Keep hope alive: I made Tang dalgona milk
well, sort of
Hello, fools!
It is I, Dannis Ree, here once again. Too bad for you.
Whew. It’s been a hard week, and I didn’t realize how much stress my mind and body have been processing. Some days I’m not sure what to do next. I’ve been more scared than I was willing to admit, and it is taking its toll on me, but that is just part of being human.
I hope you are all well because I know how difficult this has been for all of you, whether it is health concerns, job concerns, diarrhea concerns, it is just a lot to deal with.
That was cute. Now, for a jarring transition into this week’s culinary bullshit, the other day (or was it month? century?), Davida and I were curious about that dalgona coffee thing that people are going apeshit over.
I know. We’re a little late to the party.
Look at that. Perfectly coiffed coffee milk with an elaborately staged table. Just admire that weird leaf in the picture that wasn’t deliberately put there.
Dalgona coffee is a recent Korean phenomenon that’s taken Instagram by storm, because if we don’t cling to fads, OMG, our lives are over. It’s just instant coffee whipped with sugar and water. For whatever reason, the instant coffee and sugar mixture foams up and stays that way due to some form of science.
We made one too.
It looked like whipped poo on top of iced milk. Scrumptious. Neither Davida or I found it particularly delicious; it was really bitter (yes, I realize it’s coffee, but this was a lot to deal with, emotionally), and very sweet. Once we mixed it together it improved the flavor significantly, but I do not think we’ll be going out of our way to make it again. You Instagram influencers can keep it. I’ll just be over here drinking a gallon of Monster energy drink like a normal person.
But in the back of my mind I had a pressing question: Dannis, can you make this dalgona bullshit with another powdered drink?
Time to find out.
I obsessively researched online to see how this shit works.
I won’t go into details, but basically, it involves science. Modern science involves making up facts and telling people to drink delicious, delicious, bleach. What a time to be alive. Who knew you were supposed to drink a caustic cleaning agent that will actually kill you? Because science tells you that.
In my version of science, I was basically trying to create foam to capture very small bubbles so that I could make a beverage that would also make me famous on Instagram.
Because as you know, Instagram fame is the most important kind of fame.
So throwing my science knowledge around with wild abandon, I decided to capture Tang bubbles with gelatin and this very strange whipped cream stabilizer I discovered online called Whip It.
Bop it. Twist it. Flick it. Pull it!
Why Tang? Well, it’s powdered and sugared. It could have been Kool-Aid or roach repellent as far as I’m concerned. But I made the correct decision, because check out this disturbing 30-second commercial:
What the fuck just happened.
I don’t know how that video makes me feel.
I bloomed a packet of gelatin on top of the Tang mixture.
The wrinkles don’t remind me of scrotum skin whatsoever. Come on, guys. Grow up.
Once that was more or less settled, I put this weird Whip It stuff on top.
I’d never seen it before, but apparently it gives whipped cream structure for a long time, so it doesn’t collapse nearly as quickly. This is interesting to me. Because of science.
Just so you know, there’s no special magic to it; there’s only three ingredients: Dextrose, corn starch, and tricalcium phosphate (which just keeps the powder from clumping up).
I used an electric beater to froth up the mixture for around 10 minutes.
So far, it wasn’t looking promising, though the color of the liquid was turning pale, sort of like creamed egg yolks. Creamed. Come on, guys. Grow up.
I consolidated the mixture into a pool and felt dejected.
It was just too thick. There were no peaks, no visible bubbles, nothing. The Tang mixture was heavy. My science failed.
I can’t even cream Tang.
I know what you’re thinking about that last sentence, you degenerate hooligans.
In a last ditch effort, I added an egg white.
If I was going to win at science, I might as well cheat, just like everyone else does. Beaten egg whites make a fluffy light foam, so why not at least try it?
After another long 10 minutes, the mixture became fairly pale and dare I say it, foamy?
I was still kind of hopeless, so I stared off into the distance. I was rudely brought back down to earth as one of the cats hopped into the litterbox to take an enormous dump.
Because dalgona coffee is sort of a summery drink, the milk portion is supposed to be iced.
I used an enormous spherical ice ball as big as my bulbous melon and dropped it into a pint glass. Nothing like icy watered down milk on a hot summer’s day!
Time for the foam. This was the decisive moment.
Holy shit. It worked. It actually worked.
I stared at the Tang and milk concoction for a long time. I couldn’t believe it. I thought my hopes had been dashed, but the egg white fluff was enough to save the day. But was it delicious?
No.
It was a grainy floaty fakey orangey mess, and actually foamy, but it was pretty fucking gross. This doesn’t matter. What matters is that I did it. I did a science.
So, just remember, no matter how you’re feeling, don’t forget.
Keep hope alive. By the Crystal Method.
Well, that was quite the journey.
I’m still reeling. But I think that might actually be the milk talking, I’m mildly lactose intolerant. If you laughed at least once, please share this on social media, because that spreads the word:
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See you next week!