Making food that lasts forever

This man has pretty much every type of equipment he needs for chemistry but has to cut pizza with a spoon.

NileRed: Takes all precautions to make sure there are no accidents
NileBlue: Directly pours liquid nitrogen into a plastic bin

NileBlue in the future: "I don't want to lose anymore of my friends, so I found a way to preserve them."

Reggie serves a critical function not only as the cameraman, but as the man who goes outside regularly enough to recognize a sin against nature while it is in progress.

I feel like when Nigel walks into the office with a plate of food for you to test without any context, you have reason to be concerned

Nigel and his cameraman's interactions are my favorite part, they have such good chemistry

NileRed is calm and collected, NileBlue is flash freezing a hole in your floor.

I feel like I'm gonna need to talk to my therapist about how uncomfortable the words 'the chicken looks a bit glassy' make me feel

NileBlue leaving food reviews like "This is 100% edible"

Reggie: *genuinely concerned* “Why is it bending like that?”
Nile: *laughs*

Nileblue: food gets disgustingly freezer burnt
Also Nileblue: let's take food and freezer burn it until it's a cracker

This reminds me of when I got braces and I couldn't chew solid food, so my brother put pizza into a mixer. It was way too dry, so he poured in some water. By then it was cold, so he microwaved it.

Because of how Nile reacts to horrible smells, I don't trust him at all when he says, "It actually tastes fine".

Nile literally had a Heinz Doofenshmirtzin moment explaining the sad problems he is facing and used the power of science to solve it

"Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them."
Pretty much sums up what Nigel's friends have to been through, stickiest smell ever.

I always wondered how freeze drying worked but never thought to read up on it for some reason. After this, I looked it up and found that there's a heavy amount of work done on "pretreating" food that is meant to be freeze-dried (such as for MRE's and meals for space travel). A lot of the time, it requires reformulation of the food to prevent alteration or degradation of the texture/flavor.

The reason the chicken fried rice is so heavy is because dry food fries better. For fried rice, places generally use day old rice so it's even drier because that separates the grains so they can dry. And with the chicken, if it was deep fried, that means that it sat in hot oil until the water bubbled out and was replaced with fat (which is more dense than water, so it ends up gaining mass, PLUS it won't evaporate from a simple vaccum).

I think ideally you'd want to measure how much moisture is extracted from each meal, and use that to guide how much to add back in.
Also, I'm guessing separating some parts will make it easier to rehydrate them, using different techniques more suited for those parts.

I sort of feel like the cracked and broken pizza is a pretty nice visual metaphor for Nigel trying so desperately to preserve his memories of childhood.

I like how he just smiles through all his trauma

Freeze dried fruit or ice cream is awesome, i love it. Feels like your biting into a block of chalk at first, but it just melts in your mouth. I imagine all these different things probably acted kind of the same way.

There are some really good editing moments here, props to the editor(s).

17:56 “Non-cracker form”
Nigel is unique in using that phrase to describe food. Awesome 😂

It may seem silly now, but this could genuinely be the future of food when we start exploring space for real

nigel: makes grape soda from gloves
also nigel: cuts pizza with a spoon
smh

27:10 I really enjoyed this experiment. I remember eating astronaut food in the 80s from the space museums, and that never bothered me. Honestly, I think I’ll eat any freeze dried food when it came down to an emergency.

I want to see a follow up food dehydration video, refine your technique for freezing and rehydrating. Also look at how the professionals make food that is to be stored for long periods of time. Remember Space Food Sticks?

I hope Nile does more weird cooking videos… I subscribed before realizing I probably shouldn’t expect this content from him but I’ll stay in hopes to see more!

I've never seen a chemist spill as much stuff as nile

That hit hard, one thing i still cannot get over is how my childhood favorite restaurant just closed one day suddenly!

Nigel: Disappears to build his fancy new lab.
Also Nigel: Proceeds to ruin his lab with liquid N2.

I love that you used a spoon to cut the pizza. Of all the things Nile could use.

Whenever I watch Nilered, everything he says I understand and can follow thru with ease, Nileblue i cant take anything he says seriously and just laughing along the way

I never thought I'd see a solid floor crack through the sheer cold of liquid nitrogen

I have watched so much nilered that I was waiting for the ridiculousness to start for a solid 5 minutes.
I was legit thinking "huh, guess they ran out of ideas bc this sounds like something Nile would actually do". And then I checked the channel name. U accidentally made me laugh for the first time in the last 2 weeks. Thank you

hahahaha i love this guy always brings a smile to my face and knowledge to my brain. thank you nile for all the joy you bring into my life :)

Nigel:
"Putting food in the freezer gives it freezer burn and I think that's bad"
Also Nigel: *busts out liquid nitrogen*

