Go to the Recipe: Soft Serve Ice Cream
Chapter 2:
My ears perked up. The sound of the crying baby brought back distant memories of another chapter in my life. A life before sous vide. A life before I retrofitted my garage refrigerator into a meat curing chamber. A life...before ChefSteps. The days when I somberly cried as I shoved pieces of dry, bland chicken into my mouth.
Lost in my own thoughts, I did not notice Grant leave. As I realized I was sitting alone in a bar clutching an Anova circulator, I decided to try to find the crying baby. As if in a trance, I started walking towards the sound of the crying baby. The baby sounded so close, and yet, I could not see it. Ever so gradually, my walk turned into a trot, and my trot into an determined sprint. I sprinted for days, climbed countless mountains and crossed endless rivers. The baby's cries seemed perpetually close; it's voice permeated the air like salt penetrating a curing piece of meat. And yet the baby remained forever elusive. Finally, on the 272th day, I burst into a room and found the baby (which had stopped crying) nestled in a cradle among many stacks books.
"There you are I!" I said.
The baby looked up.
"So you can talk, huh?" the baby said.
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Chapter 3:
I ignored the baby. Ain't nobody got time for crying, talking babies. I was more concerned with the books.
The room was filled with cookbooks. Modernist Cuisine, Tartine Bread, Jersusalem, Alinea: the best of today's cookbooks graced the top of each stack. But as I walked deeper and deeper into the room, the cookbooks got older and older. Most books had the smell of an earlier time drifting out between the pages-a special odor of the knowledge and emotions of previous chefs that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers.
When I reached the end of the room, I saw it. Apicius. Hands shaking and eyes watering, I slowly cracked the book open.
"UMAMI!" yelled the baby.
Startled, I dropped the book and it fell onto the floor, imploding in millions of microscopic particles.
When I woke up, the dust was gone and the baby was dead. The end.
P.S. Just accept it.
Could this be done in the ice cream making attachment for the kitchen aid? Would the "scraper paddle" on that give a better product by not letting it stick to the sides.
Dry ice is not readily available in Canada and if you can find it, you have to buy a huge quantity. So my question is similar to Adam Dagna's - can I use an ice cream maker? Mine is a Cuisinart with a built-in compressor. Thank you.
If you are living in Canada, places like Liquid Air and any welding supply shop will give you a ten pound bag reasonable cheap. Here in Edmonton, Arrow Welding supplies sells a 10 pound bag for $8.00
Is there a reason why you didn't blend the dry ice instead of bashing it?
Here, (US) it is easiest to get dry ice at the grocery. Most groceries in rural areas keep it on hand so you can get bought ice cream and other frozen foods home. Adam, this should work fine with the Kitchen aid attachment. You could freeze it and not have to do the dry ice. It will churn in a different amount of air, so texture could be a bit different. I find the Kitchen aid ice cream paddle does a nice 'fluffy' ice cream. Mind you on a warm day I miss my 660 lb, water cooled soft serve machine. We ran about 25 gallons a day thru that.
I don't know much about welding, but why are welding shops always the goto source for really cold things?
What grocery store department would you ask about dry ice?
I tried this dry-ice-method before with a sorbet base. The result was a smooth sorbet, but it had this weird "carbonated" taste to it. Is there any possibility that something went wrong?
Typically, in the states, you will find the stuff where they keep the bags of ice... the ones you'd use in your cooler. In the grocery store by my house, this is at the tail end of frozen foods section where you'd find ice cream.
I don't think it would blend correctly. You'd probably end up with an incredibly hard inner dome forming around the blade.
Hi, is it possible to use the Pacojet instead of dry-ice? thanks
Hey Chef Steps, any reason you stopped using your Warings and are not using a Vitamix??
Using a paco jet, may yield a more icy product. Soft serve is meant to be spun quickly and served immediately.
No nothing went wrong. You just had residual CO2 in the mix. The carbonation should dissipate with time. There are times however, where a little carbonation in the sorbet is nice. Or in the case of a rootbeer float, carbonated vanilla ice cream is a fun sensation.
Often fish/meat or any cold storage department should carry dry ice.
My guess is more people would carry such things, but the cost of licensing for potentially hazardous materials is expensive.
