Pistachio Ice Cream

Pistachio is one of my favorite flavors of ice cream and I have been wanting to make it for awhile. One of the things I was nervous about was how to add the pistachio flavor, without having huge chunks of pistachio in my ice cream. To add to my discomfort, one of the things I like least about the Jenni Britton Ice Cream Recipe is that while she does a great job of telling you how to make a great ice cream base, she does not tell you when would be a good time to add in any flavors. I played around with a couple different ideas and finally came up with a recipe I thought would work.

Pistachio Ice Cream

Ingredients:     

2 cups whole milk

4 teaspoons cornstarch

1 1/2 ounces cream cheese softened/room temperature

1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 1/4 cups heavy cream

2/3 cup sugar 

2 tablespoons dark corn syrup

1 cup shelled pistachios

 

Preparation:
In a small bowl, mix about 2 tablespoons of milk with the cornstarch and whisk together.
In a medium bowl, add the salt and room-temperature cream cheese and whip all the bumps out. Set aside.
In a food processor, add 1 cup of shelled pistachios and blend them until they are fine.
Add the heavy cream to the pistachios in the food processor and blend until they are a paste.
Pour the sugar, corn syrup, remaining milk and the pistachio and cream paste into a saucepan. Bring to a rolling boil over medium-high heat, set a timer for precisely 4 minutes and boil for exactly 4 minutes.
Add the cornstarch to the boiling milk mixture and stir until slightly thickened.
Strain the hot milk mixture into a clean bowl.
Gradually whisk the hot milk mixture into the cream cheese until smooth, adding about a cup of the hot milk mixture at a time and whisking the cream cheese mixture with an electric mixer for about two minutes in between each addition of the hot milk mixture. Continue until none of the hot milk mixture remains in the pot.
Chill the mixture in the refrigerator until it is completely cold.
Put your mixture into your ice cream maker and churn.
 

Texture: I think this is the first time I have over-churned an ice cream. As my husband said, it was bound to happen at one point. The consistency of the ice cream was so solid, it was almost a butter. If I was once concerned that my ice creams were too soupy, those days are now long gone. The cream cheese based ice creams will definitely give you a solid ice cream consistency that freeze well and look like ice cream when you scoop it into a bowl.

Flavor: The ice cream has a strong pistachio flavor. As my husband pointed out, he never realized how much sugar and artificial flavors were in store bought pistachio ice creams, until now. I think the nut flavor was almost too strong, but my husband enjoyed it. As he said, if you like pistachios, then this is the ice cream for you. If you want a less strong nut flavor, try 1/2 cups of pistachios. One thing I did like about using all the pistachios is that they turned the ice cream green! This is the first time that I had an ice cream that was a color other than white or gray, which was kind of cool and also makes you realize just how much food coloring they put in store bought ice cream.

Overall: I would give this ice cream a 3/5 scoops. I like the flavor and the consistency is good, but it is not one of my favorite ice creams. I do not know if this is because of the strong pistachio flavor or the fact that the ice cream is over-churned, or a combination of the two, but for whatever reason, this ice cream did not quite hit the spot for me.

In addition, this week I tried the much acclaimed Ice and Vice ice cream. You can find Ice and Vice at LIC Flea and Astoria Coffee, Brooklyn is not the only cool outer borough, as well as various other places around New York City. I tried the Milk Money flavor. The flavor and consistency weren't bad, but for $11 pint, I was expecting more. Sorry Ice and Vice, but for those prices, I want an orgasm in my mouth.

Until next time, keep calm and get your ice cream eating on.