Caviar may not be for everyone’s taste (or wallet, for that matter), but you have to admit – eating pearl-shaped food that you can layer on top of other food sounds like a lot of fun. Granted, making pearl-shaped food isn’t a lot of fun (it’s a lot of work), but that can change with the Imperial Spherificator.
No, that’s not the name of a ship out of the new Star Wars movie. Instead, that’s what they’re calling this handheld device that you can use to turn liquefied food items into pearl-like shapes right from the comfort of your kitchen. Anything that can be squeezed out of a syringe should be fair game for the device, too, so you can turn everything from workout shakes to blended veggies to your favorite soup into caviar-like fare.
Looking roughly like a travel mug, the Imperial Spherificator can hold 7 ounces of liquid inside, which you then extrude into a bowl of water and calcium chloride, the combination of which turns each drop into a caviar-like pearl form. Each full tank can produce up to 250 pearls, depending on size and base liquid. It comes with three swappable nozzles, so you can change up the size of your pearls, with a variable speed controller, so you can speed up or slow down the pace to your liking. While it will work as is for most types of liquid and blended food items, more acidic substances (e.g. tomato sauce, soda drinks) will need to be reinforced with a pinch of sodium alginate (seaweed extract) in order to form into proper spheres.
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for the Imperial Spherificator. Pledges to reserve a unit starts at $125.