How do you recognize good homemade ice cream. Here are the 11 rules of ice cream to identify and taste only quality ice creams.

But what may seem like a light food, can hide big pitfalls that it is important to be able to avoid: just as we pay attention to the market to recognize fresh fish, so we must practice recognizing good ice cream.

This post in brief. Avoid the classic ice cream displayed in the ice cream counter with the “in the mountains”.A healthy ice cream can not overflow from the tray without melting as the temperature maintained inside it is -14 °, but outside the situation changes: the temperature is that of the room and the ice cream should melt.

Acid or very bright colors. Flee.

The colors of ice cream, especially fruit, must be natural respecting the real color of the fruit. Ice creams made with fresh fruit often have muted and unlit colors.

Do you notice the presence of grains in the palate. Help.

Never happened to perceive small flakes of ice in the inner part of the ice cream. They are a clear sign of the addition of water to the ice cream, clearly perceptible on the palate, often a symptom of a remanufactured ice cream.

Would you eat it.

If the product contains milk, it is most likely a ploy to disguise the poor quality of raw materials. Just like the now very famous “Smurf” flavored ice cream, it is nothing more than a fiordilatte flavor stuffed with dye, there are also other ice creams to taste more fantasy than realistic and should be carefully avoided.

A serious ice cream counter must provide between 22 and 28 tastes. An ice-cream counter with 30 or more flavors must alert the consumer.

It is important to bear in mind that the oxidation ice cream begins as soon as it is exposed in the ice cream counter in contact with the air. The ice cream must have a soft, but aerial consistency.

Is the ice cream satisfying. Step away from the scale.

After eating it should not give the body a sense of satiety. Ice cream is not a hearty dish of pasta, it doesn’t have to feel the same.

It is a serious indication of the use of products processes. But it should not melt too easily without giving time to savor it.

The patina of grease in the mouth is a negative symptom, which emerges particularly when we resort to hydrogenated fats that give that classic flavor “buttery”. The ice cream if it is thirsty means that it has extremely composition rich in sugars.

Nature has balanced the percentages of water in food, for example if you eat an apple you are not thirsty (the fruit already contains the right amount of water).

The more thirsty you are after an ice cream, the more elaborate and therefore unnatural the ice cream is.

Setting high standards when it comes to food quality begins with reading product labels correctly. Certifications, ingredients, nutritional values, conditions of use and conservation, provenance and the expiration date are just some of the details included on labels, which act as a sort of product ID.

The rules for food labelling in the European Union (regulation 1169/2011, which replaced previous laws that were more fragmented) also apply to ice cream. And because no one can resist its refreshing goodness, we asked an expert to help us understand how to read its label and recognise a quality product.

She explains that, “when we purchase an ice cream, the first thing we should do is read the ingredients list: ice cream parlours must display it and declare the presence of any allergens”. “What makes the difference is whether or not the product contains chemicals, such as additives, thickeners and artificial colours.

Generally, these ingredients are the ones with the longest names or those marked with the letter E, even though this isn’t always the case”. Galatea has always strived to stay at pace with the legislative framework by adjusting its recipes accordingly.

“We simply consider it an act of honesty towards whoever chooses our products and a way of showing that we have nothing to hide in the way we work,” the company states.

An example. Mint flavoured ice cream that is naturally green by combining spirulina algae extract, which is blue, and safflower, a yellow, scented plant.

the Organic line, which contains at least 95 per cent organic ingredients. the Vegan line, which doesn’t contain animal-based products and coadjuvants, or raw materials obtained from genetically modified organisms.

Translated by Andrea Cutolo. Quest’opera è distribuita con Licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione – Non commerciale – Non opere derivate 4.0 Internazionale.

USD 53.00 for 15 Pieces. for 15 Pieces.

USD 42.00.

Close your eyes and think of ice cream. What do you see.

Depending on where you live, that answer’s going to vary. A lot.

Think all ice cream is soft, scoopable, and creamy. Meet sliceable gelato and spumoni.

or Indian kulfi, painstakingly cooked for hours before it’s frozen in popsicle molds.

