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Bloody Mary Fiasco

Unabogie said:
Asserting up front that this was an awful waste of fresh tomatoes, we just tried making bloody mary mix from scratch and had something very strange happen. We're hoping someone with some chemistry knowledge can help explain it.

Following a standard recipe, we put into a blender the following ingredients:

3 lbs tomatoes
1 cup parsley
juice of 1 lemon
tsp salt
3 stalks of celery
tobasco
wasabe

I blended it until smooth, and then set it aside. Within about 3 minutes, the mixture began to congeal, almost turning to jello. It continued to get more and more firm over the next 15 minutes before it became completely disgusting and we threw it out.

I double checked the recipe, and it said to add the lemon juice, salt, and hot sauce after blending, not before. Did we inadvertently cause a chemical reaction? If so, what happened?

HELP SOLVE THE MYSTERY!
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Doghouse Reilly said:
I think you activated the pectin in the tomatoes.

http://blog.khymos.org/2010/04/18/tfp-2010-tomato-gels-with-the-pectin-thats-there-part-6/

However, I don't know how or why. It must be that, though.

I've experienced the same thing a few times while making gazpacho. I think the celery can be ruled out because gazpacho doesn't have celery in it.
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A paper linked to Doghouse Reilly's reference.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...ionid=6F4CE37060B6727D016EB65D9F4F76FB.f02t04

Sounds to me like the addition of the lemon juice, salt, and hot sauce prior to blending shifted the PH and with particularly some pectin methyl esterase enzyme from the lemon, helped to catalyze de-esterification of the pectin during the heat and pressure of blending. However, I’m just speculating.
 
Cylinder said:
It sounds to me like you used a table variety tomato with a very high extra-cellular water content. These will almost always have to be very heavily reduced to make something that resembles a nice, homogenous tomato juice.

The best bet for making a nice, slightly thicker tomato juice is selecting some nice Roma or San Marzano toms. [ETA: Or any paste variety. These are usually oblong in shape -- but never use cherry or grape tomatoes which have a very high water content.]

Blanch and peel tomatoes allow to cool a bit but do not soak in water after the skin is removed.. Seed half of them by sqeezing them in your hand over the sink. Messy, but fun. Let the seeded hulks rest in a colander for a few minutes. (For extra liquid removal, place a clean, doubled dish towel over them and add some weight on top. This is more like sauce territory, though.)

Start feeding the seeded tomatoes to the blender. If the result is too thick for your application, start adding unseeded toms. Otherwise, continue seeding and adding. A stick blender is nice here - start blending at the bottom and draw the blender up - continue this kind of pumping motion to homogenize the mixture.
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Wow, thanks!
 
Did a anyone else think this was about spinning around in front of a mirror at midnight chanting "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary"?
 
I've always made my bloody mary's with tomato juice or V-8.

Is the fresh made better? (Assuming it comes out correctly.) Different?

I don't mind the extra effort for something like this, but is it worth it?
 
I don't know what happened, but I think the thread title is another for the list of cool band names.
 
Spindrift said:
I've always made my bloody mary's with tomato juice or V-8.

Is the fresh made better? (Assuming it comes out correctly.) Different?

I don't mind the extra effort for something like this, but is it worth it?
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My dear sainted mother used to make spicy tomato juice for me. Twenty-four quarts every year. (I paid for all the materials, and double the veggies so she could make some for herself.) Homemade is good because you can tweak the blend to your personal specs. I got Mom to use habañeros because they have a Scoville of 100,000 vice jalpeños' 10,000. Second year she did this it was perfect. Just add vodka and run like hell. :D
 
Gawdzilla said:
My dear sainted mother used to make spicy tomato juice for me. Twenty-four quarts every year. (I paid for all the materials, and double the veggies so she could make some for herself.) Homemade is good because you can tweak the blend to your personal specs. I got Mom to use habañeros because they have a Scoville of 100,000 vice jalpeños' 10,000. Second year she did this it was perfect. Just add vodka and run like hell. :D
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So it's worth it if you can get someone else to do it?
 
Spindrift said:
I've always made my bloody mary's with tomato juice or V-8.

Is the fresh made better? (Assuming it comes out correctly.) Different?

I don't mind the extra effort for something like this, but is it worth it?
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Yes, homemade Bloody Mary's are incredible and worth the time. There's not that much time involved, really. Just don't turn it into a science experiment like we did!
 
Gawdzilla said:
My dear sainted mother used to make spicy tomato juice for me. Twenty-four quarts every year. (I paid for all the materials, and double the veggies so she could make some for herself.) Homemade is good because you can tweak the blend to your personal specs. I got Mom to use habañeros because they have a Scoville of 100,000 vice jalpeños' 10,000. Second year she did this it was perfect. Just add vodka and run like hell. :D
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And that's the way you inadvertently invented the Flaming Bloody Mary.

ETA: The Smokin' Hot Bloody Mary?
 
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I always thought a bottle of bloody Mary mix would make an excellent sauce for egg noodles
 
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