The Tastiest Ice Cream You'll Ever Eat

Hello again! I'm going to share a recipe with you today, I hope you don't mind. Of course today's recipe is for Ice Cream, and not just any ice cream, this one is delicious. You can tell this is totally worth it because I capitalized Ice Cream. Did you notice it? I did it again there, too. 

You might be thinking to yourself that ice cream making is complicated, or a lot of work, and ice cream is fairly inexpensive, so why should I make it. Don't think that. I swear if you make this ice cream you will not only find that it was worth it, but you just might want to go out and buy an ice cream maker and never buy that other stuff again.

I do think I should give you a warning before we begin, though. Beware that the path you may find yourself on will be one that is rich with eggs and cream. While I believe that this ice cream is worth every scrumptious drop of fat that's in it, you might want to eat it again, and again, and again. Also, making ice cream is somewhat of a process, but the same holds true for really anything worth eating. I don't think anyone's ever thought, "Wow, that TV dinner blew my mind" but maybe I'm wrong. All told this will take about 4 hours or so, depending on how efficient you are. Personally, I'm horrible at multitasking in the kitchen so things seem to take me a bit longer. Regardless, most of the time is spent waiting for the ice cream to freeze. I'd say as far as actual work/preparation time, this ice cream probably takes no more than half an hour. You will need to stick around to periodically mix, though, so if you don't want to be beholden to the house for the occasional mixing you might want to pick up an ice cream maker. I'd like this one personally, this one is cheaper and takes up much less space if money and space is more of an issue.

One of the nicest things about making your own ice cream is you know what's in it. This recipe doesn't have anything like carrageenan, mono- and di-glycerides, or cloned fish proteins in it, unlike some of those grocery store ones. Nope, just egg yolks, milk, cream, sugar, salt, and vanilla in this ice cream. There is one other benefit to making your ice cream that I haven't mentioned yet, and that is that while you are making it, you can imagine this song in your head:

Okay, so let's get started, shall we? First off, you don't need an ice cream maker for this. Would it help? Probably. I don't have one so I wouldn't know. If you are going to make ice cream only a few times a year you likely don't need one, but if you are going do make it regularly (once a month or more) I think I'd get one. You can get them for around $60 and with it being the holiday season I'm sure amazon will have some sweet deals. If you don't have a machine, you'll need a had mixer. I suppose you could use a stand mixer, but a hand mixer will be much more convenient. Electric or the hand-crank style works, too.

You'll also need a medium-sized sauce pan, 2 quart bowl and 4 quart bowl. I'm going to assume you have measuring cups and if you don't you probably should pick some up, unless you can eyeball everything. I'd recommend a silicone spatula for stirring the mixture. They don't transfer heat and won't melt like plastic does, but you can use a wooden spoon. Finally, you'll need a fair amount of ice and some kosher salt or rock salt.

This recipe is from David Lebovitz, author of The Perfect Scoop. His blog is a fun read if you like reading about food, or Paris.

Ingredients:

Vanilla Ice Cream
Makes Approximately 1 quart (1l)

1 cup (250ml) whole milk
A pinch of salt
3/4 cup (150g) sugar
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
2 cups (500ml) heavy cream
8 large egg yolks
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Now for the process:

First, in a medium-sized saucepan heat the milk, salt, and sugar. Next, cut the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape the seeds into the milk mixture, then add the bean into the milk as well. Cover your saucepan, remove it from the heat, and let it infuse for an hour. Now take a break. Watch some TV, work on dinner, maybe. Or, since you're going to be eating a whole lot of ice cream (I know, a quart isn't all that much) maybe go for a walk or a jog. It's wintertime, now's the best time for jogging.

Now that you're back from your jog, set up an ice bath (for the ice cream, not you) by partially filling the bigger bowl with ice and water, then put the smaller bowl inside of that. Depending on the bowls you use, the smaller bowl may float and bob around (mine did). I kind of like it, it's fun, but if you're concerned, I suppose you could use a nice heavy ceramic or porcelain type bowl. Mine is aluminum or steel or something, so it's buoyant. Anyway, put a strainer over the small bowl, then pour the cream into it. Personally I don't own a strainer, so I didn't strain mine. I didn't notice anything wrong with the final product, so if you don't have a strainer don't worry, though I'm pretty sure almost everyone but me owns one.

Next, grab another bowl, small or medium-sized is fine, you're just whisking up the egg yolks, so most anything should suffice. By the way, at this point, if you are worried about fat content, you can use five egg yolks instead of eight. This will cut down on fat, but will make it less smooth and creamy when it's finished. The reason being that fat doesn't freeze, so you don't get ice crystals and we don't want ice crystals. If you are going to mix by hand and use 5 egg yolks instead of eight, you can add a little bit of alcohol, since it too does not freeze.

If you know how to separate egg whites and yolks you can skip this next paragraph. If you don't know how, a video may be more helpful. I don't have any photos of the process, but I'll do my best to describe it well. Here goes nothing. You'll want to crack the egg in the middle. Tap it on a counter or a bowl (technically, the counter is the proper method). separate the two halves of the shell. At this point you should have what looks like two cups. One of the cups should have the egg in it and the other will be empty. Now what you'll want to do is pour the egg from one cup to the other, and do it slowly. What will happen is the egg white and the yolk will begin to separate. Continue this pass the yolk game 3 or 4 times and you should end up with the yolk in one cup and the white in the other. Put the yolk in the bowl and take the white and put it in some tupperware for future use. You can freeze egg whites just fine, and use them later on for baking, so don't just throw them out. I hope this description helped, if not you can look up a video. I'm sure there are plenty of them on YouTube.

