Cooking tips, tricks, and advice from professional kitchens
Posts tagged Ice Cream
Churning ice cream
May 25th
One of the problems with making ice cream at home can be that the churning machines designed for home use aren’t always the best engineered, which can lead to some of the custard not getting scraped up off the bottom or sides of the churner, which will cause it to freeze solid instead of being aerated. This can even be a problem with smaller compressor units used in restaurants.
One way to solve this is to about halfway through the churning cycle, however long that may be on your machine, gently scrape the sides down with a stiff too like a pallet knife. If you’re worried about scratching the sides, you can use a softer tool like a rubber spatula. You can incorporate the scrapings back into the ice cream, and there should be sufficient time left in the cycle to still get a lump free, smooth ice cream.
Another option is to simply wait until the end of the cycle and eat the solid custard right then and there. The one thing you don’t want to do is to incorporate this stuff into the finished aerated ice cream as there will be a noticeable texture difference and it will scoop differently.
Pefect Ice Cream Balls
May 21st
Ever wonder how when you order ice cream at a nice restaurant, they get it so smooth and round? There are 2 real secrets which are best used in conjunction. The first is the type of scoop you’re using.
Now while the mechanical ice cream scoop is perfect for many things, scooping and portioning cookie dough, crab cakes, meatballs…, it is not ideal for scooping ice cream;
Mechanical ice cream scoop
The best type to use is the solid, one piece manual ice cream scoop. This type of scoop makes it easiest to form a tight smooth ball, which you do by scraping the surface of the ice cream without applying too much pressure, and at the end of the stroke, scooping down to enable you to move the ball, and start again, building a couple of layers of ice cream.
One piece ice cream scoop
The second secret is to dip the scoop in water before you start to scoop, which most people are familiar with. The secret comes with using cool water not hot.
Cool water will still enable you to move the scoop through the ice cream, but won’t cause the ice cream to melt and refreeze solid around the scoop. Think of the water as a little bit of lubrication.