sweettreateater

I agree completely with that. For me, adding nonfat dry milk seems like the single biggest thing which improves my ice creams, even more than the heating... Also, very interesting what you said, paulraphael, about Jenni's commercial production solution... I was going to try what she does but my reverse osmosis machine is in the shop.

While we're at it, this is an awesome ice cream blog: https://underbelly-nyc.blogspot.com Amazing info there, along with some pretty witty writing. He also posts here with very insightful suggestions.

JoNorvelleWalker is a close second...

I have a feeling that the 4 minute instruction is a way to achieve some of the benefits of Ruben's method, while keeping things ultra simple. Not sure why it's 4 minutes vs 5, though... that might be the amount of time she found achieves the texture she likes. I definitely think that Ruben's method results in a super creamy ice cream. However, I have not found a way to separate the effect of evaporation from the effects of the protein denaturing. For instance, what percentage of the improvement is due to evaporation and how much due to denaturing? Is it 50/50, 70/30, or something else? Or do they work at different rates throughout the 25 minute period? For instance, does denaturing play a bigger part at first and then evaporation takes over towards the end? Or is it equal throughout? It could matter because if, for example, denaturing is the bigger player and it happens mostly at the beginning, the heating time could be reduced a lot, and still achieve most of the benefits. One equation and two variables... It's all also a bit subjective because some people (ie, my girlfriend) does not like how "chewy" it comes out, whereas that's exactly what I like about it. So I could heat it less and achieve less "chewiness" which would result in her being happy but me getting less ice cream. Funny how Ruben seems to now have a method named after him... He does sometimes post here so hopefully he will chime in. He's the expert on this!

Never tried that.... seems pretty hard-core and uncomfortable. I usually just go sit on the couch instead.

One thing I've done when including fruit like chopped cherries is to simmer them in a few tablespoons of sugar for about 10 minutes. I think that helps lower the freezing point of the water in the fruit chunks and keeps them chewy and un-frozen. Otherwise, they just become little chunks of ice. I freeze them the day before and then drop them in at the end of the spin. They should be chewy right out of the freezer.

Great - after I just made a chocolate ice cream batch yesterday... But good for next time!

Thanks for posting your sorbet formulations - super helpful! 18% sugar by weight seems fairly low - does that correspond to a Brix reading of 18 as well? Also, I've mostly made sorbets without using a simple syrup, to try to avoid diluting the fruit flavor intensity. Is there any advantage to using the simple syrup vs just dissolving the sugar right in the puree overnight? Now that I think of it, I'm guessing you would kind of need to do it if you are using stabilizers... Started the base for Bing cherry sorbet today - the Bings are really good this year. According to Migoya, cherries are 19% solids, so I was planning to not strain the puree to try take advantage of the "free solids". But as I was pureeing the last half, I heard the distinct sound of a pit being chewed up so I ended up having to strain about half the the puree to avoid getting bits of the stone in the final product. But hopefully there is still enough solids in there.

I made a watermelon sorbet and reduced some of the puree. Since I wasn't sure how the reduction would alter the flavor, I reduced only half the puree, and I reduced that part 20% by weight. So the entire amount of puree was reduced by 10%. After reduction, the smell was a little odd and non-fruit like, though the taste was different than the smell and was OK. It's hard to say if reducing affected the flavor but it didn't ruin it either. Overall, the finished product was quite good, taste-wise. The watermelon flavor came through pretty strong. It was a little on the too- sweet side, though. I felt that there were some defects too: it froze a little too cold and ended up too hard right out of the freezer, and the texture was a little crumbly. Once it warmed up, the texture was good and the crumbliness went away. Anyone have any ideas what would cause a crumbly texture in a sorbet? Since the sugar level was comparable to other sorbets I've had success with (particularly strawberry), my guess is the watermelon sorbet was lacking solids. I also used corn syrup as the invert. I opted not to strain it, hoping to retain some extra solids but maybe that is not enough. I am definitely thinking about trying either some nonfat milk solids, or get some stabilizers to try. I wanted to try it with as few extra ingredients as possible but I think a thin juice like watermelon might need a little help. I might get some dextrose as well, to add some FP suppression without adding sweetness. Here was the formulation I tried: (start) 30 oz fresh watermelon puree, unstrained (final) 27 oz watermelon, after reducing half of it by 20% 8.25 ounces sugar 4.70 ounces of corn syrup 1 tsp lemon juice 1/16 tsp pinch of salt Edit: I checked and my strawberry sorbet actually has more sugar in it (37% of total weight vs 30% of total weight). That could partly explain the difference in hardness.

