Home Made Ice Cream (2013– )

Ruben Porto · April 22, 2015

Ruben,
How do you find the current recipe with the powdered milk differs from your standard 60min recipe? Is one better than the other. I've been using the 1 hr method for years now to the delight of everyone that helps me finish off the ice cream and if you're saying we can switch over to 25 mins without negatively effecting the final product then I'm on board.
BTW I have a spinning hot plate (per Ruben's post on his blog) and have had great results to date. I do incorporate some gelatin into the mix, per Momofuku Milk Bar (check out their Mind of a Chef episode on Netflix on desserts. Awesome stuff).

Hi Tim,

Great to hear you've been using the 60 minute technique for a while! I would say that the ice cream made using the 25 minute method produces ice cream that isn't quite as dry, stiff, and smooth as that made using the 60 minute method. I think this is because of the improvement in emulsification and foaming that results from longer heating times.

I've also found that ice cream made using the 25 minute method takes longer to freeze in the machine (35 minutes compared to about 25 minutes for the 60 minute method). I have also had to increase the fat content in the 25 minute method to achieve smooth and creamy results, which makes an ice cream that is a bit heavier. And of course there is the inclusion on skimmed milk powder, which some people may object to.

The 25 minute method does produce excellent smooth and creamy ice cream, but I've found that longer heating times really do have a huge effect on texture. I've also played around with a 35 minute heating method, which I found made ice cream that was ever so slightly lighter and creamier than the 25 minute method.

I got a lot of feedback on the blog from people who wanted to try the recipes but were put off by long heating times. I hope that by bringing the heating time down to a reasonable 25 minutes, more people will be encouraged to try the recipes.

If you do try the 25 minute recipe, I would love your feedback on how the ice cream compares to that made using the 60 minute heating method.

Hope that helps.

All the best,

Ruben

Ruben Porto · April 22, 2015

Ruben, I'd love to see a revised chocolate recipe revolving around 25 mins.

Luke

Hi Luke,

The chocolate recipe is now on my to-do list to say thank you for your feedback

If you can't wait, try using the recipe for lemon curd and just substitute the chocolate ingredients for the lemon curd. That should work.

Please do let me know how it turns out if you give it a go.

Bojana · April 23, 2015

I have just made my new favorite ice cream flavor, roasted nori. I steeped roasted nori in warmed cream/milk mix, that I then used for my ice cream base. The flavor is very intriguing and works great in fancy plated desserts (I served it with rosemary shortbread, rosemary caramel sauce and atop of almond praline).

paulraphael · May 5, 2015

Ruben, I've been reading your site and am especially interested in your experiments on cooking temperature. I've thought of doing similar experiments, but I use a stabilizer blend that contains locust bean gum, which needs to hydrate at 90°C. Your work has convinced me to mess with this.

I plan to do an experiment with my formula, with a new stabilizer blend, cooked sous-vide at 72°C. My inclination is cook for 40 minutes, to guarantee that all the mix in the bag gets to temperature and can stay there an adequate amount of time, but I'll reconsider if you different ideas about this.

paulraphael · May 6, 2015

I did an experimental batch (vanilla) using the lower temperature, and so far I'm really pleased with the result. I've thought about experimenting with cook temperature, mostly to see if it would lead to a fresher flavor from the milk. I wasn't aware of potential texture benefits.

I put this off, though, because I used a stabilizer blend that includes locust bean gum, which needs to reach 90°C to hydrate fully. So for this experiment I did some research and substituted lambda carrageenan for the LBG. I use this in sauces, and thought it would be an interesting choice for ice cream. It has a very creamy texture, a clean finish, and it hydrates cold. It probably doesn't have the heat-shock resistance of LBG, but I don't have to ship my ice cream to stores. I just want it to stay smooth in my freezer for a couple of weeks, and to survive trips in a cooler to friends' houses.

I cooked this batch sous-vide at 72°C for 40 minutes. It's hardening in the freezer now. I'll try again tonight, and then see how it holds up over several days. I'm optimistic—so far it seems to have a cleaner, fresher milk flavor than what I usually get, and it's as smooth as any batch I've made. The mouthfeel and melt are really nice. No greasiness, no pastiness. None of the artifacts of overstabilized or overly rich ice creams.

