What are /r/foodscience's favorite Products & Services?

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I have found there is a recipe here: https://www.qwant.com/?q=almond%20flour%20noodles&t=videos&o=0:7d51f8335f0e58d5b5e0358a3dfee5d0 where the person uses almond flour, egg and xanthan gum to come up with something similar to wheat noodles. It comes out just as hydrophobic and elastic as wheat flour noodles . Not sure about the taste tho. So you're onto something there.

My friends host a podcast about food science:

https://mytuner-radio.com/podcast/food-in-the-hood-amanda-sia-and-ben-ma-1439015450

My other food scientist friend also has a YouTube channel discussing food science:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsb26ITnYA28h6FebnuzcWA

You can also get resources from the Institute of Food Technologists - they have food science courses you can take even if you're not a student or going to school for it.

Here's a few books to check out too!

On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee

The Science of Cooking by Stuart Farrimond

Modernist Cuisine (if you can get your hands on it) by Nathan Myhrvold

Cooking for Geeks by Jeff Potter

Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat

The Food Lab by J. Kenji Lopez-Al

Most flavor houses won't deal with consumers just because the amount you need is how much we'll sample out for free, and we'll never see any sales from that sample.

There are options though. I have no experience with this vendor but it'll get you started. There are other vendors who will sell to consumers direct, but you will pay out the ass for the flavor (versus what a company would pay who buys more in bulk).

https://www.amazon.com/Bakto-Flavors-Natural-Extracts-Description/dp/B00RI5M0NA/

Thermapen is a great idea; in a related cooking vein this book is very highly regarded and uses science to explain and improve cooking https://www.amazon.com/Food-Lab-Cooking-Through-Science/dp/0393081087

Check out the Netflix special "Cooked" by Michael Pollan, specifically "Air" which is on bread:

https://www.netflix.com/title/80022456

Los Angeles-based La Brea Bakery owner Nancy Silverton talks about her story of spending months (maybe years!) developing her bread by a methodical approach to developing her gluten and wheat flour. It's pretty incredible, and it would probably help to get an idea of how to develop flavors and texture from different operations and ingredients.

Here’s some info on fennel specifically: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Foeniculum-vulgare-Mill%3A-A-Review-of-Its-Botany%2C-Badgujar-Patel/d2ab5c8cdc91ca5d27ddc75e4cc1021f99ccc05e/figure/10

You’ll likely have to scan the literature to find info like this. What protein sources are you still including in your diet?

I second the view that in order to measure some of the properties you are interested in, sensory might be your best practical tool. The links between sensory properties and specific microstructures / rheological properties / physicochemical properties are often ill-defined and is a very active area of research. For example, with rheology in particular, many relevant sensory properties happen in large deformation regimes, yet the most common / well known rheological characterization methods happen under small deformation.

That being said, I cannot understate how valuable it is to train yourself to see food products from a soft matter physics perspective. Typical soft matter systems studied in literature are way simpler than food products, and that’s why they can be studied quantitatively in a way complex food materials often can’t, but it’s still an invaluable mental framework. Here are 2 book recommendations for you if you want to learn more:

The Oxford Handbook of Soft Condensed Matter, edited by Eugene Terentjev & David Weitz

• This is a sort of compendium, with chapters reading like review papers for most soft matter system categories (eg colloidal suspensions, surfactants, polymer melts, hydrogels, etc). FYR, David Weitz is the Harvard prof behind their really popular Science and Cooking course series.

Soft Condensed Matter, by RAL Jones

• This is an actual textbook if you wanted to really get your feet wet, with exercises and all. It’s pretty short too. Just a heads up though, if you want to go through it, you’ll need to be comfortable with calculus and differential equations.

Food Science is too niche, you probably won’t find a stats course focused only on food-related applications. Stats fundamentals are also application domain agnostic, that’s kind of the beauty of it. Here is a curriculum I have made for myself over the years:

• I would recommend starting with the Coursera Data Science Specialization from Johns Hopkins. It is lightweight on stats but will give you a really good grasp or R. No need to do the entire specialization, but definitely take the R Programming, Statistical Inference and Regression Models courses. Then get really familiar with the ggplot2 and dplyr R packages.
• Get comfortable with probability theory. Stats 101 and hypothesis testing become WAY more intuitive if you have that background. I took a probability class while in grad school so I don’t have a specific online course recommendation, but i’m sure there are plenty of good options on Coursera and edx.
• Finally, I think for food scientists or any experimentalist really, Design of Experiments is a must. A textbook i’ve found really comprehensive and easy to follow is Experiments: Planning, Analysis and Optimization

You won’t get through all of this before you graduate, but i think it’s a great investment over time for the rest of your career.

