Mary Berry Makes Homemade Ice Cream

The Great British Food Revival - Series 3

Welcome back to The Great British Food Revival, in which Great British Foodies champion British Produce.  In Episode 3 we see Raymond Blanc campaign about the Trout, and Mary Berry fights to revive real dairy ice cream.

Mary informs us that what makes a really good ice cream are egg yolks, cream and sugar.  Simple isn't it.  So why are there so very many ingredients on the back of the average tub of plain old vanilla ice cream.  With numerous emulsifiers, dextrose, palm oil, vegetable fat, the list goes on.... 

A real ice cream should contain egg yolks, cream and sugar.

Apparently unless an ice cream is labelled as 'Dairy' then it will contain vegetable fats.

I'll be honest, I used to think that to make ice cream you had to have an ice cream maker, which surely had to be very complex (considering the price of some of them).

But in fact all you need to do is freeze the final mixture, take it out, whizz in a food processor and then re-freeze.

In this episode Mary shows us just how simple it is to make ice cream, she takes us back in time and explains that the ice cream makers of the past used to lock their doors so that no-one else could see just how easy it was done.

One of the most interesting parts of the programme was Mary's visit to a chemistry lab to discuss all things ice and ice cream.  The Professor tells us that to make ice cream you need to achieve a temperature of around -10 degrees celsius.  To do this he simply adds dishwasher salt to the ice which dissolves in the ice.  He explains that when salt dissolves in water it gets in the way of water that wants to freeze back onto the ice, which means the ice continues to melt, and so the temperature continues to drop. Chemistry lesson over.

During this explanation Mary is stirring the custard mixture waiting for it to stiffen, so to speed things up the Professor pours Liquid Nitrogen straight into the custard, and within seconds we have velvety smooth ice cream.  Apparently the reason it is sooooo smooth is that by cooling it so very quickly (to -200 degrees Celsius) the ice crystals that form are very small and gives it that special creaminess.

The Professor pours Liquid Nitrogen onto the custard as Mary stirs

The Resultant velvety smooth ice cream, made in ultra quick time.

Now, I have actually tried ice cream made using the Liquid Nitrogen technique, which I tried at Chin Chin Labs in Camden: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Chin-Chin-Laboratorists.  I have used their FaceBook Page as it is far more interesting than the actual website.

Pouring Liquid Nitrogen directly into the Ice cream mix-
Put your safety specs on!

The second part of the programme was aimed at highlighting the better quality of ice cream available from artisan ice cream makers such as Alistair Jessel owner of Taywell Ice Cream (http://www.taywell.com/).  One of the most interesting things he said was to consider that if with the mass produced ice creams they take out ingredients like cream and milk, they must replace it with something, that something being, milk powder, emulsifiers, water and importantly AIR.  That's right, AIR.  In Alistair's artisan Ice cream, they would have around 10% air, but with the mass produced cheaper ice creams, they will contain anything from 100-200% air.  Remember that you buy ice cream by the volume and not the weight (just like pop-corn, which is the biggest con around).

My advice is when buying ice cream, look at the ingredients list. If you need to start counting on your toes, then walk away.  Feel how heavy different ice creams of the same volume are.

And of course, why not make your own.  

WhyNut's Pistachio paste and Hazelnut paste are absolutely perfect for homemade ice creams, especially as we sell in small 110g quantities - perfect for 1 litre of ice cream.  Have a go today.