My methods are different from Ruben's in some significant ways. I go for lower fat ice cream than he does. I generally don't like ice creams with more than 15% or so fat. For some flavors (fruits, chocolate) I drop down to 12%. I also like to use a minimum of eggs, because I don't like any noticeable egg flavor. I use 2 yolks per 1000g. Zero for chocolate flavors. I use added nonfat dry milk, and just under 0.2% of a blend of hydrocolloid stabilizers. This year I started cooking the mix sous-vide, which absolutely rocks.

Tri2Cook · May 6, 2015

I cooked this batch sous-vide at 72°C for 40 minutes. It's hardening in the freezer now. I'll try again tonight, and then see how it holds up over several days. I'm optimistic—so far it seems to have a cleaner, fresher milk flavor than what I usually get, and it's as smooth as any batch I've made. The mouthfeel and melt are really nice. No greasiness, no pastiness. None of the artifacts of overstabilized or overly rich ice creams.

My methods are different from Ruben's in some significant ways. I go for lower fat ice cream than he does. I generally don't like ice creams with more than 15% or so fat. For some flavors (fruits, chocolate) I drop down to 12%. I also like to use a minimum of eggs, because I don't like any noticeable egg flavor. I use 2 yolks per 1000g. Zero for chocolate flavors. I use added nonfat dry milk, and just under 0.2% of a blend of hydrocolloid stabilizers. This year I started cooking the mix sous-vide, which absolutely rocks.

I like the idea of a cleaner milk flavor and I'm with you on the nonfat dry milk and on the egg thing for most flavors. I do like the richness of higher fat levels than you go for with a lot of flavors but we seem to have pretty similar taste in ice cream outside of that. I've been watching all of this with interest because I'm always looking to learn something but without a whole lot of ambition because I'm happy with my ice cream recipes. But the curiosity is getting to me... I think I'll have to start playing around with some of this.

paulraphael · May 6, 2015

I started entertaining the idea of lower fat ice creams when I staged with Michael Laiskonis's and got to taste all of his flavors. This was probably the best ice cream I'd had, and it was all 10% milk fat. He uses 5 or 6 yolks per kg, so it's not entirely low fat, but it was still lean by my standards. The cleanness of the flavors and the mouthfeel made some of the ultrapremium local ice creams taste cloying in comparison. I realized that I didn't like the pasty film they left on my mouth.

He does it this way because his ice cream is always part of a multi-component plated dessert, served after many courses of Michelin 3-star food, and he doesn't want to demolish his guests with a butterfat wrecking ball. My constraints, needless to say, are different. So my standard recipe is around 15%—pretty high fat. Just not super rich. And I've had good luck with lower fat levels for some flavors.

I think the important thing is to not be dependent on the fat level for a smooth texture. This lets you change the richness from one flavor to another based on your tastes.

paulraphael · May 7, 2015

I cooked this batch sous-vide at 72°C for 40 minutes. It's hardening in the freezer now. I'll try again tonight, and then see how it holds up over several days. I'm optimistic—so far it seems to have a cleaner, fresher milk flavor than what I usually get, and it's as smooth as any batch I've made. The mouthfeel and melt are really nice. No greasiness, no pastiness. None of the artifacts of overstabilized or overly rich ice creams.

Ok, it's hardened now, and I'm not so happy. It's icy and lacking creaminess. It actually tastes much lower fat than it is. Not a good quality! I wonder if the lower temperature is just producing a thinner egg custard with my two measly egg yolks. This would be annoying ... based on charts in the MC series, I'd need to more than double the quantity of yolks to get the viscosity I got at 85°C. Which would defeat the purpose.

The fresh milk flavor is nice though.

One possibility is that when cooking the mix sous-vide, it spends much of its time below the water bath temperature. Which would suggest a longer cooking time might help.

Ruben Porto · May 10, 2015

Hi Paul!

Interesting to see you using sous vide to prepare your mix. I've been thinking about playing around with sous vide for a while now but simply haven't had the time to give it a go.

