If you've ever looked at a can of Coke or a piece of fruit and thought, if only I could turn this into caviar, then there's a new Kickstarter project you might be interested in. Created by Montreal-based Kelp Cavair, which makes cavair substitutes, the so-called Imperial Spherificator promises to turn just about any food into tiny spheres with a minimum of effort.
It isn't completely automatic, though. As inventor Naor Cohen explains in the project's Kickstarter video, you still need to liquefy the food in question with a blender (and let it sit for a couple of hours for the air bubbles to disappear) before putting it in the Spherificator. And to actually form the pearls, you have to shoot them from the Sphericator into a bowl filled with a mixture of water and calcium chloride, after which they need to be rinsed.
The normally more time consuming process of mixing your food with alginate to thicken it and forming spheres one at a time with a syringe, however, is automated by the Spherificator. A set of interchangable nozzles and adjustable speed controls also give you some added control over the size of the pearls.
That added convenience does of course come at a cost, however. Those eager to get a bit more adventurous with their food will have to pay $175 for the Spherificator (including a supply of alginate and calcium chloride), although there are still some early bird options available for $150. The Kickstarter project itself has already surpassed its goal of $80,000 with a few weeks left to go.
[via CNET]
