welcome friends welcome back to the kitchen the temperature is heating up
outside we're coming into summer here in Toronto and I thought we'd go back and
explore some ice cream flavors so today I'm gonna make a very basic ice cream
base that you could adapt to almost any flavor pretty much any flavor you wanted
to add on top of this you could today I'm gonna add on black pepper so we're
making a black pepper ice cream so I'm gonna start out with some cream this is
35% cream and milk and this is 3.25% milk as always the full recipe is in the
description box below the video - this milk cream mixture I'm going to
add some dry milk powder now one of the one of the perils of making ice cream at
home is you don't get a really good freeze commercial equipment freezes it
fast and that fast freezing stops ice crystal formation which gives you a
creamier ice cream at the end so at home you're sort of battling this and putting
in dry milk powder is one of the ways that you can end up with something that
has a better mouthfeel at the end so we'll just stir that milk powder in I've
got this pot over medium heat we just want to bring this mixture up to a
scalding point not quite a boil just below a boil now as this heats up I'm
going to add corn syrup now this is not high fructose corn syrup this is just
corn syrup but it isn't invert sugar so you could use any invert sugar that you
want what the invert sugar does again it stops that crystallization of water
allows the water to stay liquid longer so you don't get big ice chunks in your
ice cream smoother ice cream better flavored ice cream but any invert sugar
would work now for the star ingredient in our ice cream today coarsely cracked
black pepper this is really coarsely cracked I just took some peppercorns put
them in a more pestle and sort of jammed down on them a
few times you don't want it to fine you want to be able to strain some of it out
really what we're trying to get is the essence of the black pepper into the
milk so I'm gonna put that in and we're just going to stir that around now it
seems odd black pepper ice cream right now is a huge hit in Hong Kong and if
you go back a few years David Lebovitz had recipe for this type of ice cream in
one of his ice cream books you go back a little bit further into the 1980s and
you start looking at restaurant menus you can see references to black pepper
ice cream on the menus of restaurants across North America and then you go
back even further into the 1800s and 1700s and you see black pepper flavored
custards and essentially what we're making today is a custard and then we're
just going to freeze it so the precedent is there for this flavor combination now
in here I have five egg yolks not using the egg whites the egg whites you will
find in other recipes coming out on the channel and to that I'm going to add
some sugar and I just want to whisk this together until they are light and pale
now the number of egg yolks that you use can vary this recipe works with anywhere
between three and six egg yolks okay I think we are up to temperature and it
smells really good the peppercorns it just absolutely smells amazing I can't
wait to taste this so just give the eggs just a little bit more of a whisk and
then you want to pour slowly this hot cream mixture into the eggs and you want
to bring the eggs up to temperature without cooking them without changing
them into some sort of lumpy scrambled mess and it doesn't take much and you
don't have to you have to fret about it it's not as difficult as some people
would make it out to be I think I'm already there so once we've got that
done I can whisk this back into the pot now I
just want to bring this up to 170 degrees Fahrenheit and if you don't have
a thermometer that's fine don't let it boil just keep it on a
medium heat keep stirring it every once in a while you don't have to whisk it
and the idea is that when you reach the right temperature it will coat the back
of a spoon and you can run your finger across it and the mark that your finger
leaves won't fill in that's how you know you've cooked it enough to create the
custard consistency that you want but I am I am firmly on team thermometer in
this one okay so I'm not just on a medium heat and will let it go okay
check the temperature and we're at 174 so we've reached where we want to be now
I put a sieve into my bowl and I want to strain out the peppercorns okay now you
want to chill this down really quickly you want to put it into an ice bath or a
memory and really chill this quickly and then you want to chill it down as cold
as you could possibly can get it before you put it in your ice cream maker and
that's a step that a lot of people overlook because they want to make the
ice cream faster and I'm in that boat I want to rush things and make it faster
but if you're willing to let it chill completely before you put it in the ice
cream maker you're going to get a smoother ice cream so as soon as this is
chilled we'll pop it in the machine okay fully chilled now come on tell me you're
not excited about black pepper ice cream stuff's gonna be amazing I can just tell
it's going to be fantastic so you just want to stir it a little bit in case the
custard has set too much you don't want it to go lumpy into the ice cream maker
so the ice cream maker is fully chilled we pour in the batter
now those ice cream makers that you put the bowl in the freezer those work just
as well just as well you could use one of those for sure so we're just gonna
let this go until it's frozen okay there we go we're done just like all home ice
cream makers we need to transfer this to a bowl and put it into the freezer for
to chill completely so I've got a glass bowl it's been in the freezer so it's
cold you don't want to put cold ice cream into a warm bowl and now we scrape
all of this off into the bowl now of course you could eat it as soft-serve if
you wanted to I just prefer to let it firm up a little bit more in the freezer
okay an hour - should be fine that's all you need see you back here for the
tasting
okay Jules I scream I scream put this back in the freezer it doesn't melt
I am ready okay I'm not gonna tell you the flavor
that was a surprise yes that's quite lovely isn't it I'm surprised that
pepper flavored ice cream is such a pleasant shape it is it's kind of neat
because the pepper keeps it from being that overwhelmingly sweet mm-hmm so you
get a little bit of tingle on your tongue we're in the beginning and then
you get a little something in the back of your throat and you think wow what is
that I need another one and I can see how over a bowl of this it might be too
much that would build but as a flavor experience that's amazing that's pretty
fun mm-hmm we throw in some fruit and it would be really good mm-hmm as well the
pepper would compliment cherries yeah okay
amazing don't be afraid try something new yeah thanks for stopping by
stay safe see you again soon
you