Browned butter ice cream with pecans

Butter browned to a nutty amber gives the ice cream a flavour that reads as caramel, nuts and baking all at once. The yolks keep it silky.

Browned butter (beurre noisette in French) is more than melted butter. As it heats, the water boils off and the milk protein and lactose left on the base turn brown — that is the Maillard reaction, the same one that gives bread crust its flavour. Used in place of some of the cream, this fat carries all of that toasted aroma into the ice cream. The pecans at the end simply underline the same nutty line.

Type: Classic cream ice cream · Servings: 8 · Difficulty: Challenging

Equipment

Ingredients

  • 450 g whole milk 3.5 %
  • 200 g whipping cream 33 %
  • 30 g skimmed milk powder
  • 55 g browned butter (beurre noisette) (from about 65 g of butter — the water boils off as it browns)
  • 120 g granulated sugar (sucrose)
  • 35 g dextrose (glucose powder)
  • 60 g egg yolk (3 yolks)
  • 2 g salt
  • 60 g pecans (for topping or folding in at the end, toasted and chopped, folded in at the end)

Making the mix

  1. Put about 65 g of butter in a light-coloured pan (in a dark one you cannot judge the colour) and melt it over a medium heat. It will foam and spit — that is the water boiling off. When the spitting dies down, brown specks appear on the base and the butter smells of hazelnuts, take it off the heat at once. You need 55 g of browned butter, sediment included.
  2. Heat the milk, cream and milk powder in a pan until almost boiling.
  3. Whisk the yolks with the granulated sugar, dextrose and salt until pale and foamy.
  4. Whisking constantly, pour about a third of the hot milk onto the yolks in a thin stream, then tip everything back into the pan.
  5. Stir over a low heat with a wooden spoon until the custard reaches 82–84 °C and coats the spoon. Do not let it boil — the yolks would curdle. At that temperature the eggs are also pasteurised.
  6. Strain the custard into a tall jug, pour in the warm browned butter and blend with a stick blender for about a minute, until the mix is completely smooth and slightly paler. Without blending, the butterfat would separate.
  7. Stand the jug in iced water and cool the mix below 5 °C. Press cling film onto the surface and age in the fridge for 4–12 hours.
  8. Roughly chop the pecans and toast them in a dry pan for 3–4 minutes, until fragrant. Let them cool completely.

Method — Compressor ice cream maker

  1. Switch the ice cream maker on 5–10 minutes in advance so the bowl can pre-chill.
  2. Give the aged mix a quick blitz with a stick blender and pour it into the bowl, no higher than the fill line. Churn for 30–40 minutes, until it thickens and clings to the paddle.
  3. Add the cooled pecans in the last minute of churning so they are evenly distributed.
  4. Transfer to a chilled tub, press cling film onto the surface and leave to harden in the freezer for 2 hours.

Total time: 8 h 47 min

Method — Freezer-bowl ice cream maker

  1. Take the bowl, frozen for at least 24 hours, out of the freezer just before use, fit the paddle and switch the machine on.
  2. With the machine running, pour in the well-chilled, freshly blended mix — filling the bowl no more than two-thirds.
  3. Churn for 20–30 minutes, until the mix thickens to a soft cream. There is no point going longer — by then the bowl has warmed up.
  4. Fold the pecans in with a spoon as you transfer the ice cream — by then the bowl is too warm for the machine to do it.
  5. Transfer to a chilled tub, cover with cling film and leave to harden in the freezer for 3 hours.

A freezer bowl only partly freezes the mix, so the ice cream takes longer to harden and tends to be slightly less smooth than from a compressor machine. A thoroughly chilled, properly aged mix helps.

Total time: 9 h 37 min

Method — Ninja CREAMi and similar machines

  1. Pour the chilled mix into a CREAMi tub up to the MAX line, put the lid on and freeze it level for 24 hours.
  2. Put the tub in the machine and run the Ice Cream program.
  3. After the program, make a hole in the centre, add the pecans and run Mix-In. If the ice cream is crumbly, add a tablespoon of milk and run Re-spin first.

Programme: Ice Cream

Total time: 30 h 17 min

Stages

Preparation
22 min
Cooking
20 min
Cooling
30 min
Ageing in the fridge
5 h
Churning
35 min
Hardening in the freezer
2 h
Total time
8 h 47 min

Plan: what to do and when

The whole recipe takes 8 h 47 min, of which 42 min is hands-on — the rest is waiting you can spend elsewhere.

The day before (6 h 12 min)

  • Prepare the mix (weigh and stir the ingredients) — 22 min
  • Cook the mix — 20 min
  • Cool the mix down — 30 min
  • Let the mix age in the fridge — 5 h

On the day of serving (2 h 35 min)

  • Churn in the machine — 35 min
  • Let it harden in the freezer — 2 h

Serving and storage

Serve with a warm apple or pear dessert, or simply with a spoonful of maple syrup and a pinch of flaky salt. Let it stand for 5–10 minutes out of the freezer (−18 °C) until it scoops easily.

In a sealed tub with cling film pressed onto the surface it is best within a week; after that ice crystals build up.

Tips

  • The brown specks on the base of the pan are flavour — do not pour them away. If they bother you in the finished ice cream, strain the butter only after the mix has infused with it for 10 minutes.
  • Browned butter burns in a matter of seconds. Have a cold pan ready, or tip the butter straight into a bowl.
  • No pecans? Walnuts or hazelnuts work just as well.

Why it works

Browned butter is almost pure milk fat — the water has boiled off, so 55 g delivers about 53 g of fat. Together with the cream and yolks, fat lands at 15.9 %, high in the cream ice cream range (10–18 %). That is exactly why there is only 200 g of cream here: at a normal dose the ice cream would overshoot on fat and turn pasty. Milk fat crystallises during freezing and helps hold the air bubbles, so despite having no stabiliser beyond the yolks, this ice cream is dense and stable.

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How we calculate the composition · What PAC and POD mean · Balance this mix in the calculator

Sources