Witness, my breakfast:
A lot of commerical ice cream makers such as Ben & Jerry, etc., use stabilizers like guar gum to give their products a more toothsome, almost chewy texture. I have nothing against gums, per se, I just don’t want to, like, go out and buy any.
We make a lot of ice cream in this house, using just the basics: whole milk, heavy cream, sugar, a drop of vanilla bean. That’s it. It’s simple. It’s perfection. It tastes bright and clean and wholesome. (Like us! We’re vanilla!) And yet, despite my purist sensibilities, I kind of missed the chewiness of commercial creams, that feeling of taking a bite of ice cream as opposed to an airy lick.
Enter the egg. We’ve found that adding a raw egg right before processing makes the liquids and fat in the milk and cream more miscible. It gives the ice cream a denser structure by allowing it to whip more thoroughly, which gives the cream greater resistance to melting.
We like to think of the almighty egg as the original guar gum.
Some people have issues eating raw eggs. I don’t have those issues. And we have noticed a huge difference in the texture of ice cream finished with an egg versus that without: it’s silkier, smoother, denser. Mmmm.
Try this recipe, and you may wonder why you ever bothered with Chunky Monkey
HOMEMADE VANILLA ICE CREAM WITH EGG YOLK
- Whisk 3/4 cup granulated sugar with 1 cup whole milk until the sugar is dissolved, about 1 to 2 minutes.
- Add 2 cups heavy whipping cream (Note: Using high quality cream makes a big difference in the outcome of the ice cream. Subpar, less dense whipping cream makes the finished product too watery, causing it to crystallize in the freezer more quickly.)
- Add a tiny bit of crushed vanilla bean or a teensy splash of pure vanilla extract
- Add two to three egg yolks
- Whisk everything together to make sure the yolk is well blended, pour the contents into a pre-frozen bucket of an ice cream maker and process for 25 to 30 minutes.
- Transfer ice-cream to a freezer safe container. Freeze for 4 to 24 hours to give the ice cream time to set.
One more thing: No need to invest in an expensive ice cream maker, unless you plan to make ice cream professionally or in bulk. We have found this ice cream maker works wonders, and it only cost $50. For what it’s worth, it came highly recommended by the food snobs at Cook’s Illustrated.
