Hand-Crank Ice Cream for Cranks

Step 3 Cranking

Here is another very fun step. You can tell your ice cream consumers that they won't get any ice cream unless they help churn and then go into the story of the Little Red Hen if you need to. Basically what you do now is put the machine all together, and then alternate layers of ice and plenty of rock salt (you can also use cheap table salt if you can't find rock salt) in the wooden bucket all around the closed quart container. Then just turn and turn and turn the crank. Trade people when arms get tired. This takes about half an hour if you've used enough salt. The ice cream is done when it's very hard to turn (because it's frozen inside).

What's happening is that the rock salt is lowering the melting temperature of the ice so that an ice-cold bath of water surrounds the metal tank that holds the ice cream inside. Then you are turning the ice cream mixture around and around and chilling it against the sides of the tank until it is all frozen.

Some people like their ice cream to be harder, some people like it softer. I actually love to have soft, fluffy fresh ice cream so once it's really hard to turn, after you've had to have someone help the person who's turning by putting their foot on the machine to hold it steady, and now it's really really hard to turn, THEN you can take the dashers out of the quart container and serve it up. If you like your ice cream very very frozen you should put the quart container BACK in the cold ice-salt mixture and pack ice around it on all sides and let the ice cream sit for a few hours while the cold seeps all the way through the container. (Note that you take the dashers out before you pack it because otherwise the dashers freeze inside the ice cream and you have a heck of a time getting the ice cream out with all that extra metal in the way).

Comments

[stouchet]

Make sure you use a lot of salt. If it doesn't get cold enough fast enough, you run the risk of making butter. We did that once. The "ice cream" had a horrible texture and we couldn't eat it. As we sat around talking, we noticed that the "ice cream" in our bowls wasn't melting. Butter.

[psikot1]

good but you need to add that when you feel resistance near the end of the churn you need to crank even harder to whip air into the mixture. if you're not going to do that then just get a $30 machine, does the same if you don't crank harder at the right time. otherwise good.

[seedlingproject]

Actually some people don't like air in their ice cream. Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Cookbook says, "The higher the quality of the ice cream, the smaller the amount of air. Our superpremium ice cream is only 20 percent air..." Personally I like soft ice cream fresh from a churn, so I don't mind air. I never did think about churning extra hard at the end to get more of it, though. My ice cream maker is usually full to bursting and one way I know it's near done is when ice cream mixture starts squishing out into the ice/salt brine.