Pistachio ice cream
Pistachio needs no help: well toasted and well ground, it takes charge on its own. The whole recipe is built around not covering it up.
Almost all the fat in this ice cream comes from the pistachio itself. That is why the base uses water and milk powder rather than milk and cream: otherwise the fat would shoot up and the flavour would sit underneath it.
Ingredients
For 1 kgTick each ingredient as you get it ready.
Need to adjust the formula?
Step by step
9 steps · follow the order for the best result
Chef's notes
- ·If you buy ready-made pistachio paste and it is unsalted, add the salt the recipe calls for.
- ·Do not skip the cold ageing: it hydrates proteins and stabiliser and clearly improves the texture.
- ·The serving temperature depends on your recipe: if you formulate to a softer PAC than your freezer (say -11 °C with the chest at -18 °C), temper it for 5–10 min before serving; if the PAC matches your freezer, it can be eaten straight out.
- ·Why formulate at -11 and not at -18 °C: even though your freezer sits at -18 °C, formulating at -11 makes the ice cream tastes better — at -18 it is so cold that the taste buds barely pick up the flavour and the fat is slow to melt in the mouth. And keeps better: ice cream formulated at -11 and kept at -18 has less free water, suffers less from Ostwald ripening (ice crystals joining and growing) and keeps its creaminess longer.
- ·Keep your own notes: write down the POD and PAC that work best with your machine.
The texture
spot on
Creamy but clean, without the film cream leaves behind: built on water, the only fat is the pistachio's own and the flavour arrives unfiltered. The powdered milk solids give it body and the nut lingers.
All about this pistachio ice cream
The big decision in this recipe is made before you light the hob: the pistachio paste already brings almost all of the ice cream's fat. With whole milk and cream you would go far over, so the base is built on water and skimmed milk powder, which supplies the milk solids and the protein without adding fat. The pistachio goes in at the end, with the mix already cold, so the heat does not carry the aroma away. And the paste is made at home: skinned pistachios, 12 minutes at 160 °C, then into the grinder, stopping every so often so it does not heat up.
The ingredients and what each does
Every ingredient has a technical job: cream brings fat and creaminess, milk powder raises the non-fat solids, the sugars set the sweetness and the freezing point, and the stabiliser controls crystal growth during storage.
Technique and controlling the numbers
Adjusting the POD (sweetening power) and the PAC (antifreezing power, given as a target temperature) lets you match sweetness and hardness to your taste and your machine. With the selectors in the side bar the formula recalculates itself and you will see how the amount of each ingredient changes.
Storage and common mistakes
Store at -18 °C in an airtight container and avoid freeze-thaw cycles. The commonest faults are not ageing it enough, too much sugar so it never freezes properly, and over-churning, which whips in too much air and wrecks the texture.
Recommended for this recipe
Equipment and ingredients that make the difference.
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Answers to your questions
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