Interesting Properties: Film Forming
A clear, flexible, edible film.
You can coat tablets with it, to help them slip down the throat… and let’s be honest, stop all the powdery bits inside from falling out. Or make it into capsules that dissolve in the stomach. Both pharmaceutical applications.
But, you can also make glazes on buns that are allergen free and films on the outside of fried foods that reduce the oil uptake when the food is fried – without compromising the eating texture, and for the cup cake lovers amongst us, edible glitter.
All you have to do is dissolve the MC or HPMC in water, then dry it. Of course, it’s a little more complicated than that. Lower viscosity ones are better and you need to be aware of drying temperatures and times but basically that is it.
IInteresting Properties: Foaming
Sometimes a nuisance, sometimes a joy. The same properties of water-loving and oil-loving areas on the backbone means that this stuff also has surfactancy. That means that solutions with no oil in them will foam. The oil-loving (water hating) bits simply migrate to air interfaces rather than hang out with the water.
It can be a pain of course, when you don’t want a foam, but there are ways around that.
Methylcellulose: The Properties (3)
Other Applications
Basically, anywhere that you need to give a structure to a hot liquid.
In the featured vegan burger, methylcellulose binds in the cold (common) but gels (reversibly) on heating (unique), giving hot structure and bite to the burgers. This of course translates into balls, nuggets, sausages etc. etc. You can also use it to stop cheese from bursting out of its coating when fried, or if used in the crust of pizzas.
A different type of methylcellulose to the ones used in the vegan burger may be used to make savoury fillings bake or fry stable, massively reducing yield losses and clean up costs. It will do the same for frozen and chilled shelf life sweet fillings.
Another type is used to reduce oil uptake in fried foods.
One BIG restriction is in ambient shelf life sweet fillings. Methylcellulose can’t cope with high sugar levels (above about 40%) so is entirely unsuitable for use in long life fruit pies, syrups and jams.
As ever, if you want advice on what, where from and how, just get in touch.