iSi Creative Whip

In Search of Easy,
Delicious, Perfection

by Chris Young, CEO of ChefSteps

Chris Young is the CEO and co-founder of ChefSteps, a James Beard award-winning company behind ChefSteps.com and its companion app, which inspire and teach home & professional cooks new techniques and recipes with high-quality interactive content, techniques, tools, and resources.

In my previous post I shared the story of a single meal at The Fat Duck that completely changed the trajectory of my career as a chef. It began with an elegant amuse-bouche called Nitro-Poached Green Tea Sour: a delicate balance of flavor, texture, and temperature yielding something wholly new and unexpected. This balance and creative expression were only made possible by marrying the right tool—like the iSi Gourmet Whip—and technique, with a deep understanding of science in the kitchen.

That delicious bite, along with a few others that evening, drew me to join Heston Blumenthal and his team at the Fat Duck Experimental Kitchen. For five years we challenged ourselves to create unexpected and memorable moments for diners (like the one I had), drawing the very most out of our techniques and tools, and often inventing brand new ones.

It was during my tenure that Heston partnered with the BBC to film the television show In Search of Perfection, where we were further challenged to apply our modernist approach to classic British dishes that could be prepared at home. For months, we went back to the drawing board on humble dishes like a simple roast chicken and bangers and mash, seeking to not only elevate them, but to make these reimagined versions accessible to the everyday cook. It was an amazing experience, and one that again changed the course of my career.

For the first time, I saw the potential for our work in the Experimental Kitchen to reach many more than the 42 diners served each night at The Fat Duck. I saw how the building blocks of a modernist tasting menu could also be used to make a Sunday family meal easier and more delicious. And that tools like an iSi Gourmet Whip belong as much in a home kitchen as in a Michelin-starred one.

This experience ultimately led me to found ChefSteps, where we seek to inspire creativity and confidence in the kitchen for cooks of every skill level. We develop easy-to-follow content ranging from bite-sized videos to comprehensive online courses that teach new tools, techniques, and kitchen hacks. For me, one of the most rewarding parts of our work is when we can use a few simple tricks, creative approaches, and some basic science to demystify a tool like the iSI Gourmet Whip—in fact we created a whole online course to do just that. We use iSI Whippers every day to experiment with new textures, create beautiful foam garnishes, and perfectly bubbly cocktails. But I most enjoy showing our community the unexpected ways that iSi Whippers can make a classic dish simpler and more delicious, like in these recipes we developed for In Search of Perfection:

Perfect Hollandaise

Our easy instant hollandaise recipe reimagines the breakfast staple. Hollandaise is a lovely, unctuous, and notoriously fickle mother sauce that traditionally demands such artistry and precision that it has been compared to a Bach Fugue. In our version we let sous vide cooking and an iSI Gourmet Whip take care of the exact temperatures and perfect emulsification needed, leading to a lighter (and healthier) hollandaise with hardly any of the guess work.

Fresh Fruit Soda

And of course no meal involving an iSI Whipper would be complete without the perfect bubbly drink pairing. Our fresh fruit soda, made with charges of CO2 rather than the usual N2O, might not be a classic pairing, but it sure tastes good. And most of the time, that’s all that really matters. Cheers.

Chris Young is the CEO and co-founder of ChefSteps, a James Beard award-winning company behind ChefSteps.com and its companion app, which inspire and teach home and professional cooks new techniques and recipes with high-quality interactive content, techniques, tools, and resources.

Chris Young is the CEO and co-founder of ChefSteps, a James Beard award-winning company behind ChefSteps.com and its companion app, which inspire and teach home cooks new techniques and recipes with high-quality interactive content, techniques, tools, and resources. Prior to ChefSteps, Young was the principal co-author of the acclaimed and worldwide bestselling six-volume work Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. He was also the founding chef of Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck Experimental Kitchen, the secret culinary laboratory behind the innovative dishes served at one of the best restaurants in the world.

