First Experiment: How does the ingredients affect the shelf life of vinaigrette?

How does the ingredients affect the shelf life of vinaigrette?

Introduction

Vinaigrette is a good salad dressing. You should have tried it before. The common vinaigrette is usually made of oil and vinegar, it taste a bit sour but never sweet. So today, I am going to introduce a  Sweet Vinaigrette to you. Besides of this, you may have faced a problem of how to keep the vinaigrette longer. Put it in a fringe would be a good decision. However, there are other factors that would affect the shelf life. The ingredients would affect the shelf life too. The aim of this project is to find out how the amount of honey (one of the ingredients) would affect the shelf life of vinaigrette.

Ingredients 

1 box of strawberries

1 teaspoon of honey, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 3 teaspoons virgin olive oil, 

1/2 teaspoon pepper,  1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

Equipments 

food blender, measuring spoon, measuring cup, timer

Experimental test

Who?

Myself (Chan Kwan To)

What?

To test whether honey would affects the shelf life of vinaigrette.

Where?

Home kitchen

When?

To carry out the experiment after making 4 vinaigrettes with different amount of honey.

Why?

To find out the best amount of honey for the vinaigrette.

How?

To make 4 vinaigrette with different amount of honey. Carrying out the experiment after making them to find out the results. To observe the result in a shorter time, the 4 vinaigrette would be placed at room temperature (25℃). And to save the food, a spoon of each of the 4 vinaigrettes would be tested.   The vinaigrette with shorter shelf life would turn into black colour (go bad) by observation.

How to make it more accurate?

The experiment would do 4 times and would get an average shelf life time of each of the 4 vinaigrettes.

Cooking Steps

Step 0: 

Wash everything before making the food!

Step 1:

slice the strawberries 

Step 2:

Add 1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar into a bowl. And add the sliced strawberries and toss to coat.

Step 3:

Let sit for 30 mins.

Step 4:

Add the macerated strawberries, 3 teaspoons of olive oil, and 1/2 teaspoon of salt and pepper into food blender. Blend until smooth.

Step 5:

Pour regularly into four separated bowls.

Step 6:

Adding 1, 2 and 3 teaspoons of honey into bowl B, C and D respectably. 

Step 7:

 Mix the four samples.

(Vinaigrette A without any honey, Vinaigrette B with 1 teaspoon of honey,

Vinaigrette C with 2 teaspoons of honey, Vinaigrette D with 3 teaspoons of honey)

Step 8:

To save food, 1 teaspoon of each of the sample is transferred to a smaller bowl respectively.

Step 9:

Time how long would the vinaigrette turn bad at room temperature(25℃). And record the process with a camera.

Step 10:

Put the remaining vinaigrette into fringe.

Reference: 

https://growagoodlife.com/strawberry-vinaigrette/