We’ll save ice cream desserts and novelties (sundaes, sandwiches, and the like) for another survey. instead, this tour is all about what really makes gelato different from ice cream, why Midwestern frozen custard is totally different from how the FDA describes it, and how Thai street vendors are turning ice cream into finger food.

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik. Texture: A balance of richness, chewiness, and lightness.

For most Americans reading this guide, this is what you think of when you think of ice cream. It’s made with a heavy amount of cream for richness, and eggs for flavor, creaminess, and texture control.

And it offers an ideal balance of richness, chewiness, and lightness in a single scoop. If you’re just starting to make your own ice cream, this is the style you’ll find in almost every ice cream book released for the American market, and it’s what you’re being served at most premium American ice cream shops.

If you listen to the FDA, this style of ice cream is called “frozen custard,” and it requires a minimum of 10% butterfat and 1.4% egg yolk solids (which amounts to a couple egg yolks per quart). Most homemade recipes use way more butterfat and egg yolks than that, though, which is why homemade ice cream is so much richer than what you can buy in stores.

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik. Texture: Dense and intense.

Let’s be clear: Gelato is simply the Italian word for ice cream, and just as you’ll find regional variation in American ice cream, gelato doesn’t taste the same everywhere in Italy. (For instance, sometimes it’s frozen into blocks and sliced like cake.) That said, gelato does tend to be different from American styles of ice cream.

It’s almost too dense to form into neat scoops, and it ripples and glides across the tongue.

a slower churn than ice cream to draw in even less air. fewer to no eggs to keep flavors pure.

All those differences mean it can be tricky to make gelato at home that doesn’t freeze rock-solid. ice cream churns don’t work like gelato machines, and our freezers are way too cold to serve gelato at the proper temperature.

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik. Texture: Chewy, elastic, dense.

New England is the ice cream capital of the US, both for the density of its small-town ice cream shops and the generally excellent quality of ice cream you’ll find there. Less well-known is that these shops are serving a style of ice cream all their own, which for lack of a better term I’m calling New England-style.

What does New England-style mean. Ice cream so chewy you have to bite it off the cone.

It has a subtle elastic quality, thanks in part to that density but also to added milk proteins, which makes it the perfect smooshable base for slapping onto a chilled marble slab, loading with crushed candy, cookies, and brownies, and folding together for the ultimate scoop of mix-ins. Yup, the marble slab and whole “mix-in” concept is a New England thing, developed by Steve Herrell at his eponymous shop Steve’s in Somerville, MA.

Replicating New England ice cream at home is tricky, since home cooks can’t adjust the amount of air that gets added to ice cream as it churns. But with a little kitchen science, and some consultation with the Herrell family, I’ve developed a copycat recipe that’ll bring that Boston ice cream experience right to your kitchen.

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik. Texture: Light, fluffy, icy.

Philadelphia ice cream—sometimes called New York ice cream, and other times American ice cream—has very little to do with the city of Philadelphia. (Or New York.

Why the Philly name. James Beard theorized it was simply a way to class up the ice cream, as Philadelphia was an ice cream hot spot back in the 19th century.

Compared to egg-based ice creams, Philadelphia ice creams are lighter, fluffier, and melt more milky on the tongue. They tend to incorporate more air than custard ice creams, and because they lack egg yolks’ stabilizing power, can turn icy fast.

Serious Eats / Robyn Lee. Texture: Rich, soft.

Rumor has it “frozen custard” began in Coney Island in Brooklyn, but it’s come to thrive in the Midwest at shops like Culver’s, Kopp’s, and Leon’s. The Midwestern take on custard means something very specific: It’s what happens when you take extra-rich ice cream and leave out all the air, then serve it fresh from the churn when it’s so soft it can barely support its own weight.

That richness is thanks to a high-fat and egg base that’s frozen through a special machine called a continuous churn. You pour base into one side, and the machine sends it down a pipe that freezes the custard to soft serve temperatures, then spits it out in one continuous stream.

