Recipe for Carbonated Fruit

Many years ago as a teenager, our family bought some dry ice to cool a picnic lunch as well as to keep it dry since normal ice melts and turns to water. We put the dry ice in the cooler first, followed by some grapes, and then the rest of our food. Several hours later when we went to eat our food, we noticed something strange had happened. Our grapes tasted funny. They had a little bit of "bite" to them. We eventually realized that the dry ice had carbonated our fruit. The little fizzy "bite" that you get in soft drinks was now in our picnic lunch as well.

It's been a long time since I've ever tried carbonating fruit again on purpose, but if you read the last post, you know that we bought some dry ice recently to make some witch's brew/homemade root beer. We had plenty left over after making the drink, so alongside the other science experiments, I decided to use some of the extra dry ice to carbonate some fruit.

Step 1: Cut up some fruit. Make sure the fruit holds a decent amount of juice (apples, oranges) and won't dissolve overnight (bananas.)

I cut up some apples, oranges, and then added some grapes to a tupperware cannister. You want to make sure it's something you can seal, but not so rigid that it could burst or explode.

Step 2: Place fruit into a sealable container.

Step 3: Add a small piece of dry ice and seal container.

After the fruit, I added a stick of dry ice and then added the lid. You can see inside that big piece of dry ice. It was actually way too much for what I needed. On top of that, as it melted, eventually the gas made too much pressure and popped the lid several feet into the air--at least four or five times!

So if you are going to make some, try a piece that's closer to a regular ice cube size. And make sure your lid can screw on rather than pop on. After it had melted enough that the lid was no longer flying off, I put the whole thing into the fridge for 24 hours.

Step 4: Store in a cool place for 24 hours.

Step 5: Eat quickly after opening.

We opened it up the next day for lunch and enjoyed our fruit with a "bite." From what I read looking for other people who have done this on the Internet, the fizz wears off quickly, like within a half hour, so you want to eat it soon after opening.

Happy carbonating!