Ice-cream and sorbets


Ice-cream and sorbets
Making homemade ice cream may seem complex, but with the right methods and a few tricks, you can achieve a creamy texture and incomparable flavors.

On this page, we'll be revealing the secrets of successful homemade ice cream, guiding you step by step through the various stages of preparation.

Whether you're looking for the perfect recipe or tips on how to refine your technique, you'll find everything you need to know here to master the art of homemade ice cream.
431 K 4.0/5 (276 reviews)
Grade this page:
Comment Send by e-mail to a friend Follow this page
Last modified on: September 3rd 2024

General

First and foremost, it's important to distinguish between ice cream and sorbet.

Sorbets

sorbet

Sorbet recipes, like pear sorbet are extremely simple: you need 50% sugar syrup and 50% fruit pulp (sometimes it varies a little depending on the fruit), mix and pour into an ice-cream maker, and that's it!

They're easy to make because all their flavour comes from the quality of the fruit you choose. In other words, if you use fruit that doesn't have much flavour because it's not ripe, or is industrially produced, you'll get a mediocre sorbet. On the other hand, if you use good fruit, you'll have an excellent sorbet. For example, if you make a strawberry sorbet using "Gariguettes" or "Mara des bois", it will be incomparably better than a sorbet made with supermarket Spanish strawberries bought in March.

It's also possible to make sorbets that aren't sweet, like tomato sorbet to accompany a little mussel soup with turnips.
The cold-warm contrast is quite striking and delicious. The trick, to compensate for the absence of syrup, is to add a lightly beaten egg white.

See the sorbet recipes on this site for more details.

Ice cream

glace

This is a little more complicated to make, because there are more ingredients and the preparation has to be cooked.

The basic recipe is a custard, flavored to taste (pistachio, chocolate, etc.), to which liquid crème fraiche is added at the end of cooking.

For more details, see the recipe for vanilla ice cream, and the other ice cream recipes on this site.

Preparation tips

Turbining

This is the process of placing the preparation in an ice cream maker to transform it into ice cream or sorbet.
In principle, there's nothing special to do, but here are a few tips:

Choosing the right ice cream maker is vital

You absolutely need one that is at least "cold accumulation", i.e. with a part that you store in the freezer at least 36 hours in advance, and that you take out just when you're ready to churn.
The cold part contains the preparation, and a motor drives the blades which scrape the edges where the preparation frosts.
sorbetière à accumulation

Note: If you've got one of those old-fashioned ice-cream makers that you have to put in the freezer with the wire sticking out, forget it - you won't get anywhere with it.

Top of the line: the turbine

But what's really ideal is the ice cream turbine, a model that has its own cold production unit, so there's nothing to put in the freezer in advance, and a constant, permanent supply of cold.
But be warned, they don't come at the same price - see my good addresses page.

turbine à glace

All right, it costs an eyeful, but in the final analysis, given the use you're going to make of it and the satisfaction it brings, it's an excellent investment.

Operation is a little surprising the first time: you have to prepare brine (a saturated solution of salt) and pour a dose (dosette supplied) into the turbine before placing the tank in it and screwing on the blade.
The brine is there to ensure good thermal contact between the cold generated by the turbine and the preparation in the tank.

Better than an ice cream maker?

It's important to remember that the faster the ice cream or sorbet is made, i.e. turbinated or "set", the better it is. And that's because during the turbining process, small crystals of water ice form, giving the ice cream a softer texture. So the faster you go, the less time the crystals have to form, and the better the ice.

So, can we go even faster than with an ice cream maker?
The answer is "yes", but it requires very special techniques.

Liquid nitrogen

Liquid nitrogen is a curious product: it's a bubbling liquid, liquefied nitrogen gas (a neutral gas that forms 3/4 of our air) at -196°C.

Obviously, it can't be handled like water, and a number of strict rules must be observed (gloves and goggles at the very least), as touching nitrogen or getting it on the skin can cause serious burns.
Please refer to the advice provided by l'air liquide. Warning: The author of this page cannot be held responsible for any damage or injury resulting from the use of this product.

Getting hold of this product is not easy for individuals either, so check the yellow pages and search engines. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank a colleague, without whose help these experiments would not have been possible.

Once safety has been respected, let's see what this can do for ice-cream making? Well, quite simply, speed: the ice cream sets almost instantaneously, because the same volume of liquid nitrogen is poured into the basic preparation while whisking vigorously, setting the ice cream in a few seconds with a great release of water vapour.

First, pour your preparation (here for vanilla ice cream) into a metal container.

azote liquide

Then pour in the liquid nitrogen, little by little, while whisking the machine.

azote liquide

This will produce a lot of "smoke" (in fact, water vapor), so you won't see much, but keep whisking, and a little tip: blow on the container to move the water vapor away.

azote liquide

After a few seconds, you'll feel the whisk set and thicken.

azote liquide

And finally, you've got your famous liquid nitrogen ice cream. You can taste it, and you'll be amazed at how creamy it is.

azote liquide

Much more than just a molecular cuisine gadget, liquid nitrogen ice cream is a genuine technical innovation, albeit a tricky one to make.

Dry ice

Another solution and another strange product is dry ice, which isCO2 in solid form at -80°C, and which can be used to make ice cream very quickly too.

Dry ice comes in the form of large pellets.

neige carbonique

To do this, wrap it in a tea towel, fold it carefully and then tap it with a rolling pin.

neige carbonique

The result should be a fairly coarse powder.

neige carbonique

Pour it directly into the whipped mixture.

neige carbonique

It always has a spectacular effect.

neige carbonique

And the ice cream is ready in seconds.

neige carbonique

You'll note that unlike liquid nitrogen, which is neutral, dry ice gives the ice cream a spicy edge, which you need to bear in mind when choosing your flavor.

Back to top of page

Other pages you may also like
Bread oven
Bread oven
Building a bread oven was until a few years ago a job for the professionals. But now you can buy a kind of kit which allows you to build your own bred oven without professional masonry know-how. You should know that the kits only provide the main part of oven, the hearth, where you light the fire...
August 24th 20241.16 M3.6
Flours
Flours
At the most basic level, wheat grain is put through a mill, which produces a white-ish powder flour... Well, actually it's not quite that simple. First of all we need to distinguish between the different grains that can be made into flour: wheat of course, but also rye, barley, buckwheat, etc. So we...
June 3rd 2024726 K 413.6
List of all pages
List of all pages
Here you'll find a list of all the pages published on the site, excluding recipes and blog posts, sorted by theme.
August 29th 2024379 K3.7
Other cookery websites
Other cookery websites
List of my other favourite sites.
August 29th 2023194 K3.9
My best addresses...
My best addresses...
Quite a few of you often ask me where I can find this or that? or is such and such a thing a good buy? or which brand is best for this or that? On this page, I'm going to group together my good addresses for suppliers of this or that product or utensil, and good books on the subjects that interest...
August 29th 2023299 K3.9
Post a comment or question
Posted by:
I am not a leaving thing
Follow this page (as 7 people already do)
If you are interested in this page, you can "follow" it, by entering your email address here. You will then receive a notification immediately each time the page is modified or a new comment is added. Please note that you will need to confirm this following.
I am not a leaving thing
Note: We'll never share your e-mail address with anyone else.
Alternatively: you can subscribe to the mailing list of cooling-ez.com , you will receive a e-mail for each new recipe published on the site.

Back to top of page