Typically considered less than optimal. Think about it - how much heavy cream can you eat before you start to feel queasy? Look up home recipes, they all call for some proportion of milk.
I can remember when I first saw people using liquid nitrogen on TV. They would put on those big rubber gloves and a total face shield. Then, I was watching The Dish with Kish (Top Chef adjacent show) the other day, and Mei Lin, the guest, just grabbed the tank and started pouring. No protective nothing. I think if you’re used to using it, you know to be as careful as you’d be with any other dangerous product/tool.
To me, it’s ideal when you just pour some Guinness over a scoop of ice cream. You taste all the flavors more that way.
The dessert I was served years ago at a French restaurant on my birthday was two small scoops of vanilla ice cream with champagne poured over with a handful of fresh raspberries. Excellent.
FWIW in south Ontario a number of options are available which use minimal ingredients or nearly so. You pay more - a box or tub with 1.5-2 quarts will cost five to eight Canuck Bucks if quality, minus two dollars if made with sawdust and wool. The higher price is during the brief summer.
There’s a “real ice cream” place in downtown Willow Glen, aptly named the Willow Glen Creamery. From their webpage:
We are a locally owned creamery that serves Ice Cream made from independent dairies with the highest butterfat and best ingredients available…We also serve “real Frozen Custard” that we receive from a dairy in Waukesha, Wisconsin
They’ve been around for more than 20 years, and I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I’ve never sampled any of their wares. I pledge to correct that problem and report back this weekend.
It isn’t, though. Just as reduced lactose means at least 70% less lactose, 99% lactose-free means at least 99% less lactose, a negligible amount. I spent a lot of time studying this while writing three books on the subject.
Medusa+optics+lactose=?
It’s not making sense to me. I don’t see the connection.
Okay, I can buy that. But most national commercial ice cream gets hauled around and stored sometimes in less than ideal circumstances.
I have tried some hyper-local ice cream, made on the premises, and the flavor was better- more fresher. Maybe a better texture, sure. Good points.
Maybe the OP should look for one of those.
I bought some commercial stabilizer (xanthin gum) to use in my homemade ice cream, so that the leftovers would stay creamy, not form giant ice crystals as homemade ice cream often does. But since I could only buy it in commercial quantities, I had a big tub that said something “use 1 pint per 50 quarts.” No instructions on how the home cook should use it, and when you’re changing a recipe by that many orders of magnitude, simple division probably won’t work. (Ask me how I know - I once multiplied a chicken recipe by 8. The results were inedibly salty.)
Anyway, I threw in a small amount to my homemade burnt caramel ice cream - to hilarious results. The ice cream was like cold, pliant taffy. Clearly, I used WAY too much.
It was actually pretty good, in its own special way. But after that, I used only teeny tiny amounts in future batches.
Pretty sure that’s what everyone else has said too.
I got some Haagen Dazs to try out tonight. Interestingly a national brand. There was one local ice cream that claimed to be old-fashioned. It had more crap than other brands.
Medusa and optics were among @CalMeacham 's books, not @Exapno_Mapcase 's.
Yeah, I’m lactose+the past future+humor, which makes even less sense.
D’oh!
This has been a bad year for me.
Now, everything is clear! The lactose is for food pills.I’ll send my robot servant out to get some.
Breyers always seemed high quality. It’s what I’ve bought for a long time.
Yarnell’s Ice Cream is made in Searcy Arkansas. It was a Arkansas family-owned business. Excellent quality. Founded in 1932 and ended in 2011.
It’s been sold twice since 2011. I suspect the recipes have changed.
I was never impressed by Haagen Dazs. It seems over priced and not much better than Breyers.
It might be the best mass-produced one. I just got the H-D to compare to ice cream with gums in a root beer float.
You slowly pour in the liquid nitrogen while stirring, until you get the right consistency— I did not measure the time, but it took a couple of minutes, tops.
Last time I did it, I actually purchased a non-bulk amount (I only have a couple of appropriate Thermos flasks at home) of “food grade” liquid nitrogen from a restaurant supply place, as supposed to just swiping some from the university, so I got ripped off to the tune of $10 for a couple of liters. The ice cream was good, though. I bet if you were not as impatient, you could buy a gallon of nitrogen for $5 or something.
Does Frozen Custard meet the best ice cream standard? It’s not supposed to have gum thickeners in it.
I like going by Shakes in Little Rock. I love the rich, smooth texture. They are in 9 states
There are other brands of frozen custard. It’s always made and served fresh. You won’t find it in a grocery.
So yes it does.
When we used it, we used ordinary care, like you’d use with boiling water. We didn’t use any special protective gear. We did only use it outdoors, in a well ventilated area.