Gear Heads | Which Homemade Ice Cream Equipment is Right for You?

- It's easier if you have two hands, but I'm lucky if today I have even one hand. My second chef. Yoohoo! (upbeat music) - Ice

cream

is the perfect summer treat. Most people just go out and buy it at the store, but you do know the joy of making it at home. - It's actually much easier than you think. My preferred method is to use our tried and tested winning ice

cream

maker. -And I'm partial to Cook's Country Deputy Food Editor Morgan Bolling's super-easy, no-churn ice cream,

which

is made in our winning blender. - Today we will look at these two proven home methods so you can see

which

one is

right

for you. - Hannah, let's start with you and the traditional ice cream maker method. - Okay, sounds good.

Therefore, all ice cream makers work in approximately the same way. You make a loose foundation, a liquid foundation. It can be dairy if you're making a custard-style ice cream, coconut milk, which makes a super delicious vegan ice cream, or fruit if you want to make a sorbet. So you have this liquid base and then you cool it. Once your base is nice and cold, you get out your machine and there are two types of machines. The first type is called boat style. It has a removable container that you store in the freezer. Then you take out the cold container, put it in the machine, pour the base, turn on the machine and the machine spins slowly.

It has a paddle inside that gently shakes and stirs everything. This is really key. The scoop incorporates some air in there so the ice cream doesn't freeze into a solid brick of ice, so you can scoop it out and it's nice and creamy. And then there is another type of ice cream machine. This is called a self-refrigerating ice cream machine. These are the ones that have the cooling elements inside the machine. They are nice because you don't need to take up freezer space to freeze the container. You can make several batches, one after another. But there are two major drawbacks.

First of all, they are big. Secondly, they are expensive. We're talking about three or 400 dollars. So we tested six ice cream machines in our ice cream machine test, some canister style and some with automatic refrigeration. Not everyone performed well. Some made colder ice cream. For others it was difficult to add mixes. So in the end, we picked a winner from Cuisinart, the Cuisinart Frozen Yogurt Ice Cream and Sorbet Maker. It was super easy to use, made wonderfully delicious ice cream, super easy to add mixes, it was lightweight, on the smaller side of things. I bought it for my wedding eight years ago and it still works fantastically.

Al

right

, I'll show you how to make ice cream at home. I am making a custard, that is, it is a base of milk, cream and eggs. So milk and cream, a cup and a half of each. (liquid pour) Half a cup of sugar. We will heat this over medium heat for about five minutes. We are looking for a temperature of 175 degrees. While the custard is heating, you should also beat in some sugar, 1/4 cup, and four egg yolks. You don't want the eggs to cook when you add the hot milk mixture to them, so we'll temper them by adding a little of the milk mixture to the eggs off the heat and then combine everything again.

So once we reach 175, we'll add half of the heavy cream mixture to the egg yolks and sugar, whisking to combine everything and then combine it again here. And at this point I'm going to warm everything up again. This time, my target temperature is 180 to 185 degrees. This all sounds very difficult and complicated, and when I first read the recipe I thought, "What?" But there are very few ingredients and all you need is time. You want to make the custard base. You want to give it time to cool down. You want to make sure you have your container in the freezer 24 hours in advance.

But if you remember to leave time to do those two things, the activities in between are pretty simple. 180, here we go. Turning off the heat, I'm now going to pour all of this through the fine mesh strainer into the medium bowl, which is placed in the ice bath. (liquid pouring) The reason you do the ice bath is so it cools down faster. You don't want it to sit out of your refrigerator for too long while it comes to room temperature so you can put it back in your refrigerator. So the ice situation here and this double layer container really helps it cool down faster.

Once it has cooled to room temperature, you should cover it and put it in the refrigerator until it reaches 40 degrees. Nice and cold. You want to make sure you allow time for this to cool. It can take three to four hours, or you can just make it the day before, which is what I did, and then you'll be sure it will be nice and cold. But you just have to make sure it reaches 40 degrees, otherwise your ice cream will be icy and not in a good way. I've been there. Do not do it. I'm going to take out the boat.

It's been cold here for 24 hours. I feel like a hoarder. I'm ashamed of my freezer. Do not look. (scary music) Alright, let's churn our ice cream. This part is very easy. I'm going to shake the base, make sure everything is nice and combined, and add my extracts at this point. Vanilla extract, if using extract instead of a pod, we like to add it right before blending to maximize flavor. So I'm adding a teaspoon of that. And then I'm also going to add a little bit of coconut extract because the flavor I'm making today is coconut, chocolate and almond.

I used to work in an ice cream shop. Shout out to Nona's Homemade, South Shore Boston, Mass. Out of 40 flavors, this was my absolute favorite. I'm going to add a teaspoon of coconut extract. Extracts are added. Let's shake my foundation here, make sure everything is nice and combined. Pour it into the cold container. Here is the palette. The oar just sits there. And the cover. The cover goes into these slots here right at the bottom. It slides right in. That's all. (machine hum) It takes between 15 and 20 minutes. You want to see the consistency of the interior.

It should look like a smoothie or frozen yogurt. So you want to see some thickening. And then it's time to add the plugins. So here I have roasted almonds, chocolate pieces and dried cherries. I've never put nuts in ice cream, but that's one of the most fun parts of an ice cream machine. You can do all kinds of weird things here. A good rule of thumb is about two cups of supplements to three cups of dairy. Alright, we're done. Everything is incorporated. We have a thick, smooth, service-like mixture. So now we just want to take it out of the container and put it in an airtight storage container, and then we put it in the refrigerator to harden a little bit.

