STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM
Our strawberry ice cream tastes like ice cream with strawberries, as opposed to strawberry ice cream, if that makes sense. It doesn’t have that overly sweet milk-shake taste, and we’re enormously proud of that. To get our strawberry ice cream just right, we went through a lot of trial and error. A lot. In fact, this was one of our hardest flavors to nail down. We wanted our ice cream to be rich yet redolent of strawberries for that unmistakable classic summer flavor. At the same time, we didn’t want the strawberry to taste candylike or to be masked by butterfat, which can be an easy trap to fall into.
In the end, because strawberries are so high in water content, we upped the fat but calibrated it so that the strawberries still shone through. We wound up using almost no milk—mostly cream—to get the right texture, bite, and flavor. To get more consistent results, we make a compote out of strawberries, which allows us to control the total water content in the ice cream, and allows us to further highlight the berry flavors. Seek out the best in-season local strawberries you can find; typically these tend to be smaller berries with a concentrated sweet taste.
MAKES ABOUT 1 QUART
SPECIAL EQUIPMENT
Immersion blender
FOR THE ICE CREAM BASE
2 cups heavy cream
½ cup whole milk
¾ cup (150 grams) sugar
¼ teaspoon (1 gram) kosher salt
6 large egg yolks
FOR THE STRAWBERRY COMPOTE
10 ounces (284 grams) fresh or frozen strawberries, hulled and diced
¼ cup (50 grams) sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1. To make the ice cream base, pour the cream and milk into a double boiler or a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of gently simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water). Whisk in ½ cup (100 grams) of the sugar and the salt and stir until both have dissolved. Warm the mixture until you see steam rising from the top.
2. Meanwhile, prepare an ice bath in a large bowl and set another bowl over it.
3. In a medium bowl, with a kitchen towel underneath it to prevent slipping, whisk together the egg yolks with the remaining ¼ cup (50 grams) sugar until uniform. While whisking, add a splash of the hot dairy mixture to the yolks. Continue to add the dairy mixture, whisking it in bit by bit, until you’ve added about half. Add the yolk mixture to the remaining dairy mixture in the double boiler. Set the heat under the double boiler to medium and cook the custard, stirring continuously with a wooden spoon and reducing the heat to medium-low as necessary, until steam begins to rise from the surface and the custard thickens enough to coat the back of the spoon. Hold the spoon horizontally and run your finger through the custard. If the trail left by your finger stays separated, the custard is ready to be cooled.
4. Strain the custard into the bowl sitting over the prepared ice bath and stir for 3 to 5 minutes, or until the custard has cooled. Transfer the custard to a quart-size container, cover, and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or, preferably, overnight.
5. To make the strawberry compote, while the custard cools, in a nonreactive bowl, combine the strawberries, sugar, and lemon juice and let stand for at least 2 hours. If necessary, cover and refrigerate the compote until ready to use. Using a potato masher, mash the strawberries until the compote is chunky.
6. Combine the chilled custard with 1½ cups of the strawberry compote and, using an immersion blender, buzz the mixture until well mixed. Pour the custard into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Place the container in which you refrigerated the custard in the freezer so you can use it to store the finished ice cream. Churn the ice cream until the texture resembles “soft serve.” Transfer the ice cream to the chilled storage container and freeze until hardened to your desired consistency. Alternatively, you can serve it immediately—it will be the consistency of gelato. The ice cream will keep, frozen, for up to 7 days.
