Fire and Ice (Cream)

So between a son-in-law who loves hot sauce (on just about everything) and a coworker who is interested in consuming and growing the fiery peppers (including the infamous Carolina Reaper) I have gotten a bit more into hot sauces.

I'm a fan of Sriracha and Tapatio. I recently was "turned-on" to Tabasco Habanero sauce. The aforementioned coworker also alerted me to the fact that the Grand Island Hy-Vee was stocking a great sauce called "Pain 85%".

I've also recently learned of a Fermented Hot Sauce group on Facebook, which I've joined but not yet really explored. But it is A Thing!

On the other end of the spectrum: ICE (cream) making - that journey was begun when I found a new-in-the-box Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker at a garage sale for $10. That led me to groups, books, etc. My first ice cream was a Chocolate Sriracha that I thought worked quite well (already blurring the lines a bit between Fire & Ice). Making your own ice cream costs a lot more than buying it, but it has an entertainment value and is fun to do with the granddaughter. (We last made a nice "Philadelphia Style" ice cream with smashed up frozen Reese's Pieces in it. It was a delicious soft serve in a cone!)

So this post is covering both extremes because I found something interesting today that can share a commonality between hot sauces and ice cream: Chia Seeds! This Saveur article: "Use Chia Seeds as an Easy, No-Fuss Thickener for Homemade Hot Sauce and Purees" outlines how Chia seeds soften and swell, absorbing up to 30 times their weight in water. This helps prevent separation of a solution, such as hot sauce, keeping pureed veggies and spices evenly distributed in the liquid base. Something similar is done in industrial cooking with Xanthan Gum.

Now I had heard of Xanthan Gum being used in ice cream making, as well. So I wondered if anyone was using Chia Seeds in a similar way. Googling this, I found several articles on making a "gel" out of the Chia seeds. In short,
The basic rules are:

• A ratio of about a tablespoon of chia to half a cup of liquid makes a thickish gel.  It’s not as thick as jello (jelly) but more like a sago pudding in thickness and texture.
• The seeds need to soak in the liquid for about 10 minutes for them to jellify.
• The mix needs whisking or it will clump.   I found whisking at the beginning, once or twice in the middle and again at the end of the setting period worked perfectly.
• Chia has such a mild flavour that it will take on the flavour of the liquid (but this means if the liquid doesn’t have much flavour then you’ll probably want to add some other kind of flavouring).

Since this works with any liquid, I thought about using it with the milk (like cocunut milk), or other dairy product in ice cream making. That this should work was made pretty clear by this recipe for a Chia seed pudding, which TASTES like ice cream! One can also make things like "Chia Coconut Pudding Popsicles", which blur the lines. Then I found a recipe for "Chia Seed Ice Cream" , "Chia Seed & Banana Ice Cream" and also "Chocolate Chia Ice Cream!"



Note to self: It is easy to misspell Chia and Chai.




I'm also going to leave this link to an scientific paper entitled:
 "Optimization of the Mucilage Extraction Process from Chia Seeds and Application inIce Cream as a Stabilizer and Emulsifier" for later reading/analysis.