I agree that keeping the temperature at 72°C prevents the cooked milk and the eggy hydrogen sulphide flavours from developing. I wouldn't recommend heating your mix to 85°C or 90°C for a prolonged period of time as this is highly likely to lead to irreversible protein denaturation, which is detrimental to texture. If you're using egg yolks, depending on the quantity you use, you are also likely to develop the hydrogen sulphide note in your ice cream.

I would certainly recommend heating your mix for longer than 40 minutes as I have found better emulsification and foaming properties in the milk proteins with longer heating times. I would also suggest increasing your total solids count if you are experiencing icy texture.

I hope that helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

All the best,

Ruben

paulraphael · May 10, 2015

Thanks Ruben. In the past I've sous-vided for 30 minutes at 85C. This is around what most pastry chefs are doing. No problems with icy texture, or with egg flavors (although part of this is that I'm only using 32g yolk/ 1000g). I'm more averse to egg flavors than a lot of people.

But without doing a side-by side comparison, I believe I'm getting a fresher / less cooked milk flavor at 73C. Which seems worth striving for.

Some iciness could be due to the change in stabilizer I made to accommodate the lower temp.

Right now I'm at 39% solids (fat and nonfat). I might increase this by 1% with a few grams extra nonfat dry milk, which has very high water sequestering properties.

And I'll try cooking for 70 minutes, which will give somewhere near an hour at full temperature (allowing extra time for the mix to rise from fridge temp).

I think you'll like making ice cream sous-vide. It's fool-proof, you don't have to hover over a pot, and your pasteurized mix is sealed in a bag for later use. I've only begun to experiment with using the sous-vide step to infuse flavors. I suspect it will be ideal for some flavors and not others. For the latter, you can infuse on the stove at a higher temp/shorter time with a portion of the milk.

Edited May 10, 2015 by paulraphael (log)

JoNorvelleWalker · May 10, 2015

My one attempt at cooking the ice cream mixture sous vide did not work out as well as I had hoped:

http://forums.egullet.org/topic/144208-home-made-ice-cream-2013–/?p=1960786

The recipe I came up with relied on condensed milk. However the solids were too high and the texture was poor. It might be worth revisiting the condensed milk sous vide approach, though I have yet to do so.

For those who have tried sous vide, are there any techniques for getting the mix in the bag and sealed without a mess? Mine didn't spill but it came very close.

Tri2Cook · May 10, 2015

The recipe I came up with relied on condensed milk. However the solids were too high and the texture was poor. It might be worth revisiting the condensed milk sous vide approach, though I have yet to do so.

I've done Michael Laiskonis' recipe for condensed milk ice cream and the texture was great.

480g whole milk

35g nonfat dry milk

4g ice cream stabilizer

20g granulated sugar

40g glucose powder

4 egg yolks

250g sweetened condensed milk

120g heavy cream

Not sure if you were looking for a condensed milk ice cream or if you were just using it because it's part of the recipe you were using. I enjoyed it. Then again, I could eat sweetened condensed milk right out of the can if I let myself.

JoNorvelleWalker · May 10, 2015

I've done Michael Laiskonis' recipe for condensed milk ice cream and the texture was great.
480g whole milk
35g nonfat dry milk
4g ice cream stabilizer
20g granulated sugar
40g glucose powder
4 egg yolks
250g sweetened condensed milk
120g heavy cream
Not sure if you were looking for a condensed milk ice cream or if you were just using it because it's part of the recipe you were using. I enjoyed it. Then again, I could eat sweetened condensed milk right out of the can if I let myself.

My objective was to develop a method which did not depend on evaporation to increase the percent of milk solids. Condensed milk seemed worth trying. The recipe was my own, calculated from the amount of sugar in condensed milk. As I said, the resulting solids were too high, such that the ice cream never got really hard at freezer temperature. To give a concrete example from the world of commercial products, the texture was unacceptably soft like Friendly's, not hard like Haagen Dazs.

Also the mouthfeel was not quite right, which was the defect that led to the batch being dumped.

