Experimenting with the PolyScience Sonicprep™ Ultrasonic Homogenizer 

The nice folks at PolyScience generously loaned me a Sonicprep ultrasonic homogenizer for a few weeks of experimentation.  If the last sentence sounded like gibberish, it’s probably a good idea to read Jethro’s post on our experiments for a little background knowledge.  The Sonicprep is a device that emits powerful ultrasonic energy through the tip of a metal probe, into your food.  Fundamentally, high-amplitude ultrasound is really good at two things: making stable emulsions and smashing molecules together. The Sonicprep excels in both applications, but has a few nuances to overcome before I can justify the price for this gorgeous piece of technology.  Here I’ll describe some of the tests I preformed with the Sonicprep (many with Jethro’s assistance) and the conclusions we reached. 

Making Emulsions

The Sonicprep is really good at emulsifying liquids.  Like, scary good.  The first thing I did after unboxing the beast of a machine was to pour arbitrary amounts of oil and water into small glasses and give them a whirl in the Sonicprep.  Within seconds, the oil and water were mixed into a pale “milk”, and there was almost no trace of the source liquids remaining. 

The photo at the top shows a small amount of chili oil being mixed into water.  I only let the machine run for a few seconds at full power, which is why you can see the unincorporated oil on the right-hand side.  However, if I had continued sonicating, all of the oil would have become incorporated.  This isn’t necessarily an oil-to-water ratio I’d recommend; it was mostly to illustrate the process.

Unfortunately, all of my oil-based emulsions were plagued by a confounding problem: they tasted like metal and smelled like an electrical fire.  I’ve talked to several other folks who routinely use ultrasonic homogenizers and nobody else has ever encountered the problem.  Chris Young (Modernist Cuisine co-author) suggested that the intense ultrasonic energy may be setting off a chain reaction of free radical release within the oil, but unfortunately I don’t have the equipment necessary to test this theory.  It is possible that there was something specific about the machine I was using, or perhaps I was attempting to mix quantities that were just too small… the jury is still out on the cause, but this threw an unfortunate wrench in most emulsion tests. 

I did manage to create some very promising fat-based emulsions.  For example, I made the Serious Eats 36-hour Sous Vide Porchetta, which yielded quite a bit of delicious, liquid fat.  I sonicated the seasoned fat together with apple and pear cider with a touch of added xanthan gum and it turned into an exquisite gravy with the texture of thickened heavy cream.  It was stable over several days and had far more flavor than a comparable dairy-based gravy.  WIN!

I also created emulsions with duck fat and used the Sonicprep to emulsify a vegan gelato.  It performed wonderfully at those tasks.