On the days when I work at home, my morning starts with reading emails over a cup of coffee. Today, though, I took some extra time to catch up on blog reading.
One of my favorites, Cooking Issues, put up a post this morning about infusion that, quite frankly, changed my life. No joke. When your life and your livelihood revolve around food, and your obsessions include plants and aroma, then this post was truly life-altering.
Extracting flavor and aroma from plants has long been a source of frustration for me. Without a rotovap or chamber vacuum, I've had to resort to conventional methods of infusion that can take days, sometimes weeks. That's all changed now, thanks to Dave Arnold and an isi whipper.
Dave's revolutionary infusion method involves packing aromatics and liquid into an isi whipper, charging it with N2O, waiting 60 seconds before opening the canister and straining. The depressurized gas disrupts the cells, releasing aroma into the liquid. The beauty of this technique is that it is simple, quick, and inexpensive.
After I calmed down, I tried to work. Really, I did. But I was too distracted. I had to take inventory of my chargers and figure out how soon I could get more. And I kept thinking of all the herbs, flowers, and seeds in my garden, pantry and refrigerator.
Despite a crushing deadline, I took a few hours off to play. My reward is a refrigerator stocked with a dozen or so jars of brilliant infusions.
It's nearly midnight as I write this, and I have hours of work to make up. It's gonna be a long night, but I had to take a few minutes to share this with you. Maybe it will change your life, too.
Playing with Fire and Water 
Sounds fantastic. Some flavors seem to work better than others. Which ones did you like?
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I was particularly excited by the phlox infusion— an elusive flavor that I’ve tried to capture unsuccessfully. Nearly all of the herbs (lime basil, pineapple mint, wild carrot, rue, lemon balm) that I tried were great. For some reason, I couldn’t get a discernible flavor out of tomato leaves, but I’ll keep trying.
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Lemon thyme, pineapple sage, mint and holy basil worked really well. Inspired by your phlox infusion. I am planning to go for the roses tomorrow…
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Interesting technique and particularly easy on the budget since I’m having difficulty convincing myself to spend $10K on a rotovap. Are the resulting infusions completely clear? They seem to be from the photo. I’m also curious what liquid medium you’re using as you’re likely to get different extractions from water, oil and alcohol.
For your tomato, you may be able to get more out of using stalks rather than the leaves themselves (the hands from each bunch of tomato may do the trick). Those always had more tomato “smell” than the leaves ever did for me.
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It’s inspiring to see such innovative concoctions
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have you tried tomato vines?
by the way, you can get the chargers at any reputable (or less than reputable) sex shop, haha
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