The main reason I have not tried tweaking the condensed milk recipe is the difficulty of bagging the mix. Plus I know I can get great ice cream results by following Ruben's 60 minute cooking method (even if I do not use Ruben's ingredients).

I still have high hopes for the KitchenAid Precise Heat Mixing Bowl that we learned about from Kerry. Unfortunately the bowl does not fit on my current mixer.

Tri2Cook · May 10, 2015

My objective was to develop a method which did not depend on evaporation to increase the percent of milk solids. Condensed milk seemed worth trying. The recipe was my own, calculated from the amount of sugar in condensed milk. As I said, the resulting solids were too high, such that the ice cream never got really hard at freezer temperature. To give a concrete example from the world of commercial products, the texture was unacceptably soft like Friendly's, not hard like Haagen Dazs.

Also the mouthfeel was not quite right, which was the defect that led to the batch being dumped.

The main reason I have not tried tweaking the condensed milk recipe is the difficulty of bagging the mix. Plus I know I can get great ice cream results by following Ruben's 60 minute cooking method (even if I do not use Ruben's ingredients).

I still have high hopes for the KitchenAid Precise Heat Mixing Bowl that we learned about from Kerry. Unfortunately the bowl does not fit on my current mixer.

Ahhh... got it. Never mind the recipe then. I haven't tried sous vide or 60 minute cooks for ice cream so I'm of no help with that.

JoNorvelleWalker · May 11, 2015

Ok, it's hardened now, and I'm not so happy. It's icy and lacking creaminess. It actually tastes much lower fat than it is. Not a good quality! I wonder if the lower temperature is just producing a thinner egg custard with my two measly egg yolks. This would be annoying ... based on charts in the MC series, I'd need to more than double the quantity of yolks to get the viscosity I got at 85°C. Which would defeat the purpose.

The fresh milk flavor is nice though.

One possibility is that when cooking the mix sous-vide, it spends much of its time below the water bath temperature. Which would suggest a longer cooking time might help.

Thinking about this some more, and rereading the thread, you said back in post 300 that you didn't homogenize your mix. One cause of icy texture is lack of homogenization.

https://www.uoguelph.ca/foodscience/book-page/body-and-texture-defects

http://www.preparedfoods.com/articles/107961-examining-homogenization-on-ice-cream

Since reading the article you posted by Michael Laiskonis I had been* blending my mix after pasteurization, with I believe beneficial results:

http://mlaiskonis.com/2014/05/24/ice-cream/

*I use the past tense only because my immersion blender is burnt out.

paulraphael · May 11, 2015

I do blend the mix after aging, partly because of Laiskonis's thoughts on this (he's one of my teachers), partly because some stabilizer blends for a gel that needs to be thinned before you can strain them.

Have you tried using nonfat dry milk to up the solids? It's precise and easy. Laiskonis and most pastry chefs do it this way. I believe that freeze-drying skim milk in controlled setting is going to be more repeatable and mess with flavors less than doing it yourself on the stove.

Have you calculated your total solids and total nonfat solids? Getting a handle on these numbers can help diagnose problems. At 40% solids and below most recipes are ok.

timpoblete · May 11, 2015

In terms of homogenization after processing, I usually use a handblender to mix the mixture in a stainless steel bowl in an ice bath. This homogenizes and also speeds up the cooling process. I don't know how long the cooling times are for the plastic bag method, but this takes 10-15mins to get the mix down to <10C.

Edited May 11, 2015 by timpoblete (log)

JoNorvelleWalker · May 11, 2015

I do blend the mix after aging, partly because of Laiskonis's thoughts on this (he's one of my teachers), partly because some stabilizer blends for a gel that needs to be thinned before you can strain them.

Have you tried using nonfat dry milk to up the solids? It's precise and easy. Laiskonis and most pastry chefs do it this way. I believe that freeze-drying skim milk in controlled setting is going to be more repeatable and mess with flavors less than doing it yourself on the stove.

Have you calculated your total solids and total nonfat solids? Getting a handle on these numbers can help diagnose problems. At 40% solids and below most recipes are ok.

