Basil seeds have been a trendy ingredient for a few years now, but they're new to my kitchen. For some reason I had always assumed that basil seeds were a specialty ingredient that some stagiere had to spend all day picking off of basil plants at just the right point in their growing cycles. It turns out that basil seeds are extremely common in Southeast Asia and are not only cheap and sold in bulk, but are extremely easy to work with. They are often used in a sweetened drink in Southeast Asia.

I saw the basil seeds at LeSanctuaire when placing my last order. Although one pound of seeds costs $10 (and as usual, LeSanctuaire is pretty much the most expensive place to get them), that pound of seeds is actually TONS of seeds, because the curious properties of basil seeds makes them swell to around ten times their original size when soaked in water.

Basil seeds soaked in water start to form a thick, unique, gelatinous, mucilaginous membrane around the seed. Their texture is somewhat slimy, with the individual swelled seeds shooting around in your mouth like large caviar with a tiny crunchy seed inside. They are very nearly flavorless, but are such an interesting texture and visual that many chefs, pastry and savory, have found a use for them.

Ordinarily the seeds are soaked for at least several minutes in either plain water or sweetened water, depending on the recipe. I was hoping that, since the seeds were absorbing water they could absorb other flavored liquids. So, I decided to do some testing. I hydrated basil seeds in several different liquids to see how well they would swell, and how much they would absorb the flavors of the liquids they were in.

The picture at right shows basil seeds hydrated for two hours in liquids (left to right): 1) brewed coffee; 2) brewed coffee for half the time, then pure water for half the time; 3) apple cider vinegar; 4) water with 10% kosher salt; 5) water with 20% sugar; 6) pure water; 7) tequila; 8) red wine.

It turned out that NO liquid resulted in as extensive hydration of basil seeds within 2 hours of soaking time as pure water. The tequila failed to hydrated the seeds whatsoever. The vinegar, salt solution, and red wine were all about equally poor at hydrating the seeds. The coffee was slightly better but still only about (unscientifically) half the size of the fully-swelled, water-soaked seeds. Taking seeds that had been soaking in coffee for an hour and soaking them in water for the subsequent hour resulted in a markedly better (though still not approaching ideal) hydration, but the seeds retained a fair amount of coffee flavor despite the dilution.

The real battle was between the water and the sugar water. Though the two were quite close, and the hydration in the sugar water was clearly adequate, the pure water definitely did a better job than the sugar water. I'd be curious to see how these results would change if the seeds were instead soaked overnight. Would nearly all of the samples eventually catch up to the water?

What these results say is that if you want to flavor your basil seeds, you CAN use flavored water, but alcohol and acids dramatically inhibit hydration. Further testing must be done.

Posted by Barzelay on 2010/03/22 @ 1:26 | Comments (2) | Veggies, Fruit, Grain, Cheese

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