There is nothing wrong with eating it now. You could if you like it a little softer, but I like it a little firmer; It's still a little loose. So I'm going to take it out here. (upbeat, loud music) Alright, I just showed you how to make ice cream. I have a batch here that I made yesterday, so let's see how it turned out. Mmm, super delicious, super smooth and creamy, no ice crystals. Look at that there. It's absolutely delicious. Super fun making my own flavor and the texture is perfect, and that's why we like this machine.

Excellent ice cream, super easy to use, great price. But if you don't want to buy a dedicated ice cream maker, you can also use your blender. Lisa will go ahead and show us how it's done. (upbeat, loud music) - So I'm here with our no-quit method, which uses a blender. This method uses our winning mid-priced blender. In fact, we tested blenders in three categories: budget, mid-priced, and high-end, and this model, which is the Breville Fresh and Furious, won against six competitors. And one of the key points that really made this and a few others stand out was that they have a low speed, meaning it starts off slow and doesn't throw everything at the walls.

The other thing we loved about this was the narrow bottle. Many of the blenders that have wide jugs just throw everything at the wall and then it doesn't blend. This one also has a rounded bottom and creates a really powerful vortex, so the food is sucked into the blade and then up, getting a nice consistency. It costs about $200, but it's a serious blender. It will do everything, including making no-churn ice cream. This ice cream was so good and so exciting. When associate food editor Morgan Bolling worked on it at "Cook's Country," it was the cover story of our August-September 2019 issue.

Boy, that was a happy moment in the test kitchen. Okay, I'm going to make this super easy no-churn ice cream. I'm going to make the strawberry whey flavor in our mid-priced blender. It has eight ingredients in total. Most of it is pantry stuff, so that's two cups heavy cream, one cup sweetened condensed milk, 1/4 cup corn syrup, half a cup buttermilk or you can substitute 1/4 cup whole milk , two spoons. of sugar, a teaspoon of lemon juice, 1/4 teaspoon of salt and then for flavor, this is 1/3 cup of our favorite strawberry preserves, which are made with my Smucker's. Come on.

It's really easy. You'll simply turn on our blender and add heavy cream. (liquid pouring) And this is processed very quickly. It only takes about 20 to 30 seconds, so I'll turn it on. I'm going to use the mix settings. (mixer whirring) So that was really quick. It actually only took about 15 seconds before I could see that I was getting soft spikes, which is the first sign. And you just want to scrape down the sides, make sure nothing gets stuck. When whipping cream, there are soft peaks or stiff peaks that are called for in recipes. Soft peaks are when they are a little soft and squishy, ​​somewhat firm but not very hard.

When it has rigid spikes, it can stand on its own. And that's just the consistency of how much air is put into it and how solid it is. Now everything we do, this is super simple, we just add the rest of the stuff. Too easy. Then I'm going to add my sweetened condensed milk. I have some whole milk here or you would add buttermilk here if you were making strawberry buttermilk. Two tablespoons of sugar, a little bit of corn syrup, a little bit of lemon juice. It's just a teaspoon of fresh lemon juice. This keeps it tasting nice and fresh.

Prevents it from becoming too sweet. Salt. A lot of sweet things have a little bit of salt in them because that makes you, ah, taste the sweetness a little bit more. So I'm just lightly mixing it with my spatula. And then we'll run it back into the blender for a couple of seconds just to make sure it's well blended. And that's almost all. (blender whirring) I have my loaf pan. If you have a quart container, kind of tall, it doesn't freeze as quickly or as evenly, and this really makes it nice and easy. As you can see, it has a pourable consistency, but it is fluffy.

I'm leveling it out a little. And now all I have to do is take my third cup of strawberry jam, and I'll put it in and shake it with a fork. That allows you to go in and move it around the ice cream. And I'm done. That way I didn't have to cook custard and chill it. I'm sorry, Hannah. (laughs) I didn't have to freeze a jar beforehand. I didn't have to do much more than go out and buy some fresh heavy cream and some preserves and a couple seconds of blending. I put a piece of plastic wrap on it and then gently press the surface so that it comes into contact with the surface of the ice cream.

And you put it in the freezer for about six hours and you get delicious ice cream, and that's it. Well, I have some of the same flavor, strawberry buttermilk, that I made yesterday. This is our winning Zeroll ice cream scoop. Use the heat of your hand to slightly warm the bowl and scoop out the ice cream. Well, it's ok. This is great. It's really creamy. It's not too sweet. It's just perfect and has a really nice, fresh flavor that I sometimes think supermarket ice creams don't really have. You can really taste the strawberry. The base is really delicious and as you can see, it sets up really well.

It's not thick or icy. - Very good, Lisa, it was so much fun watching you make that ice cream. Is so easy. All the accessories are fun. I remember when Morgan was testing that recipe and it was a really fun time in the test kitchen. However, I think there is still a place for the ice cream machine for certain people. If you really want to go crazy, if you want to make sorbet, if you want to make frozen yogurt, if you want to make more traditional custard recipes with eggs, then an ice cream maker is definitely still the way to go.

That being said, if you just want to dabble, if you want to try making ice cream at home and you already have a blender, try the blender method. Both can make really great ice cream. - Yes, definitely. If you have a blender and a couple of ingredients from the pantry, that's great. And it's especially good. My son is allergic to eggs. This is a wonderful, rich and creamy ice cream without eggs, so it's also good for people with allergies. - Well, Lisa, thank you so much for talking to me about ice cream today. It was so funny. - I had a great time as always.

So for more information on everything you've seen today, including recipes, check out the links below. - Yes, and if you have any questions about ice cream, be sure to ask them in thecomments and don't forget to hit the subscribe button. (bright and happy music)