Please explain. Are you referring strictly to the bottled juice? The “proper” product, as I mentioned, IMHO, I was extremely pleased with my recipe results, calling for lemon juice, not sodium citrate. That is not a gamble.
If I could just get a confirmation that the bottled juice is equivalent to the fresh in terms of volume and citric acid level, which, since it is already an unadulterated, non-concentrated 100% lemon juice product, which would seem to be the case.
It is a gamble as the citric acid concentration in lemon juice (concentrates) will vary from bottle to bottle. Which means that it is not unlikely that when adding baking soda to make sodium citrate in situ you might add not enough or too much of it. In both cases the consistency of the cheese sauce will be not optimal, e.g. excess citric acid is known to give a more grainy consistency where as too much baking soda tends to lead to “soapy” mouthfeel
The concentration in bottled lemon juice (which tastes nasty if you’re used to fresh) varies, but looking at the video, I don’t think that will matter so long as there’s enough sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) to convert enough citric acid to sodium citrate to disable the casein. The flavor might be affected by excess citric acid or sodium bicarbonate. You might need to make the recipe a couple of times to adjust the quantities.
An $8 8-oz. bag of sodium citrate would make a whole lot more than eight batches.
What I meant was lemon juice itself is not a gamble. However, I didn’t notice that it was “from concentrate”, so thanks for that ::
That said, It got a 4.7 out of 5 stars, with 7,940 global ratings, all 3 stars or better. I don’t foresee a problemn
If you only ever make that one recipe.
? why is it not a gamble for this specific recipe ?
ive tried calculating the molar amounts of citric acid/bicarbonate to get a molar equivalent based on average lemon juice concentrations, but found that titrating upwards with bicarb until fizzling stops was more reliable.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/ez0g0p/lemon_juice_and_baking_soda/
As a chemist who has done way too many acid/base titration during university I know that looking for fizzling is not a terrible effective way to get sodium citrate without additional access of either starting materials
Sure, but like I said, in this case all that really matters is that you get enough sodium citrate to disable the casein.
I would be foolish to challenge your expertise. All I said was lemon juice itself, not specifying fresh or bottled.
The recipe calls for lemon juice. It came out perfect. What’s the gamble? I used medium cheddar.
I no longer use sharp cheddar because of the less that optimal results with the more conventional preparation methods, but I will experiment with a variation of the recipe, in small portions for that in the future.
I haven’t read the complete thread yet, but that’s definitely an example of the direction I’m after. It’s may take my tiny intellect a while to process the science, but it looks very promising. Thanks. Appreciate it big time.
Just lemon juice without any base ? Normally pure lemon juice for making cheese sauces tend to break the sauce and makes it very grainy.
The recipe starts with dissolving baking soda in lemon juice.
I thought I qualified my methods and goals here, but we seem to be going around and around, overlooking and rehashing some things.
The foundation of my initial inquiry was simple. Can I substitute the lemon juice with Sour Salt? However I do understand this conversation has taken, as least for me, a lot of welcome twists and turns, that led us down an interesting, educational path.
First thing, please forgive me if I misinterpret your intention when you said “Just lemon juice without any base ?”, but everything I’ve discussed here is in direct reference to the recipe I posted, which uses lemon juice. I can only assume that whatever you are referring to or ignoring, as a base, to mimic the impact of sodium citrate, happens to be the baking soda? Of course, lets not forget the additional liquid as well.
Secondly, forget about me using the powdered sodium citrate, at least for now, Maybe in time, with all your guys wonderful suggestions, help and the references you found, there will one day be a method to apply a measurable dose of sodium citrate in relation to other ingredients, for the everyday cook, without fancy scales, tooos, etc., to accurately and reasonably calculate.
This is why I made the 360 back to the bottled lemon juice, not the sour salt, as a substitute. Right now, it’s that or the fresh.
Sodium citrate is expensive. I used it once to make the cheese sauce for my mac n cheese. It helped make the sauce velvety smooth but the dish ended up being a little salty. Would be careful to monitor saltiness of the dish.
My main point (and I think from others) in this discussion is that you look like trying to desperately avoid using sodium citrate and use a way more complicated and inaccurate approach which has a much higher probability of giving you suboptimal result. It would be understandable if sodium citrate would be expensive but you can get 1/2 lb for <$8 which allows you to make many, many cheese sauces without any possible issues (with this amount of sodium citrate you could take bath in the cheese sauce)
Please tell me the amount sodium citrate I need to replace the lemon juice and baking soda in the recipe.
Or, give me another tried and true recipe that uses sodium citrate.
This is what I used
You can get it for $7 a pound. If you don’t have Amazon Prime, have a friend who does order it for you.