The Meal that Changed the
Course of My Culinary Journey

by Chris Young, CEO of ChefSteps

Chris Young is the CEO and co-founder of ChefSteps, a James Beard award-winning company behind ChefSteps.com and its companion app, which inspire and teach home & professional cooks new techniques and recipes with high-quality interactive content, techniques, tools, and resources.

I never expected to become a chef. And I don’t think I would have become one if it weren’t for a meal that I had in early 2003 at a small, relatively unknown (at the time) restaurant west of London called The Fat Duck. My meal began with foam, the famous liquid nitrogen-poached Green Tea Sour.

For those unfamiliar with this dish, I’ll describe the experience: My server Didier rolled an opulent guéridon across the small and humble dining room, parking it beside my table of one. On top of the oak wood cart was a cauldron of steel and glass filled to the brim with liquid nitrogen simmering at -320 °F; beside it was a whipping siphon, a set of silver soup spoons nested within a linen napkin, a muslin satchel tied with a bow, and a set of chilled plates. Didier picked up the whipping siphon, deftly inverting it to dispense a bite-sized dollop of dense white foam onto the bowl of a shallow spoon, and then with a practiced motion plunged it into the nitrogen, which erupted to a boil as it cryo-poached my sour. He flipped and basted it with the spoon for exactly eight seconds, before lifting it from the liquid nitrogen, dusting the glossy white puff with the satchel of matcha, and then served it to me on a chilled plate with the request that I enjoy it as a single bite.

And when I bit into it, the glossy surface shattered crisply, giving way to a cool and luscious mousse racing with the acidity of lime juice and the slight astringency of green tea. But the best part was the rush of fog that streamed from my nose, making me look a bit like a puffing dragon. This dish is both literally and figuratively very cool. From this one bite it was clear to me that this meal was going to be very different from any other that I had ever eaten.

But the nitro-poached lime sour wasn’t just about theatrics—Heston Blumenthal had crafted it for the purpose of really cleansing the palate. If you’ve ever had a glass of orange juice after brushing your teeth, then you know how awful the alkaline residue of the toothpaste can make food taste. The acidic lime juice serves to neutralize this alkaline residue, while the green tea adds astringent polyphenols that help cleanse the mouth, and a very small amount of vodka provides just enough alcohol to disperse oils and fats.

Of course aerating and poaching it in liquefied nitrogen added textural surprise and an element of fun and whimsy that so often is missing from fine dining restaurants. By the end of my meal there was no question that I had to work at The Fat Duck, with Heston Blumenthal, and I was lucky enough to do so for the next five years. One of the many things I learned from working there was that a talented chef could accomplish extraordinary things when empowered by scientific knowledge.

Like all scientific progress, there was a lot of failure along the way. That light and delicate green tea sour foam would constantly collapse if not served immediately; the result of alcohol that tends to thin the bubble walls until they are simply too delicate to survive the pull of gravity. This was a real problem, because the foam itself kept the liquid nitrogen from freezing more than a paper-thin shell at the surface. If the foam collapsed while it was being cryo-poached, the experience for the guest was more like a tongue stuck to a frozen flagpole, which is not a great way to begin a meal. The solution for near-flawless foam every time was to use a whipping siphon, a unique tool that with the squeeze of the trigger created fresh foam on demand.

Transforming Modern Cuisine

Whipping siphons, like those from iSi, became a fixture at The Fat Duck, as well as every other modernist restaurant. That’s because these tools afforded chefs a better way to manipulate foams that in turn create texture. And manipulating texture is something chefs are always doing, whether they realize it or not. Whipped cream is perhaps the best-known example of texture being transformed by edible foam. It’s simple to make—you just create a lot of small bubbles in cold cream. The whisk is the basic tool for this job, and it does the work in two ways: First, as the wires are whipped through the air and then into the liquid, each wire leaves a trail of bubbles in its wake. Second, the wires stretch and pull existing bubbles until they split into smaller bubbles, which expands the whipped cream and helps make the foam stable. Doing this, however, does eventually wear out your arm. A whipping siphon makes the job easy, but also works in an entirely different way: It uses gas pressure to force soluble gas (nitrous oxide for whipped cream) to dissolve into the cream. When the trigger of the siphon is squeezed, the pressure pushes the cold, gas-laden cream through a valve stem, and as the cream emerges, the surrounding pressure suddenly drops, causing the gas to burst out of the solution as an uncountable number of tiny bubbles that whip the cream. The advantage, aside from avoiding a sore arm, is the ability to create as much or as little fresh whipped cream as you need.

