Knowledge Base > Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

This event was on Tuesday, January 31, 2023 at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern

Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to cours… Read More.

Recorded

Question:

I am working on the agar cheese for the Plant Based cooking class. It turned out to be the consistency of a weird lumpy mess. Could it be the agar, or am I not cooking it enough?

— Denise Jenkins

Answer:

So Denise this does happen typically in my experience when I found that it's because you're not scraping the bottom of the pan as you're cooking your agar and the agar floating to the bottom of the pan. So then when you pour it out of your Pan, the egg are still stuck to the bottom of your pan. So that's typically what I see when I see something like that is so make sure when you're cooking your agar and the liquid you're doing that you're taking a spatula and scraping the bottom of the pan to be able to get everything off the bottom with handle might be sticking out into the rest of it. So it's all cooking. Evenly that's typically where I'm gonna see that The other way that I see agar, I know in this I know this cheese recipe and I don't think there is but too much acid can keep agar from binding perfectly. So make sure you're using the reckon a recommended amount of agar and the recommended amount of asset. So like lemon, you know would be something like that. So yeah, I've seen a lot of people in that same activity do that this sweet version. And if you're doing like something like an orange agar, you know, it's gonna be much less likely to set properly because of all the acid.
Dan Marek

Dan Marek

Director of Plant-Based Culinary & Dev

rouxbe.com