paulraphael

The basic idea is that in an unstabilized solution, you can have problems if the milk solids non-fat concentration is greater than 1 part in 7 parts water. This is a very loose approximation; there are many other factors. The water activity of other dissolved solids is one. Temperature is another. Solutions are more stable at lower temperatures, BUT ... because of fractional freezing, the concentration of msnf goes up and up and up the more hard-frozen the ice cream is. So the temperature relationship is completely non-linear. Corvitto's formula is an even more vague approximation than the 1:7 rule, because there are sources of msnf besides milk powder (like, milk and cream). And because there are solids besides fat and sugar. So with his equation, in addition to using a rather rough general principle, you're just guessing at the quantities of both msnf and water. But happily, the shortcut is very simple: if you use stabilizers, you shouldn't have to worry about any of this unless you're trying to do something extreme.

Intersting. I don't know why you're having texture problems. It looks like a very well-balanced formula. I'd also expect it to be relatively soft at normal serving temperatures. The "standard" maximum nonfat milk solids level for this would be 8.5%. You're at 12.3%, which shouldn't be a problem, considering the stabilizers. Here are the other numbers: Total Fat: 14.7% Milk Fat: 13.7% Total Solids: 40.4% Solids Nonfat: 25.8% Milk Solids Nonfat: 12.3% Acidity: 0.2% Alcohol: 0% Stabilizer/Water: 0.26% Egg Lecithin: 0.34% POD: 130 / 1000g PAC: 254 / 1000g Absolute PAC: 535 / 1000g (these PAC values don't mean much) Rel. Hardness @ -14°C: 72 (normal values are between 70 and 75) My only recommendation would be to add a bit of carrageenan. Like, a really small bit. 0.2g lambda or 0.1g kappa. This is a semi-wild guess, based on what you're telling me. I wouldn't have thought this would be necessary, but you're finding that something isn't right. How cold is the freezer?

Wow, I forgot I'd started this thread. I no longer live in the mouse-infested former-brewery, but did manage to get rid of the mice. Here's what worked: Getting rid of the filthy housemates who caused the problem in the first place Traps. The humane electric one, and lots of conventional ones. Exclusion. Stuffing holes with steel wool. Containing food in mouse proof things as much as possible. And cleaning up religiously. Cat. Between when the problem started and when it ended, a kitten showed up in my life. He was a ruthless serial murderer. No mouse could get away. Recommended with reservations, because he drew out the process as long as possible. Possibly the mice just packed up and fled after witnessing the torture. I did not enjoy this process, as effective as it ultimately was.

I'd love for more people to try it. It's definitely not everyone's cup of tea ... it's just so different from what people are used to. An artisanal ice cream shop that I consult with tried a less chocolaty version, and his customers found it too shocking. We had to scale back the chocolate/cocoa content a few times before the customers really loved it. His final version was maybe a third of the way between typical chocolate ice creams and mine.

If 23andme can't calculate your ideal recipe, they need to decode some more genes.

This. I've found it helpful to stop short of soft peaks. When you fold egg whites into pancake batter, even though it's a gentle process, it adds a surprising amount of whipping. I use whipped whites in pancakes a lot and have gotten the best results by going just to the point where they start to have some structure. However, I've never gone as far as making batter that's like a souflé. Mine aren't foamy enough to pipe. This may be a trickier project.

You shouldn't have to use more stabilizer. If you're using more milk solids, you might even be able to use less. Lactose controls water really well. The presence of any functional amount of stabilizer seems to avert any crystalization problem. I'd suggest using however much stabilizer gives the texture and other qualities you like. Whatever that is aught to be plenty. For perspective, my most basic formula (which I like a lot) has 12% nonfat milk solids, including 7% skim milk powder. The industry-standard calculation that determine's maximum milk solids for an unstabilized formula (similar to Corvitto's but more sophisticated) says the maximum should be 8.4%. So the formula contains nearly 143% the milk solids it should be able to get away with. I'm using 1.5g stabilizer per 1000g, or 0.15%. Relative to the water in the formula (which is how I like to calculate it) it's 0.25%. This formula has never had a hint of graininess.

