I used to make gelatin desserts successfully all the time for many years. When I moved to USA, gelatin doesn’t seem to set hard enough despite my following instructions and it melts after being taken out of the refrigerator. Why?
1 Answer
It seems likely that the brand of gelatin you were previously using was stronger than the brand you’re using now.
“Gelatin” is an umbrella term for a class of collagen hydrolysates, and for that matter there are different sources and types of collagen. Different gelatins have different amounts of gelling power per unit mass. Manufacturers routinely measure their gelatin strength and attempt to keep it constant, but it’s rare for them to list the strength on the packaging, so when switching brands you may have to do some adjustments.
Bottom line: use more gelatin next time.
It is also possible that the gelatin was adversely affected by some other ingredient (fresh pineapple, papaya, or kiwi, say) or by changes in your process (overheating the gelatin, say) but I think a difference in strength is most likely.
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1Combining these thoughts a little, it's possible that following the instructions for one brand overheats another weaker brand. I can find instructions varying between using all boiling water, dissolving in boiling and adding cold, and dissolving in hot-but-not-boiling water before adding cold. One also says to use less water in hot weather– Chris HCommented Jul 18 at 9:43