ENJOY A SPECIAL OFFER ON
CHEFSTEPS WHIPPING SIPHON CLASSES

But these tools aren’t just for gourmet whipping cream, nor are they only useful for modernist chefs looking to push the boundaries of cuisine. At ChefSteps, a company I co-founded over two years ago to teach and inspire home chefs, we’ve got tons of amazing uses for whipping siphons (which I’ll tell you more about in my next post, along with a recipe or two), and in fact we offer a comprehensive online class for home cooks, all about the many diverse ways to use a siphon (iSi customers can get 50% off the Whipping Siphon class now through July 31st using this link to enroll). We get feedback every day from cooks who are learning and trying new things with this tool they’ve had sitting in the drawer for years. It’s validating feedback for an unintentional chef such as myself—people are having the same experience at home that I had at the Fat Duck all those years ago, and today at ChefSteps, tapping into the power of whipping siphons.

Chris Young is the CEO and co-founder of ChefSteps, a James Beard award-winning company behind ChefSteps.com and its companion app, which inspire and teach home cooks new techniques and recipes with high-quality interactive content, techniques, tools, and resources. Prior to ChefSteps, Young was the principal co-author of the acclaimed and worldwide bestselling six-volume work Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. He was also the founding chef of Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck Experimental Kitchen, the secret culinary laboratory behind the innovative dishes served at one of the best restaurants in the world.

Really?….Chicago Style Hot Dogs
in a Gourmet Whip? YES!

By Chef Louisa Chu

Louisa Chu is a food consultant, food journalist, and one one of the iSi Culinary Ambassadors. Louisa hosts Chewing the Fat, the WBEZ podcast on food. For contact information, go to louisachu.com.

Well, technically I call my dish Chicago Dog, and I created not one but two recipes for the May National Restaurant Association show in Chicago. The Hot Dog Espuma was inspired by Chef Rick Tramonto’s Foie Gras, substituting hot dogs for the goose liver. The Chicago Style Foam was inspired by Cucumber-Yogurt Espuma, but I substituted the toppings of a Chicago hot dog: neon green relish, yellow mustard, onion, tomato, kosher-style pickle, and hot sport peppers.

I served the savory pink Hot Dog espuma and acidic green Chicago Style foam on a crisp Jay’s potato chip with soft, torn poppy seed bun, finished with essential celery salt.

Both of the original recipes can be found in the iSi Recipe Database online. Plus on the iSi Recipe app, I’ve posted my recipe variations.

What do you pair with Hot Dog Espuma?

My mixologist colleague Cristiana DeLucca paired my Chicago Dog with her Strawberry Soda and Lemon Infused Whipped Cream. In my last post, I wrote that Cristiana prefers to pair drinks from finished food menus. But how?
“I start pairings by thinking about if I want a similar or contrasting experience,” says Cristiana, “But I’m always thinking about how flavors will taste together, and that includes textures and aroma.”

Why, but why, Hot Dog Espuma?

People really like hot dogs, even at the National Restaurant Association show. Despite food samples everywhere, visitors waited in long lines for hot dogs, from New York’s Nathan’s Famous and Chicago’s Vienna Beef.

