"Freezing speed is correlated with freezing temperature. So if you can freeze it really, really cold, you can get smaller ice crystals. And if you can freeze really cold, you can freeze really fast. The benefit of that is if you make small enough batches you can freeze to order. Therefore you don’t need any of those extra ingredients that make ice cream far from natural."
You know what else works for that? Fat. It's why iced custard is smoother than philadelphia ice cream. It's also much easier and more manageable than using liquid nitrogen, but, you know...you can't sell regular ice cream to hipsters at a massive markup.
That's it...I'm opening an easy-bake oven bakery in Hayes Valley. After all, cooking with lightbulbs is slower, and therefore, more love goes into each cookie.
The Discovery series about food chemistry had a segment about using liquid nitrogen to make ice cream. I think they concluded that it is the perfect way to make ice cream.
The show had many other very interesting segments (like how to make mashed potato that doesn't turn into glue) with all the chemical backgrounds for great foods. It is fascinating stuff.
I love good frozen eats, so I can hope hers is good and can be part of a movement that pushes quality at scale so that US ice cream gets to where Europe is (quality at scale and optimal quality with regular availability)... The fawning contextualization and link bait headline - damn you internet.
Ingredients will be limiting factors since some preparations can not / should not be done in the mixing step and post-freeze manhandling of this soft stuff is wasted time - melt is death.
Traditional hard ice cream has a post-mix hard freeze time of 48 hours and some great preparations, like parkerhouse and butter pecan, just wouldn't render well. Not every flavor should turn out like a Dairy Queen Flurry. Not every texture should be mostly indistinguishable from a lumpy frozen custard.
She is perfecting ice crystallization but pawning off the wider challenges of the product. I hope her efforts don't create a limiting view of the cream-based frozen treat experience.
Might want to take a look at http://www.blueskycreamery.com/ where they've been freezing ice cream with liquid nitrogen in large quantities (rather than the tiny spheres of Dippin' Dots) for a long time; the two founders came up with the process when they were Iowa State students back in 1999.
Graeter's perfected ice cream decades ago. It's not techy or Silicon Valley or in Wired but it is definitely the best. There is no need to look further. Anyone else claiming ice cream perfection is a charlatan.
I'm not jealous of San Fransisco. We've got Mardi Gras, Jeni's Splend, and Graeters within walking or driving distance. Columbus, OH is where the ice cream is.
it's a fun gimmick, but "those extra ingredients that make ice cream far from natural" achieve the same thing at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the effort.
also: I haven't looked closely at their formulations, but I'm guessing that they are likely guilty of using a few ingredients in their own ice cream that are also far from natural...
[+] [-] timr|12 years ago|reply
You know what else works for that? Fat. It's why iced custard is smoother than philadelphia ice cream. It's also much easier and more manageable than using liquid nitrogen, but, you know...you can't sell regular ice cream to hipsters at a massive markup.
That's it...I'm opening an easy-bake oven bakery in Hayes Valley. After all, cooking with lightbulbs is slower, and therefore, more love goes into each cookie.
[+] [-] dasil003|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] subsystem|12 years ago|reply
1994: http://www.nhn.ou.edu/~johnson/Education/SeeS_SZ/Chemistry_o...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_gastronomy
[+] [-] johnyzee|12 years ago|reply
The show had many other very interesting segments (like how to make mashed potato that doesn't turn into glue) with all the chemical backgrounds for great foods. It is fascinating stuff.
[+] [-] antr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marban|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shin_lao|12 years ago|reply
http://www.berthillon.fr/ http://www.grom.it/
A matter of taste?
[+] [-] luscious|12 years ago|reply
Ingredients will be limiting factors since some preparations can not / should not be done in the mixing step and post-freeze manhandling of this soft stuff is wasted time - melt is death.
Traditional hard ice cream has a post-mix hard freeze time of 48 hours and some great preparations, like parkerhouse and butter pecan, just wouldn't render well. Not every flavor should turn out like a Dairy Queen Flurry. Not every texture should be mostly indistinguishable from a lumpy frozen custard.
She is perfecting ice crystallization but pawning off the wider challenges of the product. I hope her efforts don't create a limiting view of the cream-based frozen treat experience.
[+] [-] jejones3141|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nakedrobot2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] girvo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yardie|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vampirechicken|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dpdawson|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peterstjohn|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fourstar|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timdellinger|12 years ago|reply
also: I haven't looked closely at their formulations, but I'm guessing that they are likely guilty of using a few ingredients in their own ice cream that are also far from natural...