I think it was that nitrogen that made those things taste kind funny. Because this is pretty much otherwise quite similar to method that I heard about back in the days. If I remember the method right, just instead of pouring nitrogen over it you cool it to about 39F (which is where water takes least space and should reduce the crushing effect of crystals that form in the food once temperature goes below zero) and then youll start to vacuum dry it and subsequently once vacuum draws as much moisture as possible you'll reduce temperature enough to freeze dry it and then seal it in can, or other container immediately after. It is quite important to limit exposure to air moisture (cus those crystals anywhere on the food are like Vandals in Rome, completely ruining everything and even with most efficient methods youll never draw all the water out completely, but above said process can greatly reduce the damage). If all is done right, food can stay good for decades, or if properly stored in deep freeze, theoretically it can last even for centuries.
This being said, its been over 20yrs since we last talked about it with guy, who claimed to be one of the research team that was working on this stuff for army years back, so its all second hand knowledge and its possible I remember the method wrong.
And as for pizza, I think main reason for it going so horribly bad was that since it's basically just milk fat and protein, without water to buffer the temperature, proteins simply overheated and denatured upon contact with steam, since steam being steam is still just water heated to over 212F, which is more than enough to do such a thing along with oxidising milk fats (think burned butter, you don't need even boiling temperatures for it to start oxidise) especially considering that your average pizza cheese is about 40% water which otherwise is very efficient in insulating other cheese content.

the one question i have is what does this process do to the nutritional value of the food? and thank you for reawakening the inner geek in me. much love

nigel's food sufferings are very relatable.

You should have taken the mass before and after to determine how much water was lost, then use a humidifier to reintroduce that same mass of water

I've never laughed so hard him trying the food got me dying

as informative and polished as the content on NileRed is, i genuinely enjoy the unhinged, fuck around and find out direction NileBlue has taken. NileRed is what you publish to a scientific paper, and NileBlue is what you actually did in the lab screwing around while you waited on reactions and instruments to finish running 😂

Fascinating as always :-) maybe weighing before and after freeze-drying should give you an idea how much water is needed to re-hydrate 🙂

If NileRed walks into the room and offers some... food, i'd be very cautious indeed.

I love this channel. It's like hanging out with my brother-in-law if he wasn't dangerously irresponsible.

Astronaut food. 😂 🚀
Nile Red/Blue ideas would be great for the Umbrella Corporation.
They are always fresh and new.

There was this video where the guy (Joel Creates) created a contraption that generates water vapor, and he used that to rehydrate toast back into bread. I think you could probably rehydrate the food with something like that which doesn't introduce heat to the rehydrating.

I like to think that Nile's weak sense of taste and smell come from his childhood chemistry experiments in his parents' garage

Nile is going to create the next big food novelties!

Freeze drying that chicken and rice went a lot smoother than I thought it would’ve

More interested in knowing if it's possible to preserve the ingredients of these separately, then actually reconstitute them separately and put them together. I've heard things like cheese, cooked rice, etc. actually do fine on their own.

What you should have done is weigh the food before freeze drying, then compare it to the dry weight, and use that to calculate how much water you needed to add back!

he’s getting closer and closer to becoming a real life flint lockwood

I appreciate this video simply because I was literally saying a bit ago how I’ve never actually seen the liquid of liquid nitrogen before because of all the vapour. The content is great too lol obviously

Nilered sure knows how to rehydrate a pizza

NileRed cooking is the funniest content and I love it, please keep making more cooking with science videos.

NileRed: amazing chemical transformations I can hardly understand
NileBlue: cuts pizza with a spoon

I love how a chemist just eats fast food lol. I’d assume you have a Rube Goldberg machine that cooks you food or something

nigel is deffinitely the guy that would do all this instead of just learning how to cook the food yourself

I think the only way to get the water back in there for the non-.soup stuff without all the side-effects, is if you pull another vacuum on it, and let water vapour in at a high concentration (like... 50%) to force the food to absorb it very quickly. Just like it left :D

Watching Nile videos just feels like watching Dr. Stone live action!

It must be scary when you work for chemistry youtuber and he walks in with weird looking food and tells you to test it hahha

is it just me or does somebody else feel like making chips/crisps with a bunch of flavours now as soon as i heard the pizza crunch i wanted to hear it made into seasoning xD

This has already been done before, that’s what those camping meals where you just add boiling water are: freeze dried

Nile is the only person who can say, ‘that’s the worst thing I’ve ever tasted’ with a straight face and continuing to chew.

All the childhood food I remember and care about is the cooking of my Mother and Grandmother! Thats what I would freeze so I could enjoy it for the rest of my days!!! To late for my Grandmother though :( I cherish every memory at the table!!!

the pizza i think would work on a low heat frypan with a small amount of water in the base, as the water is absorbed it produces steam which would rehydrate the entire slice while also making sure it doesn't turn to mush cos heat on base of pizza directly. i'd say maybe a 3 on my stove personally, not much more than that.

For a short while you could buy in local shops freeze dried cheese cubes mixed with macadamia nuts. It was really tasty but they discontinued that line. A lot of camping shops sell freeze dried meals.

I would say regeneration needs lower temperature, for longer. I'd guess around 65~70°C 90~95% humidity, or maybe a cycle between saturated/mist and not saturated.
And then, depending on the dish, some amount of time at 90~120°C to dry out the outside a little bit so it's not soggy.

