How to Make Strawberry Ice Cream

Hi, I'm Amy. This is House of Nash Eats, and today we are making homemade strawberry ice cream. All right, so let's get started with our strawberry ice cream. The first thing that we do is we're going to add our milk and our cream to a medium saucepan, and we're going to heat them over medium-low heat until they're hot, but we don't want it to bubble. So we're going to add both of those together. It's about three cups total, one and a half cups each, and I'll leave a link in the notes below to the printable recipe where you can get all these measurements. And we're going to do about half of a cup of sugar. It's about half of our sugar. Okay, and we're going to stir those together and just let them come to a nice warm temperature where it's hot but not bubbling. It's just going to take about four to five minutes over a medium-low heat. Okay, while that's happening, we're going to work on our egg yolk, which makes the custard base of this ice cream. First thing we're going to do is separate our egg whites from our egg yolks. And I like to save the egg whites and make macarons. I've got some macaron recipes for you that I think you'll love. So just separate the egg yolk from the egg white. My favorite method is just using the shells to tilt it back and forth, but I've seen other people do it with their hands or like a bottle trick, or there are even like special little tools to help you separate egg yolks and egg whites. But the reason we use egg yolks in this custard-based ice cream is because it makes it really creamy and scoopable. Recipes that don't have egg yolks tend to be more on the icy side, and they like really creamy ice cream. And we're cooking this so that there aren't raw eggs. So that's what we're doing here. Now, you don't want to just add your eggs straight to your hot milk and cream mixture, or it's going to scramble the eggs. We definitely don't want scrambled egg strawberry ice cream. Now, to our egg yolks, we're going to add almost all of the rest of the sugar. We're just going to save about two tablespoons for blending with our strawberries in just a little bit. So we're going to add the sugar, and it's all going in the same place, so you don't have to measure exactly on this one. But we're going to now whisk the sugar with the egg yolks. And at first, it might seem like it's not coming together or it's just really thick, and it'll be this bright yellow color. These eggs are from my backyard chicken, so they're like extra, extra yellow. But as you continue to whisk, the egg yolks are going to lighten in color. So you're going to want to whisk for a minute or two until they start to change color and it turns more of a lighter, pale yellow. Okay, and you can see how it just drips off in ribbons, and it's a lighter, paler shade of yellow. So these are set. So now we're just waiting for our milk and cream to come up to temperature. You'll know when it starts steaming just a little bit when you stir it, that it's just about there. Okay, so I can see that my milk has started to steam just a little bit. So that means it's ready to temper the egg yolks. We're just going to pour a little bit of the hot milk mixture into the egg yolks and sugar and whisk that in. It's about half a cup, then a little bit more. Okay, and what that's doing is it's actually gently raising the temperature of those egg yolks so they don't get shocked and scramble when you add them to the hot milk mixture. This lets them come up to temperature a little bit more slowly. So once those are whisked together, we're just going to pour this in back into the sauce pan with the rest of the milk. Okay, and now we're going to continue to heat this. It's still over that medium-low temperature because we don't want to boil it until it comes to 170 to 175 degrees Fahrenheit on the back, on a, like a candy thermometer. I can't think of the word. So I've got a candy thermometer. You could use a digital thermometer. Just going to pop this on here. And once it hits about 170 to 175 degrees, that's when the eggs are cooked and it's created a custard. It's still going to be pretty runny, but it should be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon when you run your finger through it. Okay, so that is already there. So I'm going to pop that out. And that's just going to depend on how hot the milk was to start with, but you can see how when I run my finger through it, it's creating a stripe down the back of the spoon. I don't know if you can see that or not. It's pretty pale, but, oh, there we go. Now you can kind of see that. Maybe I'll get a metal spoon. So you can see how it coats the back of this spoon and you get like a nice stripe. I have really shaky hands. There, see that stripe? Okay, so once your custard mixture is hot, we're going to add our vanilla. So add that vanilla extract. Oh, I lost my spoon. Got another one. Okay, we're going to stir in the vanilla extract. And then this really needs to chill all the way before you can churn it. So we don't want to put hot custard into our ice cream maker, but you can kind of cheat it. Instead of spending four hours in the fridge chilling this all the way, you can put it on ice or in an ice bath. You can transfer this to like a reusable silicone bag and stick it down in an ice bath or just set it over some ice and stir it and let it sit for 10 to 15 minutes. And it should come down in temperature a lot and pretty much be ready to churn right around then. While this is cooling down, we're going to work on our strawberry puree to turn this from vanilla ice cream into strawberry ice cream. Okay, now that