I use the calculator from the icecreamgeek site:

http://www.icecreamgeek.com/?page_id=817

So far I've tried condensed milk and nano concentrated milk, but not dry milk.

Blending after aging is not the same thing. The benefits of homogenization come from blending after pasteurization while the mix is still hot, prior to cooling and aging.

paulraphael · May 12, 2015

Blending after aging is not the same thing. The benefits of homogenization come from blending after pasteurization while the mix is still hot, prior to cooling and aging.

Interesting. I'd been under the impression that Laiskonis blended after aging, but indeed he does it as you describe. I haven't seen any side-by-side tests of this from him or anyone else, though. He seems to do it on good faith that a stick blender has some homogenizing ability. Have you tested it, or do you know of any tests?

JoNorvelleWalker · May 12, 2015

Interesting. I'd been under the impression that Laiskonis blended after aging, but indeed he does it as you describe. I haven't seen any side-by-side tests of this from him or anyone else, though. He seems to do it on good faith that a stick blender has some homogenizing ability. Have you tested it, or do you know of any tests?

I have only blended with my now broken KitchenAid immersion blender. A real homogenizer still exceeds my grasp but hopefully not for too much longer. Be assured I shall report.

But yes, the immersion blender was better than nothing I thought. Seriously, I'd say it was an improvement.

paulraphael · May 12, 2015

I have only blended with my now broken KitchenAid immersion blender. A real homogenizer still exceeds my grasp but hopefully not for too much longer. Be assured I shall report.

But yes, the immersion blender was better than nothing I thought. Seriously, I'd say it was an improvement.

Yes, please report if you get one of those gizmos. So far all the sub-$500 ones I saw could only handle a test tub worth of stuff. Would be nice to borrow one.

I have yet to see any theory on what's actually happening in the post-cook blending. The milk and cream are already homogenized, so is this about the egg fat, if any?

And if so I wonder why it makes a difference if it's done pre- or post-aging.

Or pre-or post-cooking. My mix goes through a blender (to disperse the hydrocolloids) before cooking.

Interestingly, the aging process is about helping to unhomogenize (heterogenize?) the mix. It partially crystalizes the fat droplets, and also effects surface changes to aid in their agglomeration. As far as I can tell, the actual agglomeration takes place as the mix freezes.

Edited May 12, 2015 by paulraphael (log)

JoNorvelleWalker · May 23, 2015

Tonight I received my homogenizer. It is a BioSpec BioHomogenizer 1285:

http://www.biospec.com/product/19/biohomogenizer/

The motor unit is made by Bamix. Here is what the generator looks like. This size generator is designed to work with up to two liters of liquid. I believe you can see the outer stator and the inner rotor (as well as the pores in my Boos block).

Earlier I was playing around with soapy water. Interesting. One drop of Dawn detergent makes an opaque and almost solid foam. I thought of cooking up an ice cream batch tonight. Depends on how many eggs I have and how many mai tais. But probably not.

Speaking of ice cream I found an interview with Jeni Brintton Bauer as to why she adds cream cheese, corn syrup, and cornstarch to her home recipes: "...you have limitations in your home kitchen; you don't have a pasteurizer or homogenizer."

http://www.splendidtable.org/story/when-you-are-making-ice-cream-at-home-water-is-your-enemy

Note: Jeni uses no eggs. Neither in her commercial ice cream nor in her home recipes. Though I am sure she would be among the first to affirm pasteurization is important.

rotuts · May 23, 2015

""" Earlier I was playing around with soapy water. Interesting. One drop of Dawn detergent makes an opaque and almost solid foam. I thought of cooking up an ice cream batch tonight ""

Dawn Ice Cream ? :wacko:

hope that wasn't the M.R. talking

:biggrin:

Kerry Beal · May 23, 2015

Colour me green with envy. I picked up a tiny little homogenizer very inexpensively on E-bay a few years back - but the sucker is basically non functional. I think it might still be in the closet up north. And it would handle about 100 ml instead of 2 litres.

paulraphael · May 23, 2015

Dawn Ice Cream ?

That's probably the best emulsifier in the whole kitchen. I can't speak for its deliciousness.

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