Guide To Sous Vide Ice Cream {Video}

Guide to making perfectly rich, silky creme anglaise ice cream base, with flavour options for vanilla, coffee, mint chocolate and tonka bean.

I scream...we all scream for perfectly silky, creamy, flavourful, foolproof Sous Vide ICE CREAM!

We will start with a basic creme anglaise/custard base and build a few basic flavours, including vanilla bean, coffee bean, fresh mint + dark chocolate and tonka bean.

In the soon to come second instalment to this post, we will step up our ice cream game with a couple variations and fun flavour add-ins, like this, this and this. For now, let's stick to basics...

After making gallons and gallons of homemade ice cream over the years, it still amazes me how a few simple, everyday ingredients can be transformed into such a crowd-pleaser.

Here's what you'll need:

• Sous Vide Precision Cooker - to perfectly cook and infuse your custard at a constant temperature, while you Netflix and chill
• Resealable sous vide bag(s) - to contain your custard during its bath. Unless you have a chamber vacuum sealer, a resealable bag is your best bet. Use the edge of your counter or displacement method to remove excess air from the bag before sealing.
• Whisk or immersion blender - to combine the ingredients before and sometimes after the cook.
• Egg yolks - to bind the fat and water for a creamy, rich texture, while adding stability and improved melt rate. We have found pastured eggs provide much more flavour. Cold eggs separate easier than room temperature, so if you are ever worried about yolks getting into white, separate while cold.
• Sugar - to sweeten (obvs) and help lessen freezing (ice crystals), so we don't get a mouthful of icy ice cream when it's time to enjoy. Too little and the texture will lose it's smoothness and difficult to scoop. Too much and your ice cream won't freeze.
• Salt (optional) - to enhance flavour and contrast sweetness. We prefer kosher salt or sea salt.
• Cream (milkfat) - for richness, flavour, body, smooth texture and good melting properties. I use 35% whipping cream. You could omit the milk and use all cream, but the additional fat tends to mask any added flavours.
• Milk (milk solids) - to balance the flavour by lowering the fat (see cream above), enhance the texture (due to the protein) and air-holding ability of the end product. You may substitute milk powder.
• Vanilla beans - optional, but highly recommended, as they add loads of flavour and mini polka-dotty aesthetics to ice cream. If you don't have access to the real deal pods, use vanilla bean paste. If you find the cost of either prohibitive, use a good quality pure vanilla extract.
• Kitchen torch - totally optional, but comes in handy to remove excess air bubbles from the custard's surface, after whisking. I found it challenging to seal the bag in the presence of too much foam.

Disclosure: The above contains affiliate links to products I use regularly, or have used in this post. Purchasing from these links provides a small commission that goes directly back into the upkeep of my blog.

Custard Base (2:1:0.5)

So we have our ingredients and a basic understanding of their purpose. Let's make some yummy magic:

• Mise en place - scale your ingredients
• Heat the water bath to 85ºC/185ºF
• Whisk together the yolks, sugar, salt and milk and cream until well combined
• Remove any excess bubbles or foam, using the heat from a lit kitchen torch. I've used this technique in a number of videos on my You Tube channel, and always when making these. It's a little trick I learned a couple years back. In this case, it makes closing the bag less challenging.

• Transfer the mixture to a large, resealable sous vide safe bag and add the vanilla beans and pod
• You can easily split the custard and flavour each differently (scroll down for suggestions)
• Hang the filled bag off the edge of your kitchen counter and slide down the edge to push the air out, before sealing the bag, or use the displacement method. Add to the heated water bath and cook for 1 hour
• After an hour, remove the bag and transfer to an ice bath to cool, then refrigerate

• Once chilled, remove bag from refrigerator
• I find using a scraper to push the custard to the top of the bag before opening, ensures none of the delish gets left behind 😉 And the bag is easier to clean for future use
• Cooking the custard sous vide means no lumping or clumping, so no straining needed. In this case, we want to remove the pod and keep the seeds, so we push it through a sieve
• Once sieved, you will find that the bulk of the beans are sitting on the top of the custard, use a whisk, spatula or immersion blender to redistribute

At this stage, you may use like a traditional creme anglaise, warm or cold, over fresh fruits, meringue, cakes or tarts. Also, by removing the dairy and adding it with a couple charges to a whipper, you can transform the custard into this. Today, we churn...

Time to churn...

• Set up your ice cream maker, per the manufacturer's instructions. Mine requires an overnight chill of the bowl, but I keep two bowls in the freezer at all times, cause we love our ice cream
• With the maker I use, it typically takes about 15-20 minutes, using this type of custard base to get the results in the second photo above
• Transfer to a freezer-safe container, cover with parchment paper and freeze overnight
• I am impatient, so I usually enjoy a scoop, soft-serve, before I freeze it.

Vanilla Bean Ice Cream - The Real Deal

The custard base can be made without the addition of vanilla beans, but really, why bother?!? You would just be denying yourself one of the most satisfying flavour experiences known to the human palate. No exaggeration! Come one... real vanilla beans are the REAL DEAL!

Flavour Options...

Now let's start with the base recipe above, omit the vanilla beans and split the custard among two sous vide bags to churn up some mint + dark chocolate and coffee beans.

Fresh Mint + Dark Chocolate Ice Cream

If you are a mint choco-chip ice cream fan, this one will give you ALL THE FEELS! Infusing the custard with a paste of fresh, home-grown mint and a little sugar guarantees a lovely green colour and an irresistible minty flavour.

Once churned, fold in the chocolate. You can use chocolate chips or chunks, but I prefer to grate it. I want to lick my ice cream, not chew it. This is one of the Dude's favourite flavour combos, so it disappeared fast.

Coffee Bean Ice Cream

take a pass on the hot cup of coffee, and kick your summer morning routine into gear with a cool cone. I sit proudly in the tea camp, but I was all over this flavour (I have a pretty nasty dairy intolerance, so I made another version with coconut milk and cream). ALL MINE!

Coarsely ground coffee beans infused in the base during the sous vide cook just took this one over the top, ya'll! I am already being asked when I plan to make more.

This one requires straining, as well, to remove the beans. I wanted to keep the smaller pieces speckled throughout, but if you prefer a cleaner finish, use a fine sieve or cheesecloth.

Tonka Bean Ice Cream

This one is a bonus flavour from my basic bunch, although nothing basic about tonka beans. I especially love using them in my chocolate work. You would simply replace the vanilla beans above with a grated tonka bean. They work nicely together, so keeping both the vanilla and tonka is also an option.

Don't be put off by their shrivelled look. They smell fruity, smoky and spicy at once, like a hybrid of almond (amaretto), vanilla, cinnamon, and dark fruit (like plum or cherry). In other words, intoxicatingly complex!

The wrinkled exterior, when shaved, gives way to an interior that resembles almond. As mentioned in a previous post, oddly, the same naturally occurring compound (coumarin), that is present in nutmeg, cinnamon, liquorice and other plants, makes tonka beans illegal in the U.S., due to its link to liver failure. It is, however, legal here in Canada.

I hope my Guide To Sous Vide Ice Cream will get you on the road to preparing your own flavours, using the foolproof, almost hands-off approach of sous vide cooking. I look forward to hearing from you and seeing your creations!

Check out my video below to see how it all went down!