our custard is cooling, we're going to take about half a pound of strawberries. And I like to use fresh strawberries. You could use frozen strawberries that you've thawed all the way, but you're going to want to quarter them or slice them and add them to a blender or food processor. And if you have like really sweet, fresh summer berries that have a lot of sugar content on their own, you might not need quite as much sugar in your ice cream. I like sweet ice cream, so I don't have a problem using the full amount of sugar, but you could scale that back just a tiny bit if you want to. Strawberry ice cream was my grandpa's favorite ice cream. So, and he's the one who actually taught me to make homemade ice cream. I remember using their old fashioned ice cream churn that we actually had to crank by hand and you'd pack it with rock salt and ice. And we'd sit on their back porch in Idaho in the summertime and churn fresh homemade ice cream there. So whenever I make strawberry ice cream, I think about my grandpa. Okay, so now we've got our strawberries and we're going to just add the rest of the sugar. And then we're going to put the lid on. I always forget this. And we're going to pulse those strawberries until they're almost a puree. Now this depends on whether you want little chunks of fruit in your ice cream or not. If the chunks are too big, you're going to get like icy bites of strawberry in your ice cream. So I like to almost all the way puree it to give a lot of strawberry flavor throughout. But if you like those little bits of strawberry, just don't puree it quite as much. Okay, so now that our ice cream base has chilled and it's not hot anymore, it's nice and cold. We are going to add the strawberry puree to the ice cream. Now, some people will strain the ice cream base before they add the strawberry to it, just in case there are little bits of scrambled egg. But I find that when you temper the eggs this way, there are never little bits of scrambled egg and I don't need to do that. So I always skip that step. You're welcome to do it if you want to. Okay, it is a beautiful pink color and this is ready to go into our ice cream maker. I have one of those Cuisinart ice cream makers and I love it because you can just leave the frozen bowl inside the freezer and have it ready to go to make ice cream at any time. The downside is it makes small batches. It's just right for this size batch of ice cream, which is good for like six to eight people or six to eight servings maybe, depends on how much ice cream you eat. But you could also use this to double the batch and use a bigger old fashioned ice cream maker if you wanted to. I took the bowl right out of the freezer so it's really, really cold and we're going to pour our cold strawberry ice cream base into this and freeze it. Okay, so now we pop the piece down in. I don't even know what it's called, but the little plastic piece and put our lid on it. This would also work with the kitchen-made ice cream attachment. Just any ice cream churn that you have will work with this recipe. And we're gonna turn it on and let it churn for about 20 minutes, 20 to 25 until it is cold and about soft serve consistency. So the reason that we're churning ice cream is not only does it freeze it, but it incorporates some air into the ice cream, giving it a nice, light, creamy texture. So you can see it's almost filled up the ice cream container. This makes a really full batch and pretty much maxes out what these small Cuisinart ice cream makers can do. So now that it is firm, I can take this off and you'll see when I pull this out, I'm gonna grab another bowl or a plate. Okay, and when I lift this out, you'll see it's more of a soft serve consistency. It's not going to be like a hard scoopable ice cream just yet. And that's fine. You could eat it just like this if you like soft serve ice cream. It's super delicious. But I really like hard scoopable ice cream. So we're going to transfer this to a container that can go in the freezer. I like to use bread pans. They're just the right size to hold a batch of ice cream. They also make ice cream containers that are specifically designed for ice cream. But I find bread pans just work great and they're my favorite. Just use a rubber spatula so you don't damage the inside of your ice cream container or churn bowl, whatever it's called. And then we're going to cover it with a piece of plastic wrap and stick it in the freezer for four to six hours. And that is called curing your ice cream. That process of letting it freeze really hard and solid. And once it's cured, you can scoop your ice cream and it's going to be amazing. Okay, one of the best things about a custard-based ice cream is you'll see when you scoop it, how well it scoops out. It's creamy and not icy. It's amazing ice cream. And that's why we go to the extra work of churning it and using the eggs to make a custard base. Okay, now it's my turn to taste this strawberry ice cream. All right, here we go. This is amazing, amazing ice cream. It's got such great fresh strawberry flavor. It's so creamy and smooth. It's delicious. I'll eat this plain. I'll top it with hot fudge or my favorite is marshmallow ice cream topping. I've got a recipe on my site and I'll link to it below. I think you guys are going to love this strawberry ice cream and I hope you enjoy it all summer long. Thanks so much for watching. I hope you guys love this strawberry ice cream. Let me know in the comments below what your favorite ice cream flavor is and maybe I'll do that one next. Be sure to like and subscribe to my channel for more great recipes just like this.