Have you considered putting the food in a vacuum sealed plastic bag (heat sealed) and irradiating it?
It tastes like instant rice because... that's pretty much how they make instant rice. :)

"Pizza time" he whispers to himself as he puts a freeze dried, crumbled mess that once resembled a pizza in a steamer to rehydrate it, like its not the most unhinged and insane thing someone ever did.
Love it

This is the most simple and violent way to enjoy food I have seen 😂

The way he describes it in the beginning is like how my biomedical ethics teacher would start a conversation about human cryogenic preservation.

Same bro. Jack had the Bruschetta Chicken Ciabatta sandwich for a while. It was the only thing I liked from their menu. Bought it for years, then suddenly it was gone. I didn't know how to express my frustration and sadness for a freaking sandwich. Take care, be safe.

If this man is able to become a successful chemist then I am able to do literally anything in life.

I've messed around with a freeze dryer. Ice cream was weird but the secret is perfecting the rehydration in order to not change the taste.

My man is grieving this chicken chipotle wrap more than I've seen people grieve family members

what if you harvest the ice thats collected under the freeze dryer and when re hydrating, place it with the food item in a ziploc bag and sousvide it? i imagine it might work better if you can control the temperature + if its rehydrated with its original liquid it might taste closer to the original than rehydrating it with plain water.

these foods are fun but it would've been interesting to do something kind of practical along with them, like beans or peas or something

If it is a bit dry, I think you might need to rehydrate it more. Maybe a bit more often inside a bag or bowl?

This gives me hope that maybe food on the first Mars mission won't totally suck.

Okay so in a few years, I think there's a very real chance we're going to hear of a real life Mr. Freeze that needs to save food instead of a sick wife

Man Nigel needs to hang out with US military food scientists. They've spent decades trying to get shelf stable pizza right and achieved "basically edible".

Instead of using the (hot) steam bath, you could instead use just a normal, room temperature humidifier into a closed space to force the moisture to diffuse back into the food quickly, without cooking it (like it did to the cheese). If you could pressurise the system as well it would also encourage rehydration, but that comes with drawbacks too

Maybe if you steam it in a pressure cooker for a short time instead of steaming it for a long time? Since a vacuum was pulled during the freeze drying? Or, if you could cool the water down a lot, put it in a strong container and then just warm that up to like 90 degrees or something, so it's not hot enough to cook but the air can hold some moisture

The Clip-Sharer Joel Creates made a video titled 'Reverse Toaster (actually works)' that uses similar idea to the steamer, but they used fog instead of steam to re-hydrate the toast. This could probably help with the cooking problem you had with the steamer.

I think a bit of refining to how you rehydrate the food would give you a much better result as far as how it tastes. Usually pouring hot water into the food is how it's done, but obviously some things rehydrate differently than others. I think weighing the food before and after being freeze dried and subtracting for the difference would give you the amount of hot water to add back in to rehydrate it. Don't know about the pizza, but that general tsos chicken and the rice as well as wonton soup, probably would have been pretty good if they were all weighed, freeze dried, and rehydrated separately with the amounts of water lost respectively from each one. As far as pizza goes that one might be a bit more tricky and probably not gonna turn out right without the bread getting soggy.

After seeing the cookie video, glad you made something edible. I'd love to try lmfao

regular people: gets the recipes for their favorite foods
neil: imortal food

You should have freeze-dried one at a time and then measured the mass of the ice deposited at the end of each in order to perfectly reconstitute the moisture content of each.

Reggie knows what's up - mad respect 😂

you could have measured the weight before (and later), so you would have known the percentage of water, to then have put the exact amount of water to the tea, for example. Great video as always btw

Nilered: Okay, we better not let this stinky gas to anyone.
Nileblue: FOOD.

I just found out about NileBlue I thought there was only NileRed.
I can say I definitely prefer the chaos and humour found in NileBlue 😂

NileRed is the chemistry channel while NileBlue is the alchemy channel

I would try Dry freezing -27 as quick as possible. Then do the freeze dry for 24-48 hrs and store it dry. When needed to cook, spray with water and freeze, then let the product thaw out in the fridge like food, then heat up in foil in the oven on 325f-375f to get it out of the temp danger zone, which is 40F-140F.

I would try freeze drying the pizza in a wax coated cardboard sleeve in the shape of the slice to hold its shape. I think steaming is the way to go when heating it. Its probably very sensitive to how much water amd heat is being added to it. I would weigh the slice before and after freeze drying and then put the difference in weight in water into a steam bowl and boil it until its all gone. Maybe 1 or 2 extra grams for whats going to roll out of the dish from pressure. So basically when the water level in the boiler hits zero pull it out. I dunno but i dont have a freeze dryer to try it but it sounds exciting. Pizza resurrection.

It's actually super easy to rehydrate properly! Your mistake is that you need to SUBMERGE the food in right amount of water, and let it cook for until the water has all been absorbed. The food needs a LOT of water to rehydrate and steaming it WILL NOT work. Think of making those instant noodles that isn't soupy, like some chow mein or yakisoba brands. You pour just enough water that by the time the food is rehydrated, all the water is soaked up. I do this with various freeze dried foods. Veggies, Kimchi, chicken, pasta, rice, etc. It works every time.

At this point, I wonder if he can taste the difference between michelin star food and good food