I've never had a problem with sandy textures. All the guidelines for maximum milk solids content are based on unstabilized ice cream. With stabilizers in the mix, you increase the maximum by 50%, possibly more ... certainly to a level that you'll never be tempted to test.

Yeah, skim milk powder is about half lactose by weight. The lactose is a major part of what make it effective. If you're trying to reduce lactose it get a bit tricky. I'm not a huge fan of maltodextrin (except in sport drinks) because the glycemic index is so high. One option is trehalose, which has properties quite similar to lactose. Inulin isn't really something I'd use to bump up the solids. It works like a cross between a sugar, a fat, and a stabilizer. I like it in sorbets up to a few percent, but not in ice cream. People use it in very low fat ice creams, if they want them to seam like high fat ice creams. I just use as much fat as I think is appropriate. You could consider using atomized glucose powder. The catch is that you never know what's in it besides glucose ... and it's often a whole lot of maltodextrin and related dextrins. I end up using a fair amount of this in sorbets.

I haven't done any experiments in ice cream, but the really fudgey brownies that I like most get pretty hard and gummy when they're frozen. When I worked at an ice cream shop ages ago, we got brownies from a local bakery. They stayed pretty soft in the ice cream. I don't know what the recipe was, but I asuume they were cocoa-based. They were very sweet, more like a dense cake than fudge, and probably had something like trimoline for shelf life. So pretty much by chance they ticked all the expected boxes.

I think you're overstating your case here. Like Mitch, making great pizza at home has eluded me. But it's because my oven is nowhere near up to the task. The sourdough took just a few months to get right. For what it's worth, all the great pizzas I've ever had were naturally leavened. Maybe I'm spoiled.

I don't understand. What does browning onions have to do with anything? There's no reason to expect browning onions wouldn't work fine in a nonstick pan. You have to finish the job and complete the browning on relatively low heat, and you're not deglazing the pan to make a sauce base.

I haven't used starches in a while. My only thoughts are that cornstarch is traditional, tapioca seems to be the darling these days, and arrowroot is nasty (in ice cream ... it's great elsewhere).

What you're calling chemical additives are just ingredients with unfamiliar names. Inulin is an extract from chicory root. Dextrose is just glucose (if it weren't flowing through your veins right now, you'd be dead). Sorbet stabilizers are blends of gums, which are just flours made from plants like carob tree seeds, guar beans, or Irish moss seaweed. These ingredients are expensive and take up room on my shelf. I wouldn't bother if thought there was another way to make ice cream or sorbet that's as good.

My only problem with the Cook's Illustrated recipe (and practically all sorbet recipes) is that they're way too sweet for me. I mean, instant tooth-ache sweet. I think we've all just learned to accept this over the last 10 million years of sorbet-eating. Typical sorbets are around 30% sugar by weight. Most fruits are 8-15%. Most ice cream is 20% (which I think is already so sweet that it mutes our ability to taste the other flavors). Sorbet's gob-smacking sweetness level exists just for practical levels. Pastry chefs aren't saying "let's blow people's heads off with sugar!" ... they're only trying to make something that doesn't freeze into a brick. So my goal has simply been to tame the sweetness, and maximize the fruit, without any hardness or texture compromises. In fact, along the way, I decided to try to get a creamier texture than the usual short/icy sorbet texture. My approach is similar to CI's but more extreme. I use 75% fruit by weight. The remainder is a blend of sugars and other ingredients that work very hard to suppress freezing point, get the sweetness right, and keep the ice crystals small. The method I think is the same as theirs: blend it all together, chill, spin.

I think you can get there with a bit less effort. Rather than totally rethinking the sugar in your brownies, you can do what many pastry chefs already do for improved shelf life, and substitute 10-20% of the sugar with invert syrup. Buy Trimoline or just make your own. It has high freezing point depression, reduces sugar crystalization, and keeps things moist. You can also make the brownies sweeter than you usually prefer, since we're less sensitive to sweet flavors when they're cold. Scott's advice to add additional cocoa makes sense as well. Other than that, just pick a recipe that isn't very rich. Not a lot of eggs, not a lot of butter or other fat. And one that uses cocoa powder rather than melted chocolate. Which is all to say: brownies that will be boring on their own, but that will add some tasty browniness to the ice cream, and that will be less likely to turn into little bricks. You can use corn syrup instead of invert syrup, but it's not as good. I don't even mention corn syrup in any of my ice cream articles.