Thanks to everyone who visited our booth. Below you’ll find our full menu. Next time I’ll  share details for your chance to win an iSi Culinary Ensemble.

iSi National Restaurant Association Show 2015 MenU

Day 1: Food: “Deep Dish” (Tomato Hollandaise Espuma and Pizza Foam on olive oil toasted Tuscan bread, fresh mozzarella pearls, and micro arugula) Drink: Lemon Basil Soda with “Tomato as a Fruit” Foam
Day 2: Food: “Guac” (Guacamole Espuma and Taco Foam on tortilla chips, goat cheese, and micro radish) Drink: Watermelon Soda with Jalapeno Infused Whipped Cream

Day 3: Food: “Rangoon” (Scallion Espuma and Duck Sauce Foam on lobster chips, chow mein, and Chinese American microgreens)
Drink: Cucumber Soda with Sriracha Foam

Day 4: Food: “Chicago Dog” (Hot Dog Espuma and Chicago Style Foam on Jays potato chips, poppy seed bun, and celery salt)
Drink: Strawberry Soda with Lemon Infused Whipped Cream

Hot Dog Espuma

Ingredients:
170 g hot dogs, fully cooked
110 ml milk
210 ml heavy cream
salt to taste

Preparation:
In a blender add hot dogs and milk, then purée until smooth. Please note, purée hot dogs with milk only, not cream. When smooth, stir in heavy cream. Season to taste. Pass the mixture through an iSi Funnel & Sieve directly into an 0.5 L (~17 fl. oz.) iSi Whipper. If using a Thermo Whip, chill empty whipper thoroughly first. Charge with one iSi cream charger then shake well. Test for desired consistency. Shake further if firmer texture preferred.

Serving Suggestion:
Dispense to warm buns. Customize with regional toppings to taste. Keep refrigerated.

Chicago Style Foam

Ingredients:
165 ml Chicago neon green relish
165 ml yellow mustard
dill pickle to taste
red tomato to taste
white onion to taste
sport pepper to taste

Please note that relish and mustard create a stable base to add remaining ingredients to taste. Final mixture can total 500 ml max for 0.5 L iSi Whipper.

Preparation:
In a blender add all ingredients, then purée until smooth. Pass the mixture through an iSi Funnel & Sieve directly into an 0.5 L (~17 fl. oz.) iSi Whipper. If using a Thermo Whip, chill empty whipper thoroughly first. Charge with one iSi cream charger then shake well. Test for desired consistency. Shake further if firmer texture preferred.

Serving Suggestion:
Dispense on Hot Dog Espuma and poppy seed bun. Finish with celery salt. Keep refrigerated.

Deep Dish Espuma plus Pizza Foam?
Lemon Basil Soda with “Tomato as a Fruit” Foam?

By Chef Louisa Chu

Louisa Chu is a food consultant, food journalist, and one one of the iSi Culinary Ambassadors. Louisa hosts Chewing the Fat, the WBEZ podcast on food. For contact information, go to louisachu.com.

Trust us, we’re professionals. We being award-winning mixologist Cristiana DeLucca, Team iSi and me. We’ll serve this menu and more at the National Restaurant Association show, starting Saturday in Chicago.

We’re challenged with serving food and drink at a show, an industry event attended by some of the best chefs from around the world, including Top Chef Master Rick Bayless, but also the biggest brands in the food business. How do we demonstrate what we can do in one delicious bite and one delightful sip?

One of the iconic dishes of Chicago is our unique pizza. My favorite is made only at one restaurant: Burt’s Place. You may have seen Anthony Bourdain eat there, when I took him to visit my friend and pizza master Burt Katz.

Deep Dish, my take on our hometown’s divisive pizza, will be crunchy foccacia bits, torn mozzarella, onion microgreens, fruity olive oil, seasoned by smoked salt, freshly ground black pepper, and a fresh schpritz of lemon, then finished with the Tomato Hollandaise from the iSi cookbook, A Culinary Journey.

The Tomato Hollandaise was created by the Michelin starred German chef Andreas Schweiger. His variation of the classic sauce does use yolks and butter, but he adds tomato purée, lending intense flavor, preserved for any season.

The rich yolks, silky butter, and tangy tomato echo the Italian method of cracking an egg over a pizza right before it’s slipped into a wood-fired oven. Cooked until the crust bubbles and nearly blackens, while the white barely sets. It’s a very different pizza from deep dish, which some say isn’t pizza at all, yet both are correctly eaten with knife and fork. While devising the show’s menu I thought this would elevate a familiar favorite for finer dining.