I also think a sorbet would be better. It seems like the problem could be in ensuring sufficient solids. Besides sugar, what could you add to increase the solid percentage? With lemon sorbets, the flavor is so sour that you have to add a lot of sugar and I guess that takes care of the solids but that much sugar might overwhelm the watermelon... I usually strain when I make sorbets but maybe if I didn't, that might increase the solids enough without hopefully detracting too much from the final smoothness. I like the idea of reducing some of the watermelon juice.

Interesting Sugar post on underbelly. I have quite the sweet tooth so I never think ice cream is too sweet. I only know it's too sweet when it won't stay frozen in my -10 freezer! That's actually happening right now with a coffee ice cream I just made. Even I think it's too sweet. Just kidding. I've been using corn syrup for quite a while but have been curious to try a different kind of invert sugar. I found a smaller sized example (22 oz) of Trimoline for $7.25 at lepicerie. Would you say that the DIY formula for invert syrup on your site is equivalent to a commercial product like the one just mentioned? Is there any difference with the homemade one? Really enjoying the underbelly blog. You do a great job of summarizing and explaining concepts, especially the "trade-offs" with formulation changes. A lot of other blogs and books offer a lot more detail but with less clarity.

The information in underbelly is great! I particularly liked the 'Discussion' section in Basic Ice Cream Examples, where you showed how a change in the recipe can result in unexpected deficiencies, but then how to counter that effect by changing other parts of the formulation. It really demonstrates the crucial balancing act that ice cream-making is! And it really helps make clear what each part of the formulation does. One thing that I would personally really like to see is an entire posting on Solids: how to calculate them from your ingredient list, how to add them in when needed, how to counter them when they come in too high. I find the whole Solids component the trickiest part to understand well. It was covered in How To Build a Recipe but I wouldn't mind seeing more, especially how to manipulate the percentage. For instance, how would you get enough solids if you were making a watermelon ice cream? You need a ton of watermelon juice to get enough flavor (because it's a relatively non-intense juice next to say, lemon), but then how do you maintain a high enough solid percentage without diluting the flavor?

I've also had really good success with Ruben's method. This week, I tried a comparison test where I used the exact same proportions of ingredients but just dumped everything in the pot, brought it to 162, let it simmer for about 5 minutes, and then put in an ice bath. The result was OK but definitely did not have that unique creaminess. I wonder what are the biggest contributors? Is it the reversible protein unfolding and denaturing? Or is it mainly just due to evaporating so much water out of the base, which is ultimately what would contributing to any iciness? Also, I realized recently that I've been setting up all my percentages BEFORE reducing it. Then I realized that since the actual amount of base that gets churned is 13% lighter, (since I've removed about 13% of water from the base with evaporation), it also means that my ingredient percentages all increase quite a bit. I noticed today that Ruben mentions this on his site (ie, arrive at the proper mix composition AFTER heating) but I didn't see it before. The ice creams have been pretty soft at 5 degrees out of the freezer (though I kind of like that consistency), and now I think that's because I have a higher percentage of sugar in the base than my pre-reduction numbers indicated which suppresses the freezing point...

Looking forward to this one. I have frequent, animated, high-volume discussions about stabilizers with my girlfriend who refuses to eat ice cream that contains them. I like to point out that the unfortunately named guar gum is no less natural than her precious kale, yet she refuses to yield to my logic. So I just trick her. My ice cream has no labels on it.

I remember you also had a lot of success using Ruben's method. Are you using the PHMB to utilize same basic theory? (ie, 30-60 minutes at 162 degrees, etc) Since I also like to play with chocolate, I'm quite interested in this gizmo. However, I don't have the space for a KA mixer so I would likely get the standalone version. Since I wouldn't have the mixer itself, I guess I'd still be standing there stirring but at least I wouldn't have to worry about the temperature. Have you found that the temperature remains consistent, even if it differs from what reads on the display?