Blending works fine in quantity. In an attempt to make the procedure more user friendly we chose to smash it. If you are going to blend, do so in smaller quantities as the dry ice "snow" doesn't flow exactly like a liquid.
No specific reason, they are both great blenders. Vitamix gave us some to use and they work great so we have been using them more recently.
Mmm, yes? It would be a different result and certainly be more airy. But give it a try and please let me know how it turns out.
The ice cream maker freezes too slowly to really get the best texture. You can probably get it to freeze, but it will potentially be a little icy.
Im not sure what attachment you are referring to, but as long as you freeze it rather quickly while continually mixing you should be fine.
Nothing went wrong, that is normal but it goes away after a few minutes. It just means that there is some co2 still in your base. It will dissolve and de-gas after a few minutes.
That should work well, yes. I would make sure to heat the base to dissolve the proteins then chill before churning for best results.
Perhaps, although I dont see a huge benefit.
Lately I have seen shops that will mix up various flavors on-demand like this using liquid nitrogen.
I'm excited to try this at home. Is there any reason that I would not want to use this technique with a custard base?
Thank you, Ben.
I wonder if I could do a vegan version of this. Substitute full fat coconut milk for the whipping cream and almond milk for whole milk. For the milk powder, substitute a protein powder? Seems like this would work pretty easy.
What exactly is the function of the Milk Powder? I'm guessing texture.
Is dry ice safe to eat. I've never heard of this
Pacojet=Success Texture was nice. A little too soft after processing but I put back in the freezer and it was just right. thanks
Do you gents think the kitchenaid pro 600 is up to the task of making ice cream? Not a fan the ice cream maker attachments for this and love the dry ice idea. I would just hate to over freeze the product and blow a gear or motor...
Thank you guys!
I would hope so, dry ice is just the solid form for carbon dioxide.
Ummm. Take a box of Breyer's and stuff into a bag... Presto!
Hi ChefSteps, Could I use a Hand Mixer and a bowl. Seconldy could you write the recipe in ounces and pounds too they rarely use grams in country so its difficult to be going on google to find equivalents to the the mesaurment.
Is it safe to blend dry ice in a glass container? Should I only blend dry ice in a PC container?
Hi Jessica, Nice name! Above the ingredient list, you'll see text that says "Scale recipe." Click on it to convert to ounces.
How might you adjust this if you wanted to flavor it with say rhubarb? Momofuku makes a ruhbarb soft serve that Id love to try at home.
Would it be possible to use a hand mixer and a metal bowl in lieu of a stand mixer? (I keep trying to avoid buying one until I can pony up for a Bosch Universal or Ankarsrum/Electrolux--I mix all of my bread doughs using stretch and fold techniques and try to adjust with my Cuisinart/hand mixer/immersion blender for the rest
Well, I would make a jam then fold it in towards the end. You would have more contrast in texture = bonus, and more intense flavors = bonus. Otherwise you could use rhubarb juice instead of milk and add even more milk solids to adjust.
I would not use glass.
You could do that but it would simply be nasty Breyer's fluffy foam. This stuff actually tastes amazing has the texture of heaven.
Absolutely! You wont blow the motor. It is pretty darn soft.
Safe... Well is it safe to eat the gas it becomes? Yes. Is it safe to eat chucks of dry ice? No! Please do not eat dry ice, it is extremely cold and expands more than 250 times in volume. The good news is that it is completely safe when you use it as a tool and not an ingredient. If you consume pieces of dry ice bad things can happen. The good news is, the dry ice simply sublimates(solid to gas) pretty darn fast and simply disappears from your food.
The protein powder is what makes it smooth and dense. Without it, its basically sherbert.
You can use this technique to make any kind of ice cream.
Thanks Grant. Just happened to make some blubarb jam two days ago...
Hey Grant love what you guys do and how you do it, im a Cook from Mexico wondering if i could go stage With you, you know for a meal and a roof for a while. Anyway thank you for your time and thank you for your work i really respect it and admire it. Cheers
Hello there!
Fascinated by your Video memories from a visit in a Museum in Winterthur (Switzerland) came back... Some years ago we made an excellent chocolate-split ice-cream using dry ice during a kind of "science cooking class" as part of our visit in the "Technorama" science museum.
Despite the problems it makes do get dry ice over here (German province) my plan was made up - I simply had to try this! Today I managed to get "some" dry Ice (had to drive to a factory for technical gases and they gave my about 10 kilos...).
