Make your gelato even better!
Few years back I bought an Italian ice-cream machine (Musso) which came with some sorbet and gelato recipes. Of course I tried them. The taste was excellent, but the structure was lacking. I wanted something different.
Commercial ice cream stabilizers are usually only bought by professionals. They are expensive and come in larger quantities. For home use you don’t need 1 kg or 5 kg packages. And in my case it was a side business anyway: to get through the summer months where most people don’t buy that much chocolate. And they are not organic.
Why use stabilizers?
In creating and artisanal gelato recipe I will use stabilizers mainly for the reason of mouthfeel. I would want to ice-cream to be velvety smooth, maybe even a bit gooey. The stabilizer will combine the ingredients better, closer to each other, with less space between molecules that don’t mix or bind naturally. Take chocolate ice-cream: the fat and the water don’t really combine. You can mix and blend mechanically, but there are limits to that. Using a tiny amount of lecithin will for example make sure that fat and dry particles in chocolate do not separate so easily.
What do ice cream stabilizers do?
You can use different emulsifiers, stabilizers, gelling and thickening agents. Such as locust bean gum (E410), guar gum (E412), pectin (E440), gellan gum, carrageenan, lecithin, agar and many more. Many of these occur naturally in all kinds of food. For example egg yolks contain lecithin and the French kitchen uses them for binding sauces and as a base for rich gourmet ice-cream by creating a custard. And mind you, don’t be afraid of the E-numbers. As a matter of fact: it is just a code and many E-numbered ingredients you can purchase organic and non-GMO.
To summarize, you can use stabilizers to:
- change the consistency
- change the mouth feel
- affect the stability of the product
- affect shelf-life
For our purpose when you make gelato, ice cream and sorbets:
- smaller ice crystals
- better flavor
- better experience
Stabilizer for ice cream, gelato and sorbets
- Total Time: 10 minutes
- Yield: 75g 1x
- Diet: Vegan
Description
This is a universal stabilizer that can be used with my ice cream recipes. I use it both professionally and at home. You can use for gelato, sorbets and other ice cream.
If you feel uncomfortable with some of the ingredients, leave them out. Just one will already have an effect and change your ice cream. Some artisanal gelato makers only use for example locust bean gum and guar gum. Or just locust bean gum.
The lecithin helps a lot with chocolate gelato.
Ingredients
- 50 gram sunflower lecithin powder
- 15 gram locust bean gum powder
- 10g guar gum powder
Instructions
How to make
- Measure the required amounts
- Mix well.
- Put them in an airtight container.
- And all done, couldn’t be more simple 🙂
How to use
1.5 gram of stabilizer per 1 liter of ice cream mixture
Notes
to prevent clogging mix the stabilizer with sugar or other dry material before adding to the ice cream mix
pasteurizing your ice cream mix should not affect the working of your stabilizer (much)
- Prep Time: 5
- Cook Time: 5
- Category: Compounds
- Method: Mix
- Cuisine: World
works like a charm!