5 cool recipes made with agar agar

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

I think I mentioned already, that products’ names containing the same word twice are suspicious to me, but with agar agar, I’d still highly recommend you’ll always keep some at home. Agar agar is made out of seaweed (it is called Kanten in Japan), and is a great vegan substitute for gelatin, for its  thickening and gelling abilities. Yes, it is expensive, however with agar agar a little goes a long way, and you’d usually just use a tea spoon or 2 for any dish so a package should last long. If you need to convert from flakes to powder, 1 table spoon of flakes equals 1 tea spoon of powder. I would use agar-agar instead of gelatin regardless of my vegan diet preferences, as it provides more vitamins and minerals than gelatin, and some sources claim that agar-agar also helps sooth the digestive system and can help us feel more full as it absorbs water.

Either way, agar agar is a great resource, that can be used to make the following 5 cool recipes:

The first recipe, which is the most obvious thing to make with agar-agar is “Jellow“. My version uses no gelatin, no sugar, and no other un-needed junk. I try to refrain from making anything that includes processed sugars at home, as I feel there’s enough of that in the bought snacks that our kids get outside on different occasions, so I use apple concentrate (which is naturally sweet, but not too much sweet) to sweeten these candies. If you are not as strict about your sugar intake then you can obviously use any sweetener of choice here. The general ratio to keep in mind is that one tea spoon of agar-agar powder is enough to thicken one cup of liquid. Do note though that citrus will require a bit more agar agar to set. As for the molds you can totally go wild here, once your base is ready to be poured into molds to set in them you can use any shape you like, among the coolest ideas I saw around the web were Lego shaped molds and mini colorful beetles.

Ingredients:

You can pretty much make the jellow with any juice you want, or use fresh fruit. Just remember that citrus will require a bit more agar agar to set though. The red ones in the picture are made of 1 cup cubed plums blended with 1/4 cup water, 1/4 cup pure maple syrup and 1 1/4 tea spoons agar agar powder, using the same instructions as above.

The second recipe, is for macadamia pudding, which is my version for a healthy home made pudding (that aims to be visually similar to the commercial ones).

Makes:

2 small puddings

The third recipe, is more of a cool experiment I wanted to conduct, and didn’t actually use myself as I don’t tend to pack sandwiches for work, but if you do,  i believe it can be of great benefit to you. Think about it like this: you invest in an rich and tasty sandwich, with a complementary dressing, and then find the vegetables all soaked in the dressing when you want to eat it after a few hours. This recipe will solve this situation and keep your sandwich fresh, while using dressing stripes: use your favorite sandwich dressing, add agar-agar (rule of thumb again: one tea spoon of agar-agar powder is enough to thicken one cup of liquid, while citrus will require some more powder to set), bring to a boil, simmer, let cool a bit, then cut into stripes, and there you go, fresh sandwich remains! You can keep these stripes in the fridge for about a week and use with any sandwich you make.

The forth recipe is yet another experiment I was fascinated to do, and was real fun, and will most likely talk to those who like experimenting (and have

the time and energy to do so..), and want to create nice “food decorations” to add to the dishes for a special meal. The basic idea is you can prepare any kind of liquid mix, say balsamic based, add the agar-agar and cook as described in previous recipes, and as soon as we take it off the stove, drop drops of it into a bottle of oil that spent some time in the freezer. What will happen is when the hot agar-agar based mix will meet the cold oil, it will immediately thicken immediately, while creating cool looking “pearls” that can be used as decorations for a dish. Like I mentioned, only if you are into experimenting…

And the fifth recipe, is one for dessert (time for one, right?), and not any dessert but a vegan Panna Cotta Biscoff cake. While this recipe deviates a bit from my usual nutrition rules as it does use processed sugar (and the Biscoff cookies), it is likely the only such recipe on the blog, and sometimes you just need one like that around.

P.S.

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Moran