Sourced from naturally growing seaweeds, agar is a gelling agent of plant origin, which forms transparent gels.

Agar is ideal for thickening and gelling in foods without affecting colour or flavour. Since its gelling power is ten times higher than animal gelatine, it is effective at very low levels. Agar is used by great chefs to create distinctive gels, foams and textures. As an added bonus, agar has a very high content of soluble fibre (almost 90% by weight) and minerals, so is often included in dietetic foods.

Unlike other food hydrocolloids such as carrageenan and pectin, agar does not require other agents (such as salts) to form gels. Thus it contributes much less to ash content than other gelling agents.

Agar Application:

Features of Jelly with Agar/Kanten                                ·Powerful gelling ability ·Fragile and easy to suck in ·Gelatin gives good sensation of granule and when eating, you’ll feel solid materials in your mouth. ·Good taste, with obvious taste of sweet, sour and fruit. ·Compared with jelly made out of carrageenan or konjac glucomannan, it tastes more refreshing.

It may be used as additive or extender for pie, or as gelatin for laces of cake and pastry, and can provide stability for French-style pavlova, sugar-coated food, domestic cookies, ice-cream and other cream food. It may be used as stabilizers or fillers for many sugar food, such as marshmallow, sugar-preserved fruit slices, rod-like candies, and tough and elastic fruit jelly food. It may be used for sherbet and ice-cream to make them lubricous and hard to collapse. If used in ice cream making, it may improve structure of the ice cream, increase viscosity and rate of expansion, prevent ice crystal from separating out, and make the ice cream fine and smooth. If used in jam making, it may increase viscosity of the jam.

It may be added into cottage cheese, milk cake, fermented milk produce to weaken syneresis phenomenon of the dairy produce, increase thickness of cheese and make the produce easy to slice. It may be used as thickener and gelling agent for poultry products and canned seafood. It may be used as shape maintenance agent for semisolid liquid food.

For its satisfying gelling ability, Agar/Kanten is able to form fluid 3-dimensional network structure of unique functions in its low concentration solution, which makes the solution possess good suspension quality. As a result, some in-dissolvable contents (protein, fiber, etc.) are able to suspend ideally in the solution. It is of good pesudo-plasticity in its solution. When staying still, its drink product appears to be of high viscosity. Such quality makes drinks taste fulfilled, refreshing and flavorful.