And the custard is ready fast—as soon as two minutes after the base gets poured in.

I prefer my custard plain, but there’s no shame in ordering it as part of a concrete: custard + mix-ins blended like a milkshake, minus any of that pesky milk, for a “drink” you can eat with a spoon.

Texture: Dense.

But in my book, frozen yogurt is just ice cream made with yogurt instead of milk and cream. And making it couldn’t be easier: Whisk together a quart of yogurt with a cup of sugar and churn.

let it harden in the freezer and it scoops exactly like ice cream. Of course, there’s no reason to keep it that simple.

Serious Eats / Max Falkowitz. Texture: Icy, dense.

Purists may object to seeing sorbet included in a survey of ice cream styles, since by definition sorbet is a dairy-free frozen dessert. But it’s an important member of the ice cream family.

Unlike ice cream, which derives its texture from a complicated combination of sugar, fat, protein, and air, sorbet’s texture is nearly entirely dependent on the concentration of sugar and the type of sugar used to make it.

In recent years, some pastry chefs have been making “sorbets” out of dairy ingredients like yogurt and buttermilk: sherbet-like frozen desserts that are pretty much just some liquid dairy and sugar. Should we call them sorbet.

Serious Eats / Max Falkowitz. Texture: Light, icy.

Italian ices are the most famous “water ices,” basically sorbets churned with less sugar so they develop a lighter and icier texture. They’re either served in relatively warm display cases for easy scoopability, or frozen solid into cups for a customer to scrape away with a spoon.

Water ices like these are some of the world’s oldest frozen desserts, but these days the New World (especially the Northeastern US) is their biggest home. The perfect companion to boardwalk fare or pizza from a slice joint, they’re an essential part of Italian-American fast food culture, and the most famous brands command impressive loyalty even for sub-par, artificially flavored products.

If only more of New York’s vanishingly small Italian ice appreciators felt the same way.

Texture: Smooth, less fatty than ice cream but more substantial than sorbet.

But if you’re willing to put the past behind you and forget that tub of the rainbow stuff, it’s time to accept that sherbet can be amazing.

For home recipes, that means about equal amounts of dairy and another liquid, such as juice, fruit, or even tea or soda. For me, the hallmark of sherbet is its texture: smooth, less fatty than ice cream but more substantial than sorbet.

There are times when ice cream is too rich but you still want some dairy to mellow out the fruit’s bite. These are your sherbet times.

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik. Texture: Light, smooth.

Modern ice cream technology has been around for over a hundred years, but soft serve only dates back to the early mid-20th century. Some say Carvel was America’s first soft serve operation, while others point to Dairy Queen.

What is soft serve exactly. A low-butterfat base (three to six percent as opposed to ice cream’s 10 to 20), mainly made of milk, sugar, and some common stabilizers (but usually not eggs), that’s kept continually cool, then rapidly mixed with air to form a light foam right at the point of service.

But the best soft serve isn’t completely loaded with air, so it feels dense on the tongue and melts slowly on your cone.

Serious Eats / Shutterstock. Texture: Slightly flaky.

This now-archaic term still holds nostalgic appeal for many long-time ice cream lovers. Ice milk is basically hard ice cream with less than 10% butterfat, but unlike sherbet, it’s mostly dairy-based and often less sweet.

In 1994, the FDA gave manufacturers permission to label ice milk as “low-fat ice cream,” which not only meant the end of the ice milk name, but also that unique texture. Low-fat ice cream is pumped full of stabilizers to imitate full-fat ice cream’s creamier body, which means old-fashioned ice milk is now decidedly a thing of the past.

Serious Eats / Shutterstock. Texture: Rich, fluffy.

Semifreddo is a frozen dessert you can slice. It (glory be.

And it might be even easier to make than ice cream (which, yes, is really easy). But what exactly is it.

In simplest terms, it’s part ice cream, part mousse, mixed together into an airy cloud, then frozen solid in a mold. The dessert gets its richness from a stirred custard or batch of sweetened cream, either of which sometimes gets a jolt of flavor from melted chocolate or puréed fruit or nuts.

