Quick Tempering Chocolate using vegetable oil

[Darienne]

Perfect for Dipping by Melissa Clark is an article I found yesterday online in the NYT.

What's this? Quick tempering of chocolate using a neutral vegetable oil? Why have I never noticed this before? Is this a terrible thing to do? I see that it 'lasts' only two days or so. What would I use it for?

Of course I'm going to try it...the courverture, Guittard's Bittersweet, is out on the counter...but I'm really curious to know what, if anything, anyone else has to report about this technique.

Edited February 22, 2012 by Darienne (log)

[Darienne]

About one hour later.

The chocolate drips on the Pyrex bowl, which is sitting beside the sink, are still in a liquid state.

The decanted thin flat discs and the tiny egg shapes are molded and done. Out of a short stay in the freezer and into an acrylic container. Very little snap. The eggs are still sort of softish in their middles. The discs are hard. No smearing on my fingers when tested. But smears from the decanted molds.

Didn't try dipping anything into the chocolate.

Still no idea of what use this technique would be for me. We don't dip fruit or anything else into chocolate to eat right away. Maybe it would work also with candied citrus or ginger peel. Don't have any right now. But then it lasts in a hardened state for only a couple of days. Then what happens???

Forgot to add that the chocolate bits are fairly shiny. Look nice enough. Some discs have a bit of snap to them. Others have none.

...but then I might have done it all wrong to begin with...

Edited February 22, 2012 by Darienne (log)

[ElsieD]

Gee, for a minute there I got all excited.

[Darienne]

Two hours. All snap in the discs is gone. The little half eggs are soggy. Still good tasting, but no snap at all.

But then Melissa Clark used only a 'couple of drops' of oil...although those were pretty big 'drops' in the video...and I used 1 tablespoon canola per 3 oz of chocolate which the recipe stipulated.

Still... it was fun to do an 'experiment'.

[Edward J]

(1)Vegetable oil is liquid at room temperature.

(2)Cocoa butter is solid at room temperature.

(3)The more oil you put in perfectly good chocolate, the softer the chocolate will become, and the "greasier" the mouthfeel will become.

These facts will ever change irregardless of which TV prsonality or author is flogging "a new way" of tempring chocolate.

[gap]

Following on from Edward J's points above, I think I've read about this before and basically, you are not tempering the chocolate by adding oil. You're altering the chocolate into a non-chocolate substance that doesn't need tempering (sort of like compound chocolate).

I'm a little hazy on the science here, but I'm sure someone will jump in and correct me if I'm wrong (which I may well be)

Edited February 22, 2012 by gap (log)

[Marmalade]

Yes, you are definitely messing with the chemistry of the fat (cocoa butter) by adding vegetable oil. I can't say exactly how, but you're not going to get a good temper or shine. There is no quick fix for properly tempered, pure chocolate.

[Sebastian]

I think it's fair to assume that a homemade video off the NYT web site probably isn't going to break new scientific ground. If it sounds too good to be true, chances are.....

NYT should definitely get some feedback on this one.

[Darienne]

gap. That's exactly what I thought, but I wanted to try it anyway to see what would happen.

Sebastian. I wouldn't call the video homemade, nor did Clark suggest that anything she did was new to anyone.

Still it was interesting to try. The results have now been melted, with whipping cream and seedless raspberry jam added and are a ganache for DH to nibble on as is his wont.

[minas6907]

What she's doing isnt anything extraordinary, rather then ruining courverture, I would just use some coating chocolate or even chocolate chips thinned with oil or cocoa butter for quick and easy dipping.

[Tri2Cook]

gap. That's exactly what I thought, but I wanted to try it anyway to see what would happen.

That's the spirit! Trying something new (or new to you) is almost always worthwhile. Even if you're not happy with the result, you are now definitively not happy with it. You know exactly what you weren't happy about. Even if someone had said that it absolutely would not do what it was supposed to do before you tried it, that still wouldn't tell you what it does do. Maybe something will come along down the road that the result would be perfect for. When it does, you'll already know what you need for the job.

[Darienne]

gap. That's exactly what I thought, but I wanted to try it anyway to see what would happen.

That's the spirit! Trying something new (or new to you) is almost always worthwhile. Even if you're not happy with the result, you are now definitively not happy with it. You know exactly what you weren't happy about. Even if someone had said that it absolutely would not do what it was supposed to do before you tried it, that still wouldn't tell you what it does do. Maybe something will come along down the road that the result would be perfect for. When it does, you'll already know what you need for the job.

Thanks for those encouraging words, T2C. It was a good experience and as pretty much always we can eat the mistakes.

[pastrygirl]

Wow, I expect more from the NYT. The candy/deep fry thermometer she had would be useless for tempering chocolate because candy thermometers are for much higher temperatures and don't even register below 100F. Then she leaves dipped items on a wire rack to drain and harden? And they are not going to harden around the wires and get stuck? I'm skeptical...

[gap]

The results have now been melted, with whipping cream and seedless raspberry jam added and are a ganache for DH to nibble on as is his wont.

Sounds like someone came out a winner from this

[Edward J]

The best thermometer for working with chocolate is the one you have in your medicine cabinet: Cheap, accurate to 1/10th of a degree, and you already have it!

[minas6907]

Huh...I never thought of that. Thanks for the tip.

[Sebastian]

gap. That's exactly what I thought, but I wanted to try it anyway to see what would happen.

Sebastian. I wouldn't call the video homemade, nor did Clark suggest that anything she did was new to anyone.

Still it was interesting to try. The results have now been melted, with whipping cream and seedless raspberry jam added and are a ganache for DH to nibble on as is his wont.

You may not, i would. It's defiantly not production quality. She's inferring that she's got a 'new' way of 'tempering' that doesn't require one to actually temper. Which would be new science, and against physical laws that we know to be true. Quite amateurish at best, terrible research and misleading at worst. I applaud you for looking at new ways to do things, don't get me wrong, it's the piece i'm criticizing. We do, however, already know the answer to this one.

[Darienne]

To all: thanks so much for all the useful information.