Flavoring your ice creams: Extract or infusion?

[sverreef]

On 1/24/2023 at 10:30 PM, paulraphael said:

Same Sorrel. She's doing something really clever by taking advantage of the Paco Jet. By grinding up the herbs after they're frozen solid, she's not allowing the enzymes to go to work and brown leaves (and wreck the flavors). The enzymes are inactive at those low temperatures. 

 

Very clever indeed, and damn tasty too!

 

 

As usual, I used the slightly modified Chefsteps creme fraiche recipe (one drop of polysorbate 80 and 1.1g of LBG for a batch scaled to 150g creme fraiche). The 120g of water in the original recipe was replaced by 120 grams of fresh sorrel leaves (picked from the sod roof on my parents' garage). I also added 1 gram of citric acid to the base mix.

 

It took a lot of spins, and two refreezes, but the Creami was able to replicate the results Lauren Eldridge got with the Pacojet 😀

 

Because of the large volume of the fresh sorrel leaves, I had to split the mix between two Creami beakers for the initial freeze and 3 x light ice cream cycles. Then the processed mixture was combined in one beaker and frozen again. After 4 additional spins, the Creami had broken down the sorrel enough, but the mixture was more milk shake than ice cream, so back in the freezer it went. Probably due to a slightly higher solids content than usual, the ice cream needed 2 spins on the light ice cream cycle and one respin before getting the right scooping consistency (normal is one light ice cream and one or two respins).

 

Flavour profile was similar to the blueberry version I made a while ago, so it's quite understandable why Lauren Eldridge went with the blueberry pairing, but the sorrel version has an additional floral/grassy dimension I liked a lot. Defrosted wild blueberries, white chocolate namelaka and wild wood sorrel (Oxalis acetosella) - picked in my own "garden" less than an hour before it was served - was all a good match to the ice cream.

 

Edited May 21, 2023 by sverreef (log)