The Molecular Kitchen

few molecular kitchen episodes

Ice cream with liquid nitrogen

A few days ago, I had an opportunity to demonstrate a fun science experiment to the school children. There I showed how to make tasty and smooth ice cream from liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen has a very low boiling point (-196 C). So, the moment liquid nitrogen comes into contact with milk, it starts to evaporate and the milk gets solid to form ice cream. I am sharing a part of the demonstration with you. Hope you will like it.

How papaya helps to make mutton tender? | Mutton curry

Goat meat or any red meat contains lots of connective and muscle tissues making those meats tough. Enzymes in papaya or high-pressure cooking break these tissues and therefore the meat becomes softer.

Shukto | The chemistry of bitter molecules

Shukto is a very popular Bengali dish. It is prepared from different vegetables, like eggplants, drumstick, carrots and other stuffs. However, the main ingredient in my opinion is karela or bitter melon. In this week's episode of Molecular Kitchen we prepared shukto and discussed about health benefits of bitter melon. Also, talked about the chemistry of bitter molecules and how artificial intelligence can predict new bitter molecules.

Banana flower curry

If you think you realize that banana is a very versatile plant so to speak. We of course eat banana as a fruit. Plantain or kanch kola used in curry. The banana leaves are used in traditional plates even today in places in india. These plates are biodegradable. So good for environment. We use the stem of banana, called pseudo stem actually, in Bengali it’s called thor. Also used as vegetable. Not only that the flower of banana is also used as vegetables in many countries including india, Thailand etc. Mochar chop is also very tasty. In today’s cooking we will make Bengali style banana flower curry. Also learn about the health benefits of banana flower in diabetes.

Kheer | The chemistry of aromatic rice

The story goes like this. Lord Buddha was traveling near the city of Kapilavastu. There was a village nearby. Mathla was the name of this village. The villagers gathered around Buddha and asked for ‘prasad’. Buddha gave them the seeds of ‘kalanamak’, a type of aromatic rice. And told them to plant the seeds in this region. Whenever, fragrance would come out from the rice, they would remember Buddha. Carbonized remains of ‘kalanamk’ rice was discovered near Siddharth Nagar, UP, India which was close to the ancient city of Kapilavastu. In this week's episode, we prepared payesam (kheer) from aromatic chinigura rice (a popular rice in Bangladesh) and discussed the chemistry behind the aromatic rice.