How to Make Sodium Citrate at Home for Cheesemaking

we'll get a Kurd nerds today we're going to be making sodium citrate so sodium citrate is an emulsifier and was actually first discovered by Kraft and the reason they wanted it they wanted a consistent cheese they could add just about any cheese by-product to to make melty cheese so sodium citrate is basically a a salt of citric acid and it's very simple to make you could make it using bicarbonate of soda or sodium bicarbonate and citric acid and of course some water to start a chemical reaction the resultant set of that chemical reaction is indeed sodium citrate and it's very simple to make at home now the reason we use sodium citrate in cheese or American cheese Velveeta cheese slices that sort of stuff all those sorts of processed cheese's is because it reduces the cheeses acidity and it makes the proteins in the cheese more soluble and prevents it from separating into the milk solids and the fats that are in the cheese if you milk sometimes melt normal cheese you'll see that you'll get an oily slick over the top of the cheese well sodium citrate prevents that and it holds the cheese together it's great for making cheese sauces for pouring over nachos and for making your own style of American cheese now if you want to see how to make American cheese you can check out a separate video that I've got over here anyway let's get on and see how we make sodium citrate the first ingredient we're making we're using or measuring out is just water I'm using pure water 125 grams [Music] next ingredient I'm measuring out there is sodium bicarbonate or bicarbonate of soda so we're going to be measuring out ninety seven grams of bicarb I'm so close so these measurements are going to be a fairly exact and it's not that's the reason I'm not doing in them in pounds and ounces ounces is because I don't convert them like that anyway so the next ingredient is citric acid and we need 74 grams of citric acid so this is anhydrous citric acid so it dissolves in water most of the citric acids you get in the store and hydron us [Music] so there we go so the ingredients have to be exactly measured out for the chemical reaction to work properly so we put our citric acid into the into a sauce pans as a 2 liter sauce but we add in our water 125 milliliters or 125 grams which is exactly the same and we give that a good stir to make sure that the citric acid is fully dissolved that in the water so you can't see any of the crystals remaining behind so that didn't take very long at all and now going to pour in the bicarb soda or sodium bicarbonate now technically what we're making oh look at that fizz it's a little big reaction there I had to keep stirring very fast to stop it from going over the the side of the pan so just keep stirring after you put that in as you can see see there it's lessened a little bit the reaction does take quite some time now technically we're making trisodium citrate that's the proper technical chemical term for what we're trying to make there we go now it has settled down a fair bit you can see there that it's still bubbling it's still releasing carbon dioxide and that's exactly what we want it to do we want the complete reaction of the acid and the base to finish now it starts to go clear that just means some of the bicarb is settled on the bottom scene they distr it a bit more so that the reaction continues and you get rid of all of that carbon dioxide out of the solution so you can see it goes fairly clear just giving it a final stir there with a spatula just to make sure there's no powders on the bottom and I've done that there so that's as clear as it's gonna get there's no more co2 being released it stopped fizzing and I've just about to turn the heat on where I have there so once all the co2 bubbles finish you turn the heat on just to a simmer and we're just going to boil the water off so the remaining powder or crystals that are left behind is the trisodium citrate or sodium citrate as you can see they gets a bit of a crust just give it a bit of a swirl now it took me about two hours to make this the biggest part of the reaction was when we added the bicarb and the citric acid together that's what took the longest this boiling off part took about 30 minutes tops so this was the fairly easy part so I'm just stirring it just to make sure that it crystallizes properly which it does fairly fast once most of the water is gone you can see it starts to form a paste and that paste is the the sodium citrate so I'm just spreading that over the bottom of the pan it's on a very low heat at the moment just to make that dry out and it does and then when I got to this stage I just spread it out on the bottom and turn the heat off gave it a quick taste it tasted just slightly salty sour and then after a little bit more time it it turned into a powder that was had no water in it whatsoever so I just poured it into a little container and there's my sodium citrate easy peasy so how much sodium citrate do you use when making melty cheese well it's fairly simple you use between two and three percent of the total liquid of the water that you add plus the weight of the cheese so for about 400 grams of cheese and a hundred and 25 milliliters of water you would add about 15 grams of sodium citrate and this makes a very nice cheese sauce which you can melt straight and pour straight over nachos or you can form it in molds and make a solid block of say an american-style cheese I'll actually put a chart in the description below to show how much cheese to add how much liquid to add and how much sodium citrate to add to make the right consistency all the way from firm molding cheese cheese slices a liquid cheese sauce and a really runny cheese sauce so check that in the description below well I hope you like this video it's a little bit different than the normal cheese making videos that I make and it is I think it stands on its own two feet a little bit of a chemistry lesson however those who want to make their own sodium citrate at home and they've got some simple products like super citric acid and sodium bicarbonate which are easy to buy in the supermarket unlike sodium citrate mind you then you'll be able to make it at home yourself well thanks for watching Kurd nerds and I will see you next time

Channel: Gavin Webber

Views: 30,697

Rating: 4.951941 out of 5

Keywords: Sodium Citrate, Trisodium citrate, trisodium citrate cheese, cheese emulsifier, cheese (food), how to, how to cook, food (tv genre), how to make cheese, cheese making, making cheese, gavin webber, cheese making at home, cheese dip, nacho cheese sauce recipe

Id: UTGzLor4k4M

Length: 9min 20sec (560 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 02 2019