Humidity is important. If you have a chiller with a fan blowing dry air, you get giant pieces of jerky. If the air is too moist, you get a mold garden.

If no one knows of a drink by this name, then we may to invent one and send the recipe to Ms. Mitchell. I've heard she's under the weather and might appreciate some cheering up.

I've only heard good things about Watanabe. He has a reputation for great value in a traditional hand-forged knife.

So. It's time to move on to an actual pissing contest. We must include the Tequila Anaconda. Mentioned in what may the best opening line ever, in Joni Mitchell's "Talk to Me": There was a moon and a street lamp I didn't know I drank such a lot 'Til I pissed a tequila anaconda The full length of the parking lot Trouble is, whenever I look up the drink by name, I just get google links back to the song lyrics.

This is unfortunately true, if you're looking at books written for an amateur audience. One standout is Dana Cree's "Hello My Name is Ice Cream." The recipes at least lean in the direction of professional ones. And I'd be strongly inclined to trust Cree on inclusions. I'd be somewhat inclined to trust most of the better authors on inclusions, especially the ones who have pastry chef credentials. This would include Jeni Britton Bauer and David Lebovitz. Nick Palumbo might be among the best sources here; he's all about throwing stuff into the pot, including ingredients you might have to source from Home Depot or your local drug dealer. The recipes were all created by chefs (either Palumbo himself, or some other member of his loose-knit culinary gang).

Looking forward to updates on this. I'd suggest getting some kind of hygrometer and thermometer for the chamber. Refrigerators are really inconsistent, and you'll at least want to know what's going on in there. My butcher from years ago had a makeshift setup in his walk-in. Just a couple of shelves with a fan pointed at them. He had no idea what he was doing ... the meat was always very good, but there was little correlation between age and dry-aged flavors. A few times I hit the jackpot and got the most sublime stuff. Other times I'd buy something aged even longer, that just had a hint of aged flavor. That funny box, along with a couple of instruments, might let you do a more predictable job than he did.

That sounds like the only justification, really. I'm so tired of the plastic police. These people would have heart palpitations if they looked inside any restaurant kitchens (where practically everything, including the the jugs on the Vita Preps, is made of good old fashioned polycarbonate). My problem with the SS container—besides it costing as much as an actual blender—is that you just can't see what you're doing. With a clear container, you can see up and down all the sides, and you know how well things are blending, and if anything needs to shoved into the blades with the tamper.

I'll risk jumping into an arguably pointless discussion, because it might be more entertaining that working on the deadline looming over my head. I think you could objectively test a particular wine against a particular beer for complexity. But how would you test Wine (capital W— meaning the world of wine, against Beer, capital B—meaning the world of beer)? Like most such comparisons, it would likely devolve into a taxonomic one ("that's not really a beer!" "Yes it is!" Which has already started happening upthread). In this case I think we'll find that the definitions of complexity reside in the assumptions and biases rooted in the minds of whoever's doing the comparison. To me this kind of discussion = Not Interesting. We can safely say that the worlds of wine and beer are each massively complex. More than any one person can wrap their head around. For some people, this complexity may increase their enjoyment—but it's already of such a high order that a little more or a little less complexity in either world will make no practical difference. What's the difference between there 100 flavor compounds that you'll never be able to identify, and there being 1000? What's the difference between there being 100 styles of beer you'll never have time to try, and there being 500? There are much more interesting pissing contests to bet on.

I haven't played much with inclusions since I worked at an ice cream shop way back in the 20th century. We just experimented to find what worked and what didn't. I can't remember what we did for things like strawberry shortcake. Some kind of pastry-like thing got thrown in halfway through the cycle. It must have have been pretty firm stuff to not completely disintegrate. Cookies and candy bar pieces worked fine. M&Ms were a disaster ... the food coloring would melt off, the primary colors would mix together, and the ice cream would turn rat-gray.