From Food Allergies...... To Homemade Margarine

Home Made Margarine - Free of Dairy, Soy, and Food Additives

(a priceless recipe by Lorna)

If your family has food allergies and sensitivities you are welcome to use this recipe.

Ingredients

Carrot Juice, 1 tablespoon
Gelatine, 3 teaspoons
Cold Water, Half Cup
Citric Acid, Small pinch
Salt, Quarter teaspoon, or more to suit taste
Rice Bran Oil, 500 mls
Vegetable shortening, 100 grams (Kremelta)

Method

• In a small bowl place water and Gelatine, and leave to swell for 10 minutes.
• If you want the normal golden colour of margarine, extract the juice from a small carrot. If you don't have a juicer, puree it and thein seive it, to remove the carrots substance.
• Dissolve swollen Gelatine by heating in microwave for 30 seconds
• Place the Oil, Citric Acid, Carrot Juice and Salt in the blender, and add the dissolved Gelatine.
• Blend for about a minute, it will change into a creamy white emulsion.
• Melt Vegetable Shortening in the microwave, add it to the blender and blend for one minute.
• Remove the bowl/jug from the blender, and place in refrigerator for 30 minutes.
• Re-blend for 20 seconds or so until smooth,
• Pour mixture into 2 small containers with lids (400 or 500 mls capacity) and refrigerate overnight before using as margarine.

Notes about developing this recipe:
After much trial and error, I have settled on this for our family………..
Allergies to Dairy products, Soy protein and sensitivities to artificial colours and other food additives caused us to be using the only suitable Olive Oil based margarine we could find. But a while ago they added a number 202 preservative, which causes temper issues for our children, and makes one in particular appear ADHD. So with no options left, I began to research emulsifiers and play around with what I discovered. The most common and easily accessible food emulsifiers for oils are Egg Yolk, Soy Lecithin, & Gelatine.
Our soy allergy is to soy protein, so we could use soy lecithin (derived from the oil not the protein) as an emulsifier, but after trialling this we found we didn’t like the flavour it adds to the oil, we came to much the same conclusion with egg yolk as an emulsifier, so have finally settled on the above, using only the gelatine for emulsification, and gaining firmness by adding a small amount of vegetable shortening. Now we have also made it with Juice extracted from Carrot, to add yellow colour naturally, and the whole thing works great.

If we run out and I'm short on time I make a batch quickly without the colour, but the colour looks more appealing , just takes a little longer to achieve.If it is left unrefrigerated for an hour it will soften more than margarine, almost runny, but remains a stable emulsion (no separation) so to me that is a great success.

Having gone through this we now use far less margarine, as we’ve gotten used to only using it for things that would be too dry without, like Vegemite sandwiches or toast.

No chemist here......... but we can learn anything when we need to !