TAJ Edible Gum | 3.5oz (100g) Gunder Arabica (For cooking and personal care)

This is a LOT of Gum Arabic for the money, and quality is nice from what I can tell. This amount will last me forever!I'm using it to grind into a powder to mix with xylitol and flavors to make my own custom sugar free mints and candies that are dental friendly. Although, I'm looking forward to using this in other ways and to make other sorts of foods, decorations, and confections!

Tl;dr: it's likely gum tragacanth. Ignore the word "Arabica" on the bag.I'm a sucker for "weird" ingredients, being an advanced baker, food science nerd and lover of world cuisines. I'm guessing to a Desi cook, this is just a familiar run-of-the-mill bag of edible gum they've been using their whole life., but this little bag of unassuming brown chunks of mystery gum has sent me down a research rabbit hole. At first I thought I was getting gum arabic AKA acacia gum AKA gond/gaund/dink/mesca AKA E414 AKA the sap of Acacia sensu lato, because the bag literally says "Arabica". I also read on a Marathi food blog that "edible gum" == "gum Arabic", and this bag also says "edible gum". That seems to settle matters, but then another reviewer, who appeared to know South Asian foodways much better than I do, wrote that it's actually gond katira AKA gum tragacanth AKA the sap of Astragalus AKA E413. Those aren't just academic distinctions and I'm not just being pedantic, because (in my understanding) those two gums are sort of opposites. Gum arabic is warming and used in winter/heavy/energy-dense dishes like laddoo; gum tragacanth is cooling and used in summer drinks. To make matters worse, I've never had any of the foods and drinks that feature either gum, so I'm flying blind. But that's what makes it fun to be in Vine - the adventures! The exploration! The learning!Long story short, I believe it IS gum tragacanth because it doesn't dissolve easily in water, while gum arabic should. Instead, it swells up into clear lumps, as gum tragacanth does. Grinding it into powder and using hot water both make the dissolving easier.I also learned that nobody seems to know for sure what each type of gum is, but that gond katira CAN be used for laddoo. All that matters is that it puffs up when fried.That means if you specifically need gum arabic for making gomme syrup, coating candies and nuts, and mixing artist paints, you should look elsewhere. If you read Paula Wolfert's "Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco" and want to try dishes that use gum arabic for its unique resinous FLAVOR, you should doubly look elsewhere. This gum is flavorless. In fact, most actual gum arabics are also flavorless. Guess I have to go to Morocco to buy the real deal.

I picked up this edible gum mostly out of curiosity, and it’s been a fun little ingredient to experiment with. The crystals are small and easy to grind into powder, making it simple to use in recipes. It has a pretty neutral taste, so it doesn’t mess with flavors. I’ve tried it as an emulsifier for oil-and-vinegar dressing—it helps keep things smooth and combined instead of separating.I also used it to stabilize icing for cupcakes, and it worked like a charm. No slipping, no melting, and the frosting held up beautifully until party time. Just a heads up: the bag isn’t resealable, you'll wanna toss the leftovers in a resealable bag. Tons of uses, but this is a pretty small package so you'll only be able to pick a couple most likely

I bought it thinking it would be something like Agar agar or Jello. But they are tiny crumbles that doesn't really dissolve in water. No instruction on the bag or even in google. I guess I will have to store it in my pantry till I find a good recipe or instruction to use.

I liked it, but I couldn’t find any instructions online of how to best use such a product, so I had to wing it. It definitely works as a thickener, but I should have put it in LAST after creating the extraction I wanted, rather than trying to test the thickener before adding the flavors and such. I wanted to make chewy candies and wound up with a sort of molasses for tea, but it worked lol

I got this to add to my cupcake icing for stability. I needed to make several cupcakes in advance for a birthday party, and didn't want to risk the icing looking melty or slipping down before party time. I read on google that it is best to use a little at a time and to mix it with a bit of water (I used milk) to make it easier to incorporate into the icing. This worked perfectly for me, and the cupcakes were a hit. I still have a ton left, so I just sealed the bag up and tossed it in the freezer to use again later.

I tasted a few pieces of this Taj Edible Gum and found it has a pretty neutral flavor. Just as a note; the bag is not resealable. The crystals are small and fairly easy to crush to a powder with a mortar and pestle or spice grinder. The main reason I want to try this is because Gum Arabic is used as an emulsifyer in salad dressings. I love oil and vinegar based dressing but would love them more if the oil and vinegar would stay combined, which is what Gum Arabic does. I also learned it is used to make gomme syrup, which is basically a sugar syrup with Gum Arabic added to thicken the syrup and add a smooth texture as an ingredient in cocktails. I'm excited to try that, too.

This product can be used in a variety of ways for cooking. I used it to make icing for our gingerbread houses for Christmas and it seemed to help bring the icing to the right consistency needed for this project. The bag is not resealable, but it is a small enough bag where you may use it all or most of it in a single use.