I'm in Brooklyn today I'm in front
of Odd Felows ice cream shop.
I know what you're thinking,
why is he in front of an ice cream shop it's a meat show?
Well I got an email from Sam Mason
who is the ice cream wizard that runs this place
and he said, "I have something that you must try."
Now he didn't say what it was
but I know that he's done
some peculiar things with ice cream flavors.
So I'm gonna go in there and find out what's going on
and hopefully we're gonna do
an episode of The Meat Show, let's go in.
(upbeat jazz music)
How are you?
I'm very well.
We've done everything from the maple bacon pecan
to the foie gras, we've done chorizo caramel is a big one.
And today what we've done is,
it's the fall season and Thanksgiving is upon us
so we've made a honey baked ham ice cream
that has chunks of candied pineapple in it.
It's like all the best parts of Thanksgiving.
All that I remember.
Why meat ice cream?
I mean it's delicious, it's not for any reason
other than I get really bored in here
so sometimes I have to kind of look
for inspiration in different places.
I don't think anything's necessarily off-limits.
I have no parameters when it comes to making ice cream.
But that might be the reason I emailed you anyway.
Well listen it's a natural fit right?
Yeah I figured if I'm gonna call somebody
it's gonna be you.
So walk us through how you made a honey ham ice cream.
- [Sam] So for this we take a regular ham
that you can get anywhere, cube it,
we sear it to try to render off some of that water.
And then we pour pineapple juice over it
and reduce that and we add honey
and we caramelize the whole lot together.
After the ham and brown sugar ice cream go together
they get way beyond blended.
And then we pass it through a very fine strainer.
And then that then gets frozen.
You've really just extracted the essence.
Yeah you want it to be smooth.
I don't think you ever want to feel
a hamburger in your ice cream.
And we fold in the pineapples
that have been candied with a little bit of clove.
(upbeat jazz music)
I hear ice cream coming.
(laughing) Ha ha you heard it?
Alright I can--
Not only did I bring you this experimental batch
of ice cream, I brought you the bacon maple pecan ice cream.
Okay so this is really the one
that's on your menu all the time?
Yeah that lives a strong life here.
And what's this?
Malted maitake mushroom and then
this is what we've been working on.
Okay now I like this, ham ice cream.
- [Sam] We didn't know what else to call it.
You can tell that it's something daring going on right?
But then you can definitely smell
that it's got some savory elements to it.
That's really interesting.
I've got my fingers crossed.
Yeah try to get some of the pineapple and everything.
I think they all kind of need to be--
I like ice cream when it's sort of just that melted.
Yeah it hasn't been in the freezer very long.
Tell me the truth.
Tastes like a ham sandwich.
It really tastes like, I mean
it actually tastes really good.
I'm glad you like it.
I don't know if it's the (mumbles) though.
I was expecting something much more
either really subtle almost like
you wouldn't be able to tell,
or the other extreme that it would just
be like rank gaminess, but it's actually
a perfect balance of the sweetness
that you get from pork but also that savory,
you know, that barn yardy thing you know.
I don't necessarily think that
it would play well with other flavors
so you wouldn't probably get it
in a cone with another flavor,
but I think that if you're an adventurous person.
I was fully expecting to be like
are you out of your mind, this is terrible,
but it's actually really good--
I was as well.
So obviously combining savory and sweet
it's kind of a modern approach to ice cream right?
But even within that context we're talking
about using like herbs and vegetables
but meat is like pretty extreme.
That's about as far as you can go.
You're right, as far as you could go
away from being dessert.
And ice cream and meat might be
on opposite ends of the spectrum.
So do you think you're gonna put this on?
At this point I can modify it so,
I'm gonna lighten it up a little bit.
I'm gonna take it down one notch.
I could see it being a little more subtle.
I can see it being more subtle
for civilians but this is exactly
what I want when I'm eating ham ice cream.
Should I try the bacon first of the--
You know I think this is your, you're driving the train.
It's malt, peanut, maitake.
Malt? Oh I'm a sucker for malt, I love malt.
So the maitake mushrooms are cooked
in vanilla, burnt cinnamon and sugar
for hours and hours and hours.
The mushroom gives it a certain umami kind of a,
just rounds out, but it's not,
it's a sweet ice cream, it's not savory.
It's got almost like a liqueur flavor to though.
It really takes on much more
of the flavors of the spices but the texture
is really nice, it's kind of chewy.
Maple bacon pecan.
This is a very classic.
It's a bacon ice cream, fat-washed bacon.
And then we candy cooked bacon with pecans.
That's intense but the finish is absolutely,
I mean I like the up front, you get hit with
that smoke up front, you get that saltiness
but then that caramel that creamy
vanillary smoothness comes off.
- [Sam] Can start to mask some of that stuff.
Yeah it's really, this is really nice.
That's more polarizing, that tastes like ham.
No these are delicious.
So these are available all winter long?
All winter long.
Alright thank you very much for watching.
We'll see you on the next episode of The Meat Show.
Probably won't be from an ice cream shop,
but we'll see you on the next episode.