(Professor) This is only 321 degrees below
zero. That's all!
(Narrator) Culinary arts faculty and students
at Pennsylvania College of Technology added
a dash of science to craft cool recipes for
more than 200 high school students.
The recent Taste of Technology presentation
showcased how a kitchen could be transformed
into a big chemistry set.
(Professor) What's the objective? We want to
learn about spherification. We want to learn
about liquid nitrogen and different food products
and how to use that in avant-garde cuisine.
(Student) They chose very out of the box ideas
to show kids from high school, which I liked.
Because some people are like we don't want
to go too far because it might take too long
to explain. I think a lot of us got it.
(Professor) This elevates what we do to another
level but of course by no means does this
replace the normal way of people serving or
eating food.
(Narrator) Demonstrations included dropping
a liquid and sodium alginate solution into
a chloride bath to produce an edible shell
with a liquid center. In other words, the
perfect appetizer.
(Professor) So you're taking a drop of liquid
that is actually going to form the sphere
in the shape of a caviar. Except it's not
your tradition caviar. It's the faux caviar
or fake caviar where the sky is the limit.
(Narrator) For the entree, students produced
some special spaghetti by combining flavored
liquid with agar, a jelly-like derivative
of seaweed.
(Professor) When you use agar like that it
it what they call thermally irreversible.
We can heat that up. We can put a sauce on
it. We can use it as a savory. We can use
it as a sweet.
(Narrator) Ice cream and frozen marshmallows
provided a decadent dessert, thanks to liquid
nitrogen.
(Professor) It's a quicker way of freezing
product. And when you freeze products quickly
you save the integrity of the product. So
one of the fun things with liquid nitrogen
is that we can make ice cream and it is so
creamy in your mouth that it's a cross between
ice cream and whipped cream. It doesn't have
those smaller ice crystals. So it's more palpable.
It has a lot more flavor.
Today was to show them that food is not all
seriousness. You can have a lot of fun as
far as what you're doing.
(Narrator) And learn at the same time.
(Student) I learned a lot about like how science
and food correspond a lot together.
(Student) I learned a lot of new things. I
mean half the stuff I didn't even hear before
today, so it definitely was interesting.
(Narrator) The presentation also served as
a preview for the main course the culinary
crew will share this April in Washington,
D.C. as they represent Penn College at the
U.S.A. Science and Engineering Festival, the
largest STEM education event in the country.
(Professor) Now we have a crew. We are assembling
a team. We have four faculty members. We're
going to have about nine students. We are
handpicking a team of students.
(Narrator) At least one of the high schoolers
hopes to be a classmate of those culinary
arts students next year.
(Student) Because I see the stuff they are
doing. What I see is great and wonderful.
I see how great the teachers are, the instructors.
(Professor) Ladies and gentlemen, thank you
very much for being a wonderful audience.
(Narrator) For PCToday, I'm Tom Speicher