But what about fast food? Espumas are one thing, but what about the weird? Here I was inspired not only by chefs but a bit of magic. Every year the restaurant show wraps just as what’s now called Sweets & Snacks Expo, aka the Candy Show, kicks off. The Jelly Belly booth always offers their Harry Potter Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor and Bamboozled beans, with everything from Sausage to Moldy Cheese jelly beans.

So while Deep Dish Espuma is lovely, the Pizza Foam may be something else. I take the cookbook’s Parmesan Cheese Fondant, by chef Darren Ong of Singapore, then spike it with Chicago Deep Dish Pizza Pizzazz by my friends at The Spice House. It may be weird but practical too. One day for lunch I grabbed a slice, then the ubiquitous shakers of cheese, oregano, and crushed red peppers to shower them furiously. What if we could capture all that’s lost, and occasionally accidentally inhaled, in a fun pizza foam?

Our menu will change daily, all full of flavor, evocative and provocative, but above all, delicious and delightful, we hope.

Cristiana and I have worked together with iSi before. She prefers to pair from my food menu, but how does she do it? More on mixology next time.

Louisa Chu,
An iSi Culinary Ambassador

Louisa Chu is a food consultant, food journalist, and one one of the iSi Culinary Ambassadors. Louisa hosts Chewing the Fat, the WBEZ podcast on food. For contact information, go to louisachu.com.

MEET LOUISA CHU

I grew up in my family’s Chinese-American chop suey restaurants in Chicago. My first job, at the age of four, was folding pale jade green paper menus into long, clean thirds. Soon after, I started cooking, standing on a milk crate, watching over the deep fat fryer bubbling with lard, waiting for golden, crunchy egg rolls to surface. I rarely dipped into our house-made sweet-and-sour sauce, but understood how customers loved the cooling, tart contrast. I preferred the quietly fiery mustard, which we endangered ourselves to mix with Colman’s dry powder from the tin. Later I made my own family meals—fried rice a favorite—picking through our mise en place, cracking a fresh egg here, grabbing a handful of scallions there. From behind the bar, I’d pour ginger ale into hot tea, which drove my grandfather crazy. Working through weekends, holidays, and childhood, I swore to never work in restaurants again. I moved to Los Angeles, but never stopped cooking, especially since we had farmers’ markets all day, and endless, summery, southern California nights to entertain in our bungalow backyard. But after one LA evening out at a wine tasting, the food was so bad I told the shop owners I could do better, so I did. I paired French Champagne with classic gougeres and smoked salmon deviled eggs, plus retro rumaki and miniatures of our egg rolls. I started catering, and I was surprised how much I enjoyed cooking professionally again. Then I met Julia Child, while she was on book tour for the 40th anniversary edition of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Inspired, I attended her alma mater, Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. After graduation, and many calls and letters, I staged at Alain Ducasse at the Hotel Plaza Athenee. In my wildest dreams I never imagined a restaurant kitchen or cooking could be like that. It was pristinely clean and air-conditioned, with caviar, foie gras, and white Alba truffles as plentiful as potatoes, carrots, and onions. Later that breathtaking year, I staged at El Bulli. I was amazed by not only my own rekindled wonder, but that of the cooks from around the world with whom I worked too. You must know by now that chef Ferran Adria opened the restaurant only six months per year, closing the other six months for what he called “the creativity.” But before it famously became the World’s Best Restaurant, they had no customers. Ferran and his brother Albert said they’d go days serving one table or two. So instead, they created. It was there that Ferran Adria himself discovered iSi.

LOUISA & ISI

iSi North America President and CEO Rick Agresta once told me that HQ was wondering why some unknown restaurant outside of a small Catalonian resort town was ordering so much product. So they went to see for themselves. In 1994, Ferran made his first espuma: “white bean foam with sea urchins: the first foam.” Ten years later when I apprenticed, it was space camp for cooks. We had liquid nitrogen, a centrifuge, and dozens of iSi whippers. Some had custom tip tubing to make the infamous “2 m of parmesan spaghetto,” a single, long translucent noodle of whey and agar. It was served plated with balsamic vinegar, lemon zest, and black pepper. I prepared this and another Parmigiano Reggiano dish with an Italian cook who worked for the Michelin three-starred chef Massimo Bottura in Modena. He always cursed what we did to his iconic, beloved hometown cheese. When I returned to Chicago, Lavazza introduced Ferran’s Èspesso Espresso at their downtown cafe, for the first time in the country. It is essentially espresso, cream, sugar, and gelatin, set and served in an iSi whipper.

