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!

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.

It’s so expensive and not worth it I buy in store cheap and good quality

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

It says arabica gum on the ad but the product itself is from India. It looks like bunch of translucent small rock formation so this is all natural. I have had arabica gum before and I'm very familiar with the taste. This one looks similar but it's not. It also get stuck to my teeth. Terrible taste and it's nowhere near gum in anyway shape or form.

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 concur with other reviews that question if this is gum tragacanth or gum arabica as advertised. They are two distinct types of gums that react differently when used. Via trial and error, it seems that this might be tragacanth or poorly constituted or impure arabica, but tragacanth is usually more expensive so it seems suspicious that a higher valued product would sub for a lower valued one. Run some tests to see how it reacts for what you want to use it for before potentially ruining an entire batch of whatever you are adding it to.

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.