Molecular gastronomy at home: FIZZY GRAPES!

[East Coast Hustle]

You can actually do this with almost any fruit, though generally firmer fruits work better. But unless you have an unusually wide-mouthed bottle most fruits are going to have to be cut for this trick so none of them come out quite as cool as grapes, nature's little self-contained spherical glob of potential molecular gastronomy.

You will need:

Grapes. Seedless work best.

Wide-mouth nalgene bottle or wide-mouth stainless steel bottle. For safety's sake, I will advise you not to use glass for this one.

Dry ice. A piece about 1" square is enough for a standard-sized nalgene water bottle full of grapes. Since these must be consumed fairly quickly after opening the jar, if you want to make several single servings instead of a large batch you'll want to find something about the size and shape of baby food jars only, again, not made of glass. And adjust the size of the dry ice chunks down accordingly. Use too much and you'll overpressurize and cause a mess in your fridge.

Step 1: Put grapes into whatever container you are going to use.

Step 2: Put dry ice into container.

Step 3: Seal tightly and set aside for a day or two.

Step 4: Gently burp the bottle before fully opening. Eat within 15 minutes of opening.

If you decide to make a fizzy fruit salad, apples and pears also work really well for this. Things like strawberries and bananas, not so much.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Weeeird.

[Reginald Ret]

Cool!

[LMNO]

could i do this with tomolives and have the coolest martini ever?

That is, will this work with a pickled fruit, or does it have to be fresh?

[East Coast Hustle]

It will work with any fruit that contains water (or pickling brine - I don't see why that wouldn't work too) but given the "firmer the better" adage I'm not sure how well it would work with pitted olives. Might turn to mush, but certainly worth a shot.

[LMNO]

I was thinking more those little picked green tomatoes.

[Reginald Ret]

ETA dammit, already answered. Oh well, posting anyway.

could i do this with tomolives and have the coolest martini ever?

That is, will this work with a pickled fruit, or does it have to be fresh?

I think (with my small amount of chemistry knowledge) brine-pickled fruit would work, vinegar-pickled should work, but i'm not entirely sure since the two acids may interact strangely. Try it. If it explodes, the results will be saltier. Oil-pickled or oil/vinegar-pickled will probably not work since there is little water for storing the carbonic acid, though i am very interested in what does happen.



The basic reactions that take place inthe jar are
CO₂(s) <-> CO₂(g)
CO₂(g) <-> CO₂(aq)
CO₂(aq) + H₂O <-> H₂CO₃(aq)
The first one is carbondioxide gas coming off the dry ice, as you may expect this doesn't happen much in the opposite direction.
The second one is carbondioxide gas dissolving in water, this will find a balance where it is happening in both directions at the same speed, luckily the pressure of CO₂(g) will be constantly increased by the dry ice turning into CO₂ gas so the gas will be forced to dissolve.
The third one is a way for the gas to be stored in the water without the second reaction noticing it. This allows a lot more gas to be pumped into the water and incidentally is why bubbles keep forming for hours after you opened your bottle of cola instead of it all rushing out as soon as possible. Think of this as a battery in the water that you charge, the dry ice is a powercharger so all you need is water and something that can contain it (and can resist extreme cold) That is why grapes are perfect, their skin is quite strong.

[Cainad (dec.)]

I approve of putting Mad Science into the kitchen. This sounds awesome.

[LMNO]

Thanks that's pretty interesting. If I can find a vessel that won't explode, I'll give it a shot. It may not be surprising that I have a very good line to getting dry ice.

[Reginald Ret]

Thanks that's pretty interesting. If I can find a vessel that won't explode, I'll give it a shot. It may not be surprising that I have a very good line to getting dry ice.

It still cracks me up when the trick with my name works 

Thanks.