LOUISA TODAY

Now as a food consultant and food journalist, my concerns consider not only the delicious but simplicity, sustainability, ethics, and nutrition too. I’ve since made Èspesso, adapting it to my own taste. So I choose ethically sourced cold brew coffee, pastured heavy cream, and real maple syrup, adding American breakfast flavor. Always recycling the chargers, of course. I may inject my American Èspesso into fluffy raised donut holes, occasionally with a shot of whiskey. While I hope to forever discover new child-like wonders, grown-up toys and tastes are sure fun too.

AMERICAN ÉSPESSO

Ferran Adria’s Èspesso for Lavazza uses espresso. I use cold brew coffee concentrate because I prefer the smooth, chocolaty flavor, plus it’s easier, much easier. If you don’t have a cold brew coffee ratio or recipe you like, try mixing one part finely ground coffee to four parts water, then steep for 12 hours minimum. You do not need a cold brew coffee maker. Remember, this recipe uses the concentrate, not the diluted coffee. I do use both weight and volume, because sometimes it’s easier to use one over the other. Try to eyeball the half pouch of gelatin, and if you’re half a gram over or under that’s fine. You can substitute the maple syrup with sugar, use more or to taste. This is a very forgiving recipe.

Ingredients:
330 g cold brew coffee concentrate
0.5 pouch (3.5 g) Knox unflavored gelatin
50 g maple syrup
119 g pastured heavy cream

Preparation: Pour 50 ml of cold coffee into an iSi Flex-it 1000-ml (4 cups) measuring cup. Sprinkle half a pouch of Knox unflavored gelatin over it. Let stand for one minute. Pour 50 ml of coffee into Flex-it 250-ml (1 cup) measuring cup. Microwave to boiling. Carefully pour boiling coffee into cold coffee and gelatin mixture. Use an iSi silicone spatula to stir until gelatin dissolves completely. Add remaining coffee, syrup, and cream, and then stir again. Pour mixture through an iSi Funnel & Sieve into a 0.5-L (~17 fl. oz.) iSi whipper. If using a Thermo Whip, chill empty whipper thoroughly first. Charge with one iSi cream charger then shake well. Chill one hour minimum to set. Test for desired consistency. Shake further if firmer texture preferred. Serve.

Serving Suggestion: Dispense to espresso cups, top with whipped cream, sprinkle with cocoa powder, then serve. Or fill yeast-raised donut holes using iSi short 5-mm injector tip, then serve. Optionally add a shot of whiskey or other spirit to whipper before charging. Take care to only fill whipper to maximum fill line. Keep refrigerated.

Stay Tuned! Louisa will be popping up on CreativeWhip.com periodically with updates and recipes to help you make the most of your iSi Whipper System, so stay tuned!

Innovation Machine
The iSi Culinary System
– Whipping Up Something Better

How did a product originating in a small, Austrian factory in 1964 come to be a favorite means of expressing the creative imagination of chefs from around the world? The journey is remarkable. And the results have been not only inspirational, but also visually exciting; serving food with flavor and quality that is a fundamental element of modern cuisine.

The product I am referring to is the iSi Culinary System of food whippers and gas chargers – a unique and inseparable combination that can help turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. The iSi culinary innovators, among the leading chefs worldwide, embrace the desire and demand for better food and continuously bring insights of chemistry and physics to food and food preparation.

When we built the system, we had little idea of how much chefs from around the world would find new uses that enhanced their cuisine. We learned from them and we continued to improve the system, added new tools, and discovered new applications. Our constant connection with chefs and culinary creators allowed us to innovate in tandem, enabling our whipper system to evolve into an even more useful, multi-functional tool.