Amazon shows that it contains Carrageenan, vegetable gum, konyaku powder, and “permitted food conditioners”

Konnyaku Jelly Powder - 5 Packs -10g a Pack (By Nga's Garden) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CN0CH0Q/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_m5vqFb71ZTHAE

There is a correlation between fat content and viscosity in refrigerated dairy. Just compare 2% milk with a heavy whipping cream.

If you're curious, you can also see first hand what an extra high fat content cream is like. Some brands of heavy whipping cream that don't have thickeners or stabilizers end up with a very thick layer of milk fat at the top of the container. I've noticed this a lot in Whole Foods heavy whipping cream, which is the highest fat content cream I've found in the US, but I'm sure other brands have that separation occur as well.

A bit of searching finds similar things sold as "sun-dried bananas". eg https://www.amazon.com/Certified-Organic-Preservatives-Unsulfured-Natural/dp/B086JDGK16

Alternatives to stuff like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FKVYYL6/

And yes, regarding the health benefits I can only go by what I find on the internet, none of this is a scientific study. Just claims that, at least, are never disputed.

And instead of the cost, and more stuff for my small kitchen, I was wondering if a household chemical can accomplish the same, but cheaper.

I am not someone who needs evidence of effectiveness. I only need evidence of no harm. Which I think is the standard for the medical profession anyway. If a medication or physician was ineffective but did no harm, you can't go after them. I read that eating chocolate or drinking de-caf coffee has a dozen health benefits, but people just write that on the internet. As long as it does no harm, I'm willing to try it it out. If it works, I continue it, if not, I stop doing it after a month. Is that stupid?

Googling "Gluten free bakery enzymes" got a quick result to DSM. They're great if you haven't already talked with them and can work with industrial volumes.

Diastatic Malt contains a a number of enzymes in addition to amylase. Koji(rice "malt") powder may have some of the functionality you're looking for.

This product is likely made by mixing water with dry hydrolyzed collagen. I suggest you just buy the hydrolyzed collagen. Something like this.

As others have noted, it collagen is not a complete protein as it lacks tryptophan. So to complete it you'll need to supplement with L-tryptophan, as Proteinex does.

That makes sense from a safety perspective, but per the recipe I'm using (from Greweling's Chocolate's and Confections textbook) starting at a higher brix results in a tough final product.

Apparently what occurs during the candying process is that the sugar syrup pulls moisture from the high moisture levels to the low levels in the syrup. At the same time though, a small amount of the sugar syrup solution also gets absorbed into the cells. Starting at the higher brix leads to a more viscous syrup and less syrup being absorbed into the fruit.

If you're looking at the confections side of things, as an obsessive hobbyist I've really enjoined Peter Greweling's Chocolates and Confections.

It's aimed at professional confectioners, and does a very good job of explaining the theory behind working with chocolate and crystalline and non-crystalline confections.

It's a bit expensive, but depending on where you are your local library or university may have a copy or be able to find one for you. Many libraries can borrow books from other libraries for you if they don't have the book you want on their shelves.

There's a ton of these places near me, but they actually answered the question when asked.

They use packets of Crush drink mix.

https://www.amazon.com/Crush-Singles-Powder-Packets-Non-Carbonated/dp/B0105DZTCU

A good book that might help you out is the Emperor of Scent. While it's a biography, it details the work of Luca Turin, who attempted to characterize scents into a matrix showing the relationships between them.

Personally, I agree from a science basis with about a third of the construct, and it's definitely n-dimensional, not a weird cube as proposed, but it's an interesting way to start looking at the relationships between scents.

It definitely seems like a RH% issue within the fridge, I suggest buying a small dehumidifier that wouldn’t require heat (something like this) you could potentially plug it into a humidity and temperature probe (like this) and have the RH% of the fridge be around the same as the aW for the dough, this would eliminate the possibility of moisture migration all together. If condensation is still an issue then I’d consider blast chilling. Hope this helped

This, the easiest way to do is buy a can of non-stick spray. Works good in a pinch. Otherwise, buy a Misto and fill it with your oil of choice.

https://www.amazon.com/Misto-Brushed-Aluminum-Oil-Sprayer/dp/B00004SPZV?th=1

To add on to the above, this is what they do with crackers to get seasonings to adhere at well, since they are baked and don't have the inherent oil like a fried product.

https://www.amazon.com/Fennemas-Food-Chemistry-Srinivasan-Damodaran/dp/1482208121

Seems like most of the US accredited programs would use this book for food chemistry. It's priced low enough to be minimal risk and will provide supplementary reading material for years.

