Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble

"Cooking" with liquid nitrogen!

That is, cooking at MINUS 196°C: with acknowledgements to Heston Blumenthal!

My son and daughter-in-law wished to build on our experiments of earlier in the summer, and try out a number of recipes. They invited two of their friends and the friends' two children along...

In this particular picture, a creamy egg custard has had some whisky added, and liquid nitrogen has been poured in. The very low temperature not only allows this relatively alcohol-rich mixture to freeze, but the rapid freezing means that only tiny ice crystals form, and the result is amazingly smooth (and fabulously delicious). It probably takes about one minute from room temperature to the finished product, and only gentle stirring (mixing, really) is needed.

Here, the whisky is being added to the mix.

.... and some of the participants sample the result!

The family brought all the components for several interesting "courses", and provided us with

a printed menu, here on the "laboratory bench" that describes what was on offer.

You may see that the menu doesn't say anything about whisky, but that was an add-on part of the experiments. We tried whisky-enhanced versions of all three ice creams: vanilla, caramel and chocolate-chilli. There was agreement that the salted-caramel-whisky was marginally the best of three phenomenal taste sensations.

Thanks Heston: and, of course, thanks to Andrew and Beth for suggesting the venture, and doing all the hard work!