The iSi Culinary System has been called an Innovation Machine. But it is only potential energy until realized by the user. This essential component is the vision and creativity of the person using the equipment – resulting in some of the most amazing new applications in food preparation including soups, sauces, foams, desserts, and beverages.

We’ve adopted “Whip up Something Better” as our challenge and promise to our customers and all the creative food professionals we interact with. The “better” is the potential of our whipper system in lowering costs, process improvement, reducing calories, improving presentation, enabling fresher, more natural ingredients and better, more intense flavors.

Followers of this blog already have seen many examples of both the “one off” and volume applications of the iSi Culinary System. As we enter the 6^th decade of our company history, we are focused on increasing our blog activity to share more information, more often with you – our partners in creativity – who seek information about and contribute their inspiration to our Innovation Machine., the iSi Culinary System.

— RAPID INFUSION —
Mastering the Art and Science of Flavor Extraction with Dave Arnold

It was August 2010. Dave Arnold, a friend and former colleague, was very excited to show me a culinary technique he’d been working on. At the time, I was iSi’s culinary director and had been encouraging Dave to play around with the whippers to see if he could come up with some new applications beyond creams and foams. It was through his experimentation that Dave, a master tinkerer, cocktail savant and culinary innovator, came to discover the exciting potential of rapid infusion – extracting the flavor of a solid into a liquid or infusing a solid with the flavor of a liquid, or both – using an affordable, handheld device.

The discovery of this application opened the doors for flavor in ways that was not possible before for those without access to expensive vacuum machines and the know-how to properly execute the technique. In subsequent years, Dave has demonstrated how to use iSi Gourmet Whip Plus for rapid infusion to some of the most respected chefs and mixologists in the industry and in front of packed houses at various high-profile events and conferences around the world. But with the launch of his new book, Liquid Intelligence: The Art and Science of the Perfect Cocktail, the technique is now accessible for everyone.

In the book, Dave breaks down just about every element of the cocktail and how to improve on taste, texture, appearance, etc. – from traditional drinks to adaptations using modern techniques. He devotes an entire chapter to “Rapid Infusion, Shifting Pressure” where he explains the basic process of rapid nitrous infusion and the potential benefits of using a whipper and nitrous oxide (N₂O) – a water/ethanol/fat-soluble, colorless, slightly sweet-tasting gas – versus more traditional long-term infusion methods.

Rapid infusions made using an iSi whipper with N₂O tend to extract less bitter, spicy, and tannic notes as compared to traditional extraction methods that rely on heat, time, or a combination of both. For cocktails, rapid infusion allows for more of the pleasant notes to shine. Imagine a jalapeno infused vodka with all the bright flavor and aroma of fresh jalapenos with less spiciness or an aromatic coffee liquor made from coffee beans with less bitterness and less tannic notes than one that steeped over an extended period of time.

In addition to being an entertaining and educational read, the book contains several recipes for infusions, bitters, tinctures, and finished cocktails using these rapidly-infused ingredients.

While the approach may seem thoroughly modern, the end goal for using the technique is simply to make a better tasting, better looking cocktail. By reading through Dave’s recipe for turmeric infused gin you’ll get a sense of the basic method. He explains why turmeric is a good choice because “it’s porous, aromatic, colorful, and flavorful, the four characteristics you should look for in your solid infusion ingredient.” Gin provides a clear base that will complement the flavor and absorb the color and flavor of the brightly hued turmeric well.

TURMERIC INFUSED GIN

Ingredients:
500 milliliters Plymouth gin, room temperature
100 grams fresh turmeric thinly sliced into disks, room temperature (Tip: To avoid staining, wear rubber gloves when handling and cover surfaces)
Equipment:
.5 liter iSi Gourmet Whip Plus
2 iSi Cream (N₂O) Chargers
Procedure:
Add prepared turmeric to the whipper, then gin. Screw the head onto the whipper and charge using one cream charger. Swirl the whipper for a few seconds to agitate and then charge again using the second cream charger. Swirl the whipper again. As you swirl, the gas will dissolve into the liquid, and the pressure inside the whipper will drop forcing the gin and nitrous oxide solution into the turmeric. After 2 ½ minutes, hold a container over the nozzle and place the whipper over a bowl to catch any escaping liquid. Point the nozzle straight up and vent the gas quickly by fully depressing the lever. As you vent, the nitrous expands and bubbles out of the solution, forcing turmeric-flavored gin out of the turmeric and back into the rest of the gin, completing the infusion. Once all the gas has released, unscrew the whipper and allow bubbling action to subside before straining. Allow infusion to rest for about 10 minutes before using for maximum flavor. Store chilled for up to one week.

