I'm going to go with the tartaric acid let's put a few grains of tartaric acid down
there
and let's take a little pinch
of sea salt these are the flavors I think going to give us that salt and vinegar
flavor that we want so lets just pull a little bit of salt
into the center here take a little bit that tart
acid now before I add my vinegar powder
I'm just going to push down on that and give it a little try
let's see if we're getting there at all yes
little lemony perhaps but I can see why they use a combination of these flavors
for salt and vinegar come back down we've got our salt and our tartaric acid let me just move
that one out the way a minute in case
I'm going to bring a little extra of our tartaric acid in there a
little of our sea salt and let's bring some of that
powder in that's got our vinegar flavour just going to mix this up a little
bit
and then I'm just going to dip my finger in there got a nice big bunch
of it there on the tip my finger
let's see what sort of flavour we're going to get wow
probably a little too much of the tartaric
acid in there but the underlying flavor is very close
to our salt and vinegar so you join me
a day or so later and I've been experimenting with all sorts of different ideas
I've kind of gone off the idea actually of cornflour it gave a real
floury taste which I didn't like don't get me wrong they clearly used to use
this in the old days to get that vinegar seasoning but we're kind of used to a much
more
potent vinegar flavoring on our snacks now I did research there were some
people using copious amounts of vinegar
mixing it up with baking soda and boiling it down until you got
crystallization that seem to be a possible idea so I gave it a try
but the results were pretty disgusting I had this power
which can only be described if you ever were a kid and you put a 9-volt
battery on your tongue and got that
forget the shock but the taste that you got that was what the power tasted
like but it wouldn't go off your tongue it
stayed there for ages was quite disgusting so that was thrown away
now I started to see the word maltodextrose
molto dextrose on a lot of these products
maltodextrous is a powder that looks a little like corn flour
it's a sugar its a derivative of
corn syrup but unlike glucose it isn't that sweet look
if I give that a try feels a little bit like
a milk powder not that sweet and it does absorb
other seasonings and flavors so I tried adding this
in with my strong vinegar but it ended up a little bit like a taffy not a
great product
the more and more I looked into this the more I saw that quite often they
weren't using vinegars all they we're
using those acids that I mentioned citric acid
Tartaric acid maltodextose was often used though ninety percent of the time I was finding
this in the salt and vinegar crisps and popcorns
so with much experiment I've come up to the conclusion that Maltodextrous
is the way to go this is a product by the way that you can buy
in a lot of health food shops it certainly is sold in most home brew places it's
used as a sugar to enhance the body
of beer so I've come up with a balance of using this
certain acids and the right about of salt and I've come up with what I
think is a pretty
damn good salt and vinegar seasoning not too difficult to make
now I'm not going to share the recipe the final recipe with you here
get and watch the salt and vinegar popcorn that's coming up very shortly on the
channel
and if you try let it me know I'm not sure if it's perfect
but it's as close to perfect as I can make
I really hope you've enjoy this sort of look inside to how I often develop my
recipes and if you like this sort of thing I will try and do them again
please comment down below and I will see you in the next video
take care
now share the love give the thumbs up to the video if you've enjoyed it
don't forget I'm going to lleave
links here to the full popcorn series get across
check out all those wonderful popcorns we've been making chocolate popcorn I've
got some rainbow
popcorn over there well get over and also I will
leave a link to another video please comment down below
see you next time Take care