Hi guys, I'm Laura Vitale and on this episode of Laura in the Kitchen, I want to share with
you how to make one of my all time favorite ice creams, it is hazelnut ice cream, it is
one of my favorite flavors, I think it is like one of my number one favorite flavor
of ice cream not including sorbet, that's a different story, but in terms of ice cream
it is my favorite flavor and I can't wait to share this recipe with you because it is
so easy but so good, all you need for right now are some hazelnuts, now I buy my hazelnuts
already peeled, but we need to really toast these to intensify the flavor but they are
already peeled.
If your hazelnuts are not peeled, you are going to have to peel them and you can find
many tutorials online on how to do that, but my suggestion would be - I find these at Costco,
but if you just go on Amazon, anywhere on the inter-webs, you can find them already
peeled because otherwise it's kind of a pain, and all you need right now is hazelnuts and
some whole milk.
What we need to do like I said is to really intensify the flavor of the hazelnuts so you
can do this in your oven but I'm just going to do this on my stove top in just a dry skillet,
I'm going to toast these really, really well until they're beautiful golden-brown like
much deeper color than this and you'll smell them when they're really well toasted and
we can move forward.
That is what you are looking for and you can actually see the oils kind of releasing from
the nuts, that is perfect.
What I have got here is my whole milk and it is in a sauce pan just coming to a simmer.
What we're going to do now is we're going to add the hazelnuts to a food processor and
we're going to just grind them finely and I'll show you what it looks like when it's
there.
Alright, that smells good already.
So my milk is just about to a simmer.
The hazelnuts themselves smell like hazelnut ice cream, just being blended.
Oh, don't want to lose any of those.
And now what I'm going to do is I'm going to carefully make sure that I get every single
little bit of this into the simmering milk, I'm going to turn the milk off and I'm going
to let the hazelnuts sit in there and steep for a good hour to an hour and a half and
then we move on to the next step.
Alright, so this has been steeping for about an hour and a half, get rid of that, and now
we have to just strain this through a fine sieve.
Now, If you want real precaution, you want to strain this through not only a fine sieve,
but a fine sieve that has been lined with some cheesecloth to make sure there's no graininess,
but I'm just going to go ahead and do this twice, when we strain it again after the custard
has been made so I think it's going to be fine, but you know, you want to make sure
it's super smooth, then that's what you can do.
I'm going to go ahead and finish doing that, it's going to take a few minutes because you
want to press it with a spatula, just to make sure you get all that flavor out of there.
And done.
Takes a long time, but want to make sure you really press out every bit of juice, actually
don't need this right now.
That looks lovely, there is no extract of flavor in here, nothing, it's just pure deliciousness.
Now, what we'll do is take the flavored milk, delicious.
To it we are going to add some heavy cream and we're going to bring this to a simmer.
While we do that, low heat, not a boil, because it'l split, but a simmer.
While that happens, I've got egg yolks and sugar, I"m going to go ahead and add a good
splash of my homemade vanilla, if you don't have really good homemade vanilla with plenty
of seeds, you'll just want to use a paste like a vanilla bean paste.
Add that in there, I'm going to whisk this with my handheld electric whisk until it's
really thick and pale and I'll show you what it looks like when it's there.
That is perfect, so here's what we do now.
I'm going to add some of the hot liquid to the egg yolks to temper them because if I
were to add this straight into the hot put, they'll curdle, the egg yolks will cook, not
in the way that we want them to, I don't want to have scrambled eggs, you know what I mean?
So, I'm going to drizzle a little bit in here while whisking so you're adding some air in
there so it's not so hot.
Good!
Oh, other way, other way!
Now we're going to add this to the pot with the rest of the liquid, you can really smell
the toasted hazelnuts, I'm very happy because hazelnut ice cream is my favorite and I'm
very excited, up next, it would have to be pistachio because it's my mother's favorite
and it's Joe's favorite.
Add that in there, and now what I am going to do is cook this very slowly until thickened,
it could take about ten minutes or so but do not be tempted to crank up the heat because
you will just scorch everything then it will split and you will have a complete waste on
your hands and we don't want that.
That is perfect, it's thickened a bit, it's not going to be thick like pudding or anything,
but it has thickened quite a bit it has been about ten minutes or so so everything has
cooked and now I'm just going to strain it just to make sure that there's anything that
didn't get quite cooked or any eggs that have curdled or any pieces it'll stay behind.
Beautiful.
I meant to say in case there's anything that curdled while cooking, it doesn't end up in
our ice cream because I want it to be really smooth.
Now what I'm going to do.
What I'm going to do now is I'm going to cover this with some plastic wrap but I'm going
to make sure that the plastic wrap is actually touching the top of the custard so that you
don't get that really weird film on top and this is going to go in the fridge overnight,
it has to be very well chilled before we add it to our machine, and just you wait and see
how gloriously creamy it is going to be.
Alright, my ice cream base was in the fridge overnight, and it has thickened really beautifully.
I just want to give everything a stir, see it just kind of loosens up perfectly.
I have ,y ice cream machine ready.
Now if you're going to use an ice cream machine, which you have to for this recipe, most ice
cream machines will have an insert like this one over here that needs to be in the freezer
for at least 24 hours because this needs to be frozen solid, so make sure that you do
that before you get working on the custard, so ready to go.
Now, every ice cream machine varies in time, mine will take about half an hour or so for
it to get that beautiful creamy semi-frozen consistency.
Let's get this in.
Lid on and let it do it's thing.
Alright, about a half an hour, as always.
That insert is heavy.
Look at that.
That is perfect and gorgeous, I'm actually just going to pop it back in here.
Put a lid on it, I washed the container.
Do not worry.
Oh but how perfect is that?
Look at it, you could serve it right now, I'm going to wait to serve it this weekend
which is just in a couple days.
I cannot wait to have everybody over, make some pizzas outside, have a little hazelnut
ice cream, little toasted hazelnuts and a little grating of chocolate on top, perfection,
right?
I'm just going to go ahead and go for it.
Deeply toasted, hazelnutty goodness right here, that is the hazelnut ice cream of my
absolute dreams, it's pure, it's delicious it's perfectly sweetened, nothing else needs
to be said, just go to LauraintheKitchen.com and get the written recipe, and when you make
it you'll know why, it's just simply the best hazelnut ice cream ever.
Let me know down below other ice cream flavors you'll like to see me make here on Laura in
the Kitchen and I'll go through them as this Summer goes along.
Hope you have enjoyed spending time with me, and I'll see you in the next one.
Bye.