Using snow in an ice cream maker

I bought a one-gallon ice cream maker a while ago, and I was thinking of taking advantage of the snow before it melts to make some ice cream. How much salt should I use? Can I add it all at once, or do I need to “give it time”? I’m looking through various recipes right now, what is the “Doper-recommended best recipe for ice cream”?

Perhaps I should note that I’m not talking about making Snow Ice Cream, I just want to use the snow as a “cold source”. (and please, no posts about “cold”, I know it doesn’t exist in the physical sense, it’s just a term, and you know what I mean)

I would think that snow would not be a really good material, in the first place. Snow is pretty light compared to ice (lots of internal air) and I would expect the ice to reduce it to water before it had a chance to effect much of a heat transfer.

If you do go with the snow, pack it in pretty tightly and use just a bit less salt than what the recipe calls for with ice.

OTOH, I have no direct experience with using snow, so it may have better heat transfer properties than I expect.

The yellow snow is not “lemon.”

Just so you know.

Flying_Monk, I’ve got to agree with tomndeb on this one. Snow will probably have too little thermal mass to be of much use - it only takes a little heat to melt a large volume of snow so you’d be constantly pouring off meltwater and packing more snow in. Traditional ice & rocksalt mixture will do you much better.

The last few times that I made ice cream I used a simple base of half & half (cream), granulated sugar and plain vanilla (proportions were about 2L cream, 1 cup sugar and vanilla to taste IIRC). If you’re looking for base recipes I’d suggest Google or “The Joy Of Cooking”.

I was using liquid nitrogen as the coolant though so much faster - you pour the LN right into the ingredients and stir for a few minutes and voila, fresh ice cream. This requires some particular safety procedures (-173C or so) but is huge amounts of fun.

Valgard

The Web being the wonderful thing it is, there’s a great description and video of using liquid nitrogen to make ice cream here. About halfway down the page.

The rest of this site is pretty cool, too, if you haven’t already seen it.

Hey, if the temperature allows snow, couldn’t you quickly make lots and lots of ice in pans and cookie sheets left outside overnight?

I disagree about the snow. My copy of Modern Industrial Chemistry (c. 1911) has a section on freezing mixtures, and all the ice-related ones call for snow or powdered ice. The relevant one is “1 part salt, 2 parts snow” (though it doesn’t say whether “part” is by weight or volume). The deal is the endothermic reaction between the ice and the salt, so powdering both ingredients produces the maximum reaction surface. You don’t pour any liquid off: a sub-zero liquid phase (brine at about -20C) is what the reaction generates, assuming the salt is also pre-chilled to 0C.