Like a soufflé, it’s paradoxically light and rich. And in historical terms, it’s the O.G.

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik. Texture: Thick.

In India, the ice cream of choice is kulfi, a dense dessert frozen in molds rather than churned in an ice cream maker. It’s made with milk cooked for hours on the stove with sugar, nuts, and/or spices until it turns thick, syrupy, and heavily perfumed, then hardened into popsicle shapes and eaten on sticks.

I mean it about cooking for hours, and for traditional kulfi, there’s no rushing that process. Slow simmering and constant stirring is the key to caramelizing sugars and browning milk proteins for the dessert’s signature flavor.

Kulfi’s sweet stuff to be sure, but its milk-heavy base means that, even when reduced, it should feel refreshing and clean, not heavy.

And as far as I’m concerned, it’s the tastiest and most refreshing dessert from the subcontinent.

Texture: Stretchy.

Moustachioed men at street stalls twirl dondurma on long staffs and play sugar cone keepaway with customers before handing them an ice cream so elastic that dentists could use it to take tooth casts.

Ground into a fine powder, the salep functions as an elastic hydrocolloid, letting the ice cream flex to as much as a foot or two in the air. Since salep is illegal to export, the only ways to make dondurma outside Turkey are by knowing a smuggler or hacking together an ersatz version with other hydrocolloids.

Serious Eats / Leon Brocard, Flickr. Texture: Creamy and rich.

The ‘ice cream of the future” dates back a mere 28 years, when an Illinois grad student got the idea to flash-freeze little droplets of liquid ice cream base in liquid nitrogen to make tiny pearls of ultra-creamy ice cream. The dots became a hit at mass venues like malls and sports stadiums but have never made it into the consumer market in retail shops or grocery stores.

In part that’s because Dippin’ Dots require exceptionally cold temperatures to remain hard, separate, and dot-like—below -40°F, which is lower than most grocery and all home freezers could ever hope to maintain. Want to know more.

Serious Eats / Max Falkowitz. Texture: Soft and plush.

Less a distinct style and more an ice cream innovation, liquid nitrogen-frozen ice cream is one of the latest developments in ice cream technology. Well-executed, it offers restaurants and bakeries enormous freedom: No need for a giant, five-figure ice cream machine, just buy a stand mixer and a tank of LN2.

The premise is simple: whip ice cream base in a mixer while pouring in liquid nitrogen to immediately freeze the base while it aerates. The faster an ice cream churns, the smaller its ice crystals, and the creamier it’ll be.

It’s typically served right away, not stored for later scooping, so it’s soft and plush, but solid enough to form into scoops. Since it freezes so smooth, ice cream makers can get away with using lower butterfat bases for the same ice-free texture.

The execution is more complicated. liquid nitrogen freezes so quickly the ice cream can harden in uneven chunks, which is why San Francisco’s Smitten developed special double-helical mixing paddles that move through the ice cream more evenly than any stand mixer whisk.

Serious Eats / Max Falkowitz. Texture: Creamier than water or cream ice but not as substantial as a thick custard-based ice cream.

Depending on which side of the Atlantic you call home, spumoni can mean very different things. In Italy, it’s traditionally a semifreddo-like molded dessert, while in the US it’s more ice cream-like and scoopable.

That may mean vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. or cherry and pistachio with vanilla or chocolate.

Spumoni tends to fall somewhere between Italian cream ice and American ice cream: creamier than water or cream ice but not as substantial as a thick custard base.

Texture: Smooth and light.

In just a couple minutes, the liquid base freezes into a thin pancake of solid ice cream, bolstered with whatever mix-ins you ask for (crushed Oreos are common).

The theatrics really begin when the stall owner scrapes the ice cream off the metal plate with a paint-scraper, creating perfect hollow cylinders of ice cream that are then stacked vertically in a cup. Toppings like whipped cream and chocolate sauce come after, but I’d go with a light hand.

Owner of sweetemmajean.

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