Making Ice Cream Without an Ice Cream Maker
- The churning freezes your ice cream evenly, because the entire mixture is exposed evenly to colder temperatures.
- The churning breaks up an ice crystals that form during freezing, resulting in a smoother ice cream. The churning adds air bubbles to the ice cream, lightening the texture.
Although ice cream makers facilitate the three benefits above, there's no reason you can't do it on your own. Here's how...
Making ice cream by hand
- Pick and prepare a recipe. Several of mine are provided below.
- Transfer the mixture to a wide bowl. A larger surface area speeds up the cooling process.
- Chill the ice cream mixture thoroughly in the fridge. This may take as much as a couple hours if you've made a variety that required cooking the ingredients.
- Transfer the bowl to the freezer.
- After about half an hour, remove the bowl. The edges should be partly frozen and the middle slushy. Beat vigorously for 2-3 minutes until smooth, then return the bowl to the freezer. Keep in mind that you're helping to break up ice crystals, introduce light air bubbles and facilitate even freezing.
- Repeat step five twice more then let it sit until frozen.
Once your ice cream is finished, you'll want to eat it promptly. Nothing beats fresh ice cream, but without chemical preservatives it loses some of that homemade taste within a day or two. Eat it while it's fresh!
Recipes
→ Ginger Pineapple Sorbet
→ Green Tea Ice Cream
→ Lychee Ice Cream
→ Lychee Sorbet in Coconut Macadamia Tuiles with Papaya Coulis
→ Orange Mango Sorbet
→ Soursop Sorbet
Thanks for the tip! I really want to try this method. Also, thanks for stopping by my blog :)
I have fond memories of a hand-crank ice cream machine growing up. While electric ice cream machines have largely replaced them, I've always thought of recreating the process by hand: ingredients in a metal bowl, ice and rock salt wash in an outer bowl, lots and lots of stirring.
What are the pros and cons to this method of that one? I can imagine the amount of stirring required with my proposed method might have the side effect of giving you Popeye-like forearms. However, the method you wrote about seems like it might not yield as smooth a concoction.
Whaddya think?
Yeah, I was wondering about the meathod mentioned by pcg....but I will definately try your way...once lent is over :P
Kat, I hope it works well for you.
Pcg and Anuhea, I have similar memories. The barrel of the ice cream maker was wood, painted a funny nautical light blue. Inside the ice cream cylinder was battered, sitting in the middle of the ice and rock salt. I seem to remember we had to crank it for HOURS AND HOURS, which is why it didn't get much use. As much as I cringe at yet another appliance, I recognize that an electric ice cream maker simplifies the entire process enough that I actually, you know, make ice cream. Both the handcrank and the electric are fairly similar in their end result, and both will be smoother than stirring by hand. But stirring by hand is FREE and requires no storage space!
few things are as pleasant as cranking the cream yourself
Kudzu Fire, I agree that hand cranking is the best. The ice cream tastes better from all the anticipation. The only reason I like electric ice cream makers is because they remove obstacles to whipping up a batch. I found I rarely used the old hand-crank bucket my parents had because I needed to make sure I had rock salt on hand, that I had people to help, and that I had an afternoon to sit under a tree / on the porch and do the work. With the electric, I create the mix in half and hour, flip a switch and go do other things while it churns.
This method sucks!!!!!
Just kidding!!!! It works just fine and my whole family participated and we had loads if fun! :]
I made Ice Cream using this method at home.
The recipe I used was from another site and was a raw recipe, which I further altered.
Mine was very simply 1.5 C Raw milk and .5 C Raw honey.
It tasted very good, surprisingly similar to vanilla ice cream, but was very icy.
Also instead of repeating the process twice I repeated it about 10 times, give or take a few. So that may have affected the outcome.
I also used an electric hand mixer instead of mixing it by hand.
I hope to experiment more with this method and produce better results.
Next time I will probably add some egg and heavy raw cream. I will also only repeat the process twice as directed to see if I can't come up with something a little creamier and fluffier and a little less icy.
Cheers
Ryan - part of the iciness you experienced was certainly due to the ratio of fats in the recipe. Milks produce icy results unless they are mixed with cream. The more milkfat (cream) you add, the smoother and richer the result... and the more caloric. Adding eggs also increases the richness. When working with egg, mix it with a little milk and cook it over medium heat STIRRING CONSTANTLY until it just begin to thicken. Remove from heat, stir a little more then let cool. Hope that helps!