Now continue with the eggs until you have all the yolks in a bowl and whisk them together into a little bowl of orangey goodness and rewarm the milk/vanilla/sugar solution. Once the milk is warmed up, slowly ladle in a small amount of the milk into the yolks whisking constantly as you do so. That might sound a little confusing, so I will go over that again. Oh, and this would be a good time to have a spare set of hands to help you. You're going to want to be whisking the egg yolks and you slowly pour in some of the warmed milk into the eggs. Does that make sense?

(If you're wondering why you do this, it's to temper the eggs. If you pour the yolks into the warm milk, they'd cook immediately and scramble, which is not what we want. Scrambled eggs are delicious, but not in ice cream. We want nice, creamy, smooth ice cream.)

Now that you've tempered your yolks to the milk and both are warmed, you can pour the yolk mixture into the saucepan, scraping the bowl to make sure you get it all.

Now that we have the two mixtures together, we're going to want to cook them over a low heat. Be sure you keep the mixture in constant motion, stirring it and scraping the bottom with that spatula I mentioned earlier. This will likely take a bit of time. I cooked mine over a very low heat. I may have cooked it a bit lower than necessary but I didn't want to risk cooking it too fast, and I'm a patient person. I want to say it took me maybe 20 minutes or so. Regardless, you'll want to keep this stirring up until the mixture coats the spatula. If you want to check whether the mixture is ready you can do this two ways. First, run your hand across the mixture on the spatula. If the spot stays clean you're good to go. If, however, the mixture spreads back into the area you wiped, keep going. The other way is once the eggs start firming up a little on the spatula. Think when you make scrambled eggs and it first turns from liquid to that little bit of solid/liquid-ness it gets.

Now that the custard is finished, you'll want to pour it through the strainer into the heavy cream in the ice bath. This will stop the eggs from cooking; this is a good thing. Like I said, we want ice cream, not eggs. After you've finished adding the custard to the cream, stir them until they are cool, and add the vanilla extract, and chill the mixture completely.

At this point, if you have an ice cream maker, you can cool it overnight and then add it to the machine according to its directions. If, like me, you don't have an ice maker, fear not.

Once the ice cream base is cooled completely, we're going to put it in something very similar to an ice bath, except in this case there's no water and only one bowl. I happen to have some old Blue Bunny ice cream containers which are made of plastic, not the normal cardboard. If you don't have these or can't find them you'll need to find something else. You're going to want to have the container surrounded, so something bowl like works well.

Now that you've got your container, surround it with ice in the larger bowl. Now add some rock salt or kosher salt to that and mix it around some. This will lower the temperature and help in the ice creams freezing. If you have access to it, and you're a little nuts, you can use liquid Nitrogen instead. Liquid Nitrogen is kind of hard to get though (I think) and it's pretty dangerous when misused, so just be careful if you go that route. Put the ice cream in the freezer and check it in forty-five minutes. If you don't have a strainer, like me, you can just pluck out the two vanilla bean halves before freezing the ice cream.

After forty-five minutes, the ice cream may be firming up around the edges but will be otherwise soupy. Stir it and mix it around with a spatula for a few minutes and plop it back in the freezer. Check it every thirty minutes for about three hours, mixing with a hand mixer at each break for a few minutes. You want to make sure you break up any ice crystals that might occur and ensure a nice smooth ice cream. By the time two and a half hours elapse, you'll be pretty excited (at least I was) that it's now firmed up enough to resemble something like soft serve ice cream. After mixing it for the last time you can eat some if you'd like. I left mine in the freezer overnight to solidify even more.

At this point, I'm going to assume you don't need instructions on eating this delicious ice cream. Scoop it into your mouth and enjoy. I can't wait to make it again. Next time? Chocolate sherbet. If you like chocolate you're probably going to be in heaven for that one. =)

P.S. If you want to follow along and my descriptions are too lengthy here is a more concise version from David Lebovitz:

1. Heat the milk, salt, and sugar in a saucepan. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean into the milk with a paring knife, then add the bean pod to the milk. Cover, remove from heat, and infuse for one hour.

2. To make the ice cream, set up an ice bath by placing a 2-quart (2l) bowl in a larger bowl partially filled with ice and water. Set a strainer over the top of the smaller bowl and pour the cream into the bowl.

3. In a separate bowl, stir together the egg yolks. Rewarm the milk then gradually pour some of the milk into the yolks, whisking constantly as you pour. Scrape the warmed yolks and milk back into the saucepan.

4. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom with a heat-resistant spatula, until the custard thickens enough to coat the spatula.

5. Strain the custard into the heavy cream. Stir over the ice until cool, add the vanilla extract, then refrigerate to chill thoroughly. Preferably overnight.

6. Remove the vanilla bean and freeze the custard in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Note: Used vanilla beans can be rinsed and dried, then stored in a bin of sugar. That sugar can be used for baking and, of course, for future ice cream making. 

Mmmm!