Olive oil gelato with sea salt
Green, grassy and lightly salted gelato in which olive oil replaces most of the cream. It sounds like a mistake and tastes like the Mediterranean.
Bread, olive oil and a pinch of salt is an old Mediterranean snack — this recipe turns it into a dessert. The oil goes in at the very end and is broken into a fine emulsion with a stick blender, so the gelato is silky rather than greasy. The dose is deliberately small: olive oil is pure fat with no other solids at all, and even 55 g per kilogram would push the gelato above the upper fat limit.
Type: Italian gelato · Servings: 8 · Difficulty: Moderate
Equipment
Ingredients
- 555 g whole milk 3.5 %
- 60 g whipping cream 33 %
- 45 g skimmed milk powder
- 120 g granulated sugar (sucrose)
- 40 g dextrose (glucose powder)
- 25 g glucose syrup (DE 40, 80 % solids)
- 1.5 g locust bean gum (carob gum, E410)
- 1 g guar gum (E412)
- 30 g extra virgin olive oil (extra virgin, fresh and grassy)
- 2 g salt (fine sea salt)
Making the mix
- Mix the locust bean gum and guar gum thoroughly with the dry sugars (granulated sugar and dextrose). On their own they would form lumps the moment they get wet.
- Pour the milk, cream and milk powder into a pan and heat while whisking. At about 40 °C, add the sugars with the gums and the glucose syrup and whisk until dissolved.
- Heat the mix to 85 °C and hold it there for 1–2 minutes, stirring constantly.
- Stand the pan in a bowl of iced water and cool the mix below 5 °C.
- Add the salt and olive oil to the cold mix and blend with a stick blender for 30–60 seconds, until the oil disappears and the mix is smooth and matt-creamy. This is the whole trick of the recipe — un-emulsified oil would separate into droplets as it freezes.
- Cover and age in the fridge for 4–8 hours. No longer — the grassy aroma of fresh oil fades with time.
Method — Compressor ice cream maker
- Switch the ice cream maker on 5–10 minutes in advance so the bowl can pre-chill.
- 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.
- 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 35 min
Method — Freezer-bowl ice cream maker
- Take the bowl, frozen for at least 24 hours, out of the freezer just before use, fit the paddle and switch the machine on.
- With the machine running, pour in the well-chilled, freshly blended mix — filling the bowl no more than two-thirds.
- 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.
- 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 25 min
Method — Ninja CREAMi and similar machines
- Pour the chilled mix into a CREAMi tub up to the MAX line, put the lid on and freeze it level for 24 hours.
- Put the tub in the machine and run the Gelato program.
- If the result is crumbly, add a tablespoon of milk and run Re-spin.
Programme: Gelato
Total time: 30 h 5 min
Stages
- Preparation
- 18 min
- Cooking
- 12 min
- Cooling
- 30 min
- Ageing in the fridge
- 5 h
- Churning
- 35 min
- Hardening in the freezer
- 2 h
- Total time
- 8 h 35 min
Plan: what to do and when
The whole recipe takes 8 h 35 min, of which 30 min is hands-on — the rest is waiting you can spend elsewhere.
The day before (6 h)
- Prepare the mix (weigh and stir the ingredients) — 18 min
- Cook the mix — 12 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 in small scoops, drizzled with another teaspoon of oil and sprinkled with flaky salt; it is excellent with a slice of toasted white bread or with orange segments. Gelato is served at −11 to −13 °C, warmer than cream ice cream. Move the tub to the fridge 15–20 minutes before serving and work it with a spatula before scooping.
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 oil decides everything. A grassy, slightly peppery oil gives the gelