4 minutes ago, sweettreateater said: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!
thanks sweettreateater! - I think Ruben also posted somewhere in here that if you do decide to not evaporate the mix then you can already up the total solids to mimic the evaporation (i think it was around the possible use of a sous vide machine which has the mixture in a closed bag which will stop evaporation).
another tack on question to yours above is how long is the time to just denature the proteins? is that the reason why 25 mins seems to be the magic number at 72 degrees