GLO-SOUR COCKTAIL

A variation on a lime sour using the brightly hued turmeric infusion.
Makes one 5 1/3 ounce drink
Ingredients:
2 ounces (60 ml) Rapid Infused Turmeric Gin
¾ ounces (22.5 ml) freshly strained lime juice
Flat ¾ ounces (20 ml) simple syrup
3 drops saline solution or a generous pinch of salt
1-2 dashes Rapid Infused Orange Bitters, or commercial variety Orange Bitter
Procedure:
Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker. Add ice, shake, and strain into a chilled coupe glass.

More Rapid Infusion Tips from Dave:

• Solids for rapid infusion must be porous. Most plant products meet this criterion. Flavorful options include fresh herbs, citrus zest, ginger, lemongrass, peppers/chilies, cocoa nibs, coffee beans, etc.
• With the exception of fresh herbs which can bruise easily, finely cut up or grate solids to maximize surface area and expose pores to the liquid.
• Pay attention to the solid-to-liquid ratio and infusion times. Rapid infusions typically take more solids than traditional infusion methods and happen so fast that even 15 seconds can make a difference in flavor.
• Unless you’re making a bitter where bitterness is a desired, use room temperature liquids and solids. Infusions using cold ingredients produce less vibrant results.
• Consistency is key. Always measure out your ingredients, set a timer, use the right sized whipper, and the right number of chargers for the recipe for consistent results.
• The process of venting is what generates flavor-extracting bubbles. The faster you vent the gas, the stronger the bubbling action. The more bubbling action, the more active your extraction.
• Unless the recipe instructs you to do so, don’t strain the mixture right away after venting. Allow bubbles to subside. Remember, active bubbles mean that flavor extraction is still happening.

On occasion, small particles from the solid may clog the value system and the whipper may stop venting properly. To avoid this, let solids settle to the bottom of the whipper a bit before venting and always point the nozzle straight up. If you do get a clog, try pumping the handle to dislodge the clog. This Fall, iSi North America will launch a newly engineered Rapid Infusion Tool that safeguards against clogging and allows for a more streamlined venting process. This attachment will be sold separately as an accessory and should only be used with the iSi Gourmet Whip Plus.

iSi Rapid Infusion Best Practices

• The iSi Gourmet Whip Plus is designed and crafted to the highest standard with rigorous quality control for a lifetime of reliability. All stainless steel construction won’t taint flavors, react with foods, is NSF-certified, dishwasher safe, and HACCP compliant. For this reason, iSi only endorses the use of the rapid infusion technique with an iSi Gourmet Whip Plus.
• Strong flavors take less time to infuse but delicate flavors may take longer (up to 20-30 minutes). Test for best results.
• Always use iSi cream chargers with iSi equipment. iSi cream chargers are made of high-quality, recyclable steel and contain 8 grams of pure food-safe N₂O. They are individually weighed electronically and have a fill warranty for consistent results.

To learn more about the iSi System and other innovative techniques using iSi tools, stay connected on Facebook, Twitter, or by signing up for their newsletter at isinorthamerica@isi.com.

Read more about Dave Arnold and the rapid infusion techniques here.

Judiaann Woo is the former VP of Culinary Development for iSi North America. During her time, with the company, she whipped, aerated, foamed and carbonated everything under the sun and had a whole lot of fun doing it. Today, she lives in Portland, Oregon and continues to share her passion for food with others willing to travel for the next great meal. See what she’s been eating recently @judiaann.