There are lots of small scale pizza producers that are now in the market with MAP

For example Robertas pizza is pretty famous:

https://www.amazon.com/ROBERTAS-FROZEN-PIZZA-Pizza-Margherita/dp/B07C44HLSX

The more fish you eat the higher the chance you'll come across a fish that will give you ciguatera poisoning. The odds are generally low and eating certain fish from certain parts of the world will increase the odds. But there have been cases reported from eating farmed salmon.

About the disease: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciguatera_fish_poisoning Rare example of it in farmed salmon: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Ciguatera-Poisoning-Syndrome-from-Farm-Raised-Dinubile-Hokama/367a75c6b6e33339074a8d9b19d7d89a0f9a0325

I think they might be talking about the research facility in Natick. I don't know if they offer any training or educational programs but the US army has some of the best food research programs in the world. A book on the subject too

Food in the Hood is a podcast by two food science graduate students who talk about the ins and outs of graduate school, and how to develop skills for a career as a food scientist:

https://mytuner-radio.com/podcast/food-in-the-hood-amanda-sia-and-ben-ma-1439015450

Take your dry sodium acitate, an stir in concentrated vinegar. This one's nice. It will get wet like you expect, then dry up again after a few hours. If it's not drying, you may need to grind it a bit for more reaction surface area. This makes sodium diacetate which actually tastes like vinegar. You can clean it up a bit by soaking it in ice cold ethanol, coffee filter, and let dry.

Another way to go is adding citric acid. Mixing the two causes clumping, sticky problems, but the acidity "reactivates" the vinegar flavor (double decomposition).

I would recommend using transglutaminase, which crosslinks the proteins and gelatin of the meat, to improve the texture and toughness of the gel.

Properties of surimi gel as influenced by fish gelatin and microbial transglutaminase

Link: https://easyupload.io/u4bcoa

Sorry dude, I was hoping someone was going to help you out. I've been in the same boat. I can tell you what DOESNT work: Since water activity is just headspace relative humidity, I bought a probe hygrometer https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005FU5HE4 and stuck it in a closed package. I hoped that with enough food and time in a closed system, I'd get an aw. I tested this with saturated salt solutions, and was never able to get the humidity within 0.1 = garbage.

Fennema’s Food Chemistry is always a good primer.

I also wrote the book 150 Food Science Questions Answered, but is really more for young adults without any background in science:

https://www.amazon.com/150-Food-Science-Questions-Answered/dp/1646118332/

You can also view my page on the science of taste and flavor here, where I provide references/citations to research-based insights in the field:

https://www.thesciencesays.com/l/150-food-science-questions-answered/60df522a-8237-4e81-b504-16569b302f76

Hmm. You think one like this is ok? HYDDNice Chocolate Melting Pot 110V Chocolate Tempering Melting Machine Adjustable Temperature (Single Pot) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BJ1ZZ1B/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_CZAK2PMFGVPSFFKM0KGV

Ok thank you. Is this the right type of liquor you're talking about? https://www.amazon.com/Terrasoul-Superfoods-Organic-Cacao-Liquor/dp/B00EKUMJVE/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=cocoa+liquor&qid=1629222638&s=grocery&sr=1-2

> I'm genuinely confused about what they're thinking.

I suspect they're still using the "original recipe" for Bragg's in order to maintain a consistent product. The original recipe was likely concocted 100 years ago by Paui Bragg, a high school dropout who made his fortune selling "health foods" and supplements of questionable health value. People have come to expect a certain flavor, so they probably can't monkey with their slapdash patent medicine recipe for it.

My wife uses is because she doesn't like the taste of soy sauce and he current health food guru recommends it. 🙄
I've suggested other similar things like Maggi seasoning , but she says it "tastes bad".

If you're just heating 2L of water, why not use an immersion circulator. The Joule (for example) is accurate to within .1 °C. Although the interface requires a smartphone, so maybe something like this would be better.

I buy the food in bulk, cook the food, and freeze them in tray like ice cubes. Remove the pods and put them in ziploc bags to save space. This way, it does "extend" the shelf life.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NGYY9P5/ref=redir_mobile_desktop?_encoding=UTF8&aaxitk=7ad73ed2d1ee9e77b759e397be5eebf0&hsa_cr_id=5444209940401&pd_rd_plhdr=t&pd_rd_r=2a241c21-0b1c-403e-9566-c3dc570d9f89&pd_rd_w=gapmj&pd_rd_wg=...

Depends on the container it is in.

If it's in a plastic bag, it should be fine. If it's in a paper based or cardboard based bag, than I would move it into plastic bags, you can get ziploc style bags pretty large these days.