I tried your recipe and everything was fine until…
…I tasted it.
Smooth, rich, creamy texture – yes, perfect! But the taste? Somehow sour and the ice-cream was prickling like I had made it with carbonated water! Tasted pretty odd in combination with the creamy-milky-vanilla flavor…
Okay, I know that dry ice is carbon dioxide which is used to carbonate water. So it is not a total surprise that somehow carbonic acid has been built in my ice… But I think you would not propagate the dry ice method when you had this “sour-prickling-problem” and the chocolate-ice-cream we made in Switzerland did not prickle at all too…
So my hope is that you have an idea what went wrong in my case…
Oops - sorry, I see you discussed this already... But sorry again - had the ice-cream in the freezer for several hours now - the carbonation effect is still immanent and - yes - kind of destroing the taste! Maybe I`ll try a sorbet next time - I think the prickling would not bother me then...
(Hopy you understand my writing – my English is a little rusty… Sorry for that!)
How long can it take to degass the ice cream? Made some an hour ago, and still tastes a little gassy. Not the most pleasant taste.
I have tried this technique numerous times, and to date no matter what I try I still get the remnant flavor of carbonation. The base never fully degasses, and it negatively affects the flavor. I wonder if this is caused by my high elevation in the desert 3000 ft above sea level, or perhaps it is the quality of the dry ice that is poor for this purpose. Can ChefSteps team members please respond?
Would this same base work well in a commercial soft serve machine?
Hey Richard where are you in Canada?
I can give you some leads that dont require welding supply but
food grade instead...Same with nitrogen
Its available in Canada you just have to know where to go.
I get it all of the time and I live in Victoria which is
far from the most cutting edge city in the country.
Feel free to message me and I can share my sources with u
I don't think there's much up-side to using that gizmo - I have one and wouldn't endorse it. The paddle edge just scrapes the thin frozen layer of ice cream off the wall, to incorporate back into the unfrozen portion. Since the cold wall is the source of freezing (er, heat removal), but in this case the solid CO2 is far colder than a regular freezer can get the glycol (I think) in the kitchen aide bowl. The rest of the paddle is for air incorporation, aka overrun, a task which the regular stand mixer paddle fulfills. Make sense to y'all? Always worth an experiment too.
Even if you stored it in the freezer for at least ~20 minutes? That seemed to do the trick for me.
Also make sure you blend the dry ice pieces to get it in powder form.
Julia have you seen soft serve ice-cream done with liquid nitrogen ? doesn't it takes more liquid nitrogen to freeze than frezzening gelato standard ice-cream.
Boss Same question I asked Julia can you freeze soft serve ice-cream with liquid nitrogen ? doesn't it takes more liquid nitrogen to freeze than frezzening gelato standard ice-cream?
cheers
Does the ice cream stay that texture even if in the freezer for long periods of time?
Love the vanilla soft serve, but I want to do a s'more themed soft serve for the holiday weekend this time... as much as I should make marshmallow from scratch I think Im gonna try fluff... any thoughts on where to add it in the soft serve process... to the blender? to the mixer while freezing? after frozen? Then the question is between graham crackers and dipped in chocolate or just all tossed in like a Blizzard...
Also any ideas for chocolate soft serve?
I'm in BC, lower mainland. Any leads on where to purchase some?
Sadly, soft serve ice cream texture doesn't hold up in the freezer. It will become very icy and gritty because of its low-fat, high-protein formula.
Yes
It really depends on how fine the dry ice was smashed into a powder. The finer the dry ice, the faster it sublimates.
No I don't think that has to do with altitude, I think you might be an especially sensitive taster. There will be some residual carbonation, that can be tasted by some people IME. I suggest you increase the sugar by 5 to 10% and try again, the extra dissolved sugar will reduce the ability of CO2 to dissolve into the mix and might give you a result that you prefer.
Hi Lesley, any leads would be helpful. I know I can go to Praxair but that's a bit of a pain. I tried some local welders and they don't have it. Like Sean, I'm in the Lower Mainland (Coquitlam).
What does it mean by "longer lasting" if i were to heat up the mix to 80 °C? The ice creams melts slower?
Thanks
what room temperature should it be stored, enable for the ice cream not to melt fast?
