In the past I’ve made transparent tacos, clear crisps and even crystal bread, but we took it up another notch today in an attempt to make clear pear chips – that’s right, slices of pear slathered in caramel and totally see through! I know you guys love these clear food videos, and honestly, I love the challenge of the making them too. But this one was a struggle!
So here’s the recipe I followed to make the transparent pear crisps. Honestly, I’m not quite sure why we have to do some of the steps in this method! I wanted to learn so I gave them all a go, but if any of you can give me a bit more insight into what each step is for, that would be great!
The first step is a nice easy one – make some lemon water with equal parts of lemon juice and water. Mine turned out to be about 200ml of each. The slices of pear that we’re about to create will sit and soak in this. My best guess is that this step is to stop them discolouring, a bit like when apple or avocado are exposed to the air.
Next up it’s time to slice the pears! I scoured the supermarket shelves and came up with two different type of pears – conference pears and organic ones, which were simply labelled “Pears”. Slice your choice of pear vertically down the middle, then slice it flesh side down on a mandolin. Mine is an adjustable one and I tried a few different settings – the thinnest one seemed to be a bit too thin, so I went somewhere in the middle.
Once you’ve got your pear slices, you want to pop them into your lemon water while your oven preheats. The recipe said 90C, which would be 70C in a fan oven, but I went for it in the normal static oven to give it the best chance possible.
Next up lay the pear slices out on top of a baking mat on a baking tray, then layer another baking mat on top, followed by a baking tray to weigh it down and stop them curling up. Pop this into the oven for 30 minutes. After that time, remove them from the oven, take off the baking tray and baking mat, then pop them back in for as long as it takes for the slices to dry out at 70C – this took about 40 minutes for me.
Now it’s time to cover them in caramel. Make the caramel by heating 150g sugar, 150g water and 5g white wine vinegar to 157C. Cover the pears with the caramel – I tried dipping them, brushing it on and eventually just pouring it on! Then leave to cool down, and hey presto, you’ve got something of a clear pear chip!