You could also find large food storage containers pretty much anywhere that sells kitchen stuff. Like look at this thing, lol. I've even seen ones marketed for storage pet foods, and they are even larger, some even have caster wheels on them.

https://www.amazon.com/Apera-Instruments-AI3207-Electrode-Lead-Free/dp/B076B245XX

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Very similar to what I have used to do a measure of pH every 5 minutes over the course of five hours, then export data into a spreadsheet. Obviously, you sacrifice a cup of yogurt for this. Can I recommend it? If you are doing something really precise, which is what I needed it for, it was shite. I ended up having to ditch it and titrating acidity. For actual food manufacturing and not research? Not bad. Do note that the probes are delicate and just putting them back into their cases wrong can result in trashing it. If you get one, make sure you test that probe as soon as you get it. I received two where the probe didn't work and one that didn't even have the probe inside - obviously had been returned with the probe swiped.

I can't find a link to the protein I'm using at the moment, but I have this onein my pantry and plan to open it next. How much protein would I need to get 1 litre of thick yogurt? How much can I heat whey before it curdles? I've had whey protein curdle after adding it to hot oatmeal and I'm wondering if 180f isn't too hot.

<em>&quot;How Baking Works&quot;, by paula figoni.</em>

Urgghhh, would that I could just open up a virtual copy and check if it contains that information.

That's a start tho i guess, and maybe i might even be able to find the info in another book about baking like without having to go through all of the ordeal of going to a library and having a copy of that book ordered and waiting

When training a panel, if you know the taste or aroma you're looking for, you can create a scale for each attribute from 1-15 (15 being highest intensity) with various reference standards among the scale for intensity. For example, if I'm testing saltiness you may use a lays chip for 5, saltine for 8, saturated salt solution for 15. After training your panel or yourself, with these standards, you give the unknown and have them try to rank it.

Note that reference standards aren't set in stone, and can be made up by you. My textbook had a list of example references and it served as a good starting point. https://smile.amazon.com/Sensory-Evaluation-Techniques-Vance-Civille/dp/1482216906?sa-no-redirect=1

I've been spoiled by the industry - it seems plain HFCS is a pain to come by for the average person. Some of its fructose-y replacers, aside from invert sugar, tend to have some flavor to them - juice concentrates, honey, etc.

Agave syrup is very high in fructose (could combine with a plain glucose/corn syrup) but has some molasses-y notes. And the combo would still leave you with some more polymerized starches out there.

A potential easy, cheap option would be to buy crystalline fructose at $2-3/lb (Amazon probably) and add to water and a glucose syrup (or both sugars in crystalline form and add to water).

Or this strange item off Amazon that's effectively just HFCS 55 @ $2/lb: https://www.amazon.com/Fong-Leng-Fructose-Drink-Mixes/dp/B00G4DGHMW/ref=sr_1_3_a_it?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1537846739&amp;sr=8-3&amp;keywords=fructose

https://www.amazon.com/Uncorked-Science-Champagne-G%C3%A9rard-Liger-Belair/dp/069115872X

It’s about champagne but it is the most in-depth thing I have seen on bubbles and answers a lot of your questions

In a nut shell the fact that it is forced carved versus naturally caused fermentation is indirectly related. Natural fermentation products COMMONLY have higher levels of CO2 and COMMONLY have solutes that are more likely to create more stable bubbles, but those are correlative, not causative.

I have proofed that out with degassed and recarbonated sparkling wine versus the original.

SOLVED: After discovering that "Allulose" was the sweetener behind the SmartSweets brand of candy (and noticing that that didn't cause gastrointestinal issues for me), I decided to try that. Especially since it's very similar to sugar, I'd hoped it would provide enough "bulk" to reduce the freezing point of the ice. Noting that it was 70% as sweet as sugar, though, I looked around for a blend of allulose + monkfruit, to find a true "cup-for-cup" solution. Sure enough, this Amazon product (not affiliated, and not an affiliate link) did the trick! And it [actually] tastes remarkably like sugar! Thank you for your help.

Something like this?

Hm, that's annoying. I was able to find this one which seems to ship to Canada. Hopefully it can get to you

On Food and Cooking is the best place to start if you're interested in food science. On Cooking is a much more culinary textbook but has some good science too. It has a whole chapter on sandwiches that I loved. Consider the Fork was fascinating if you're interested in food technology and history.

Unfortunately, every company is different. I can tell you that you might want to pick up a book about Emotional Intelligence (easily googleable) as it's a skill based on dealing with people. A lot of people recommend Getting Things Done by Dave Allen for managing projects https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0142000280

Cabled puncture probe thermometer connected to a display outside of the oven. Test the recipe a few times in the oven (different times and temperature settings) with the probe stuck in the centre of the meat, and observe the temperature dynamic and end temperature. Then record what works and what doesn't. Repeat as necessary until archiving perfection.

Edit: like this http://www.amazon.com/CDN-DTP482-Programmable-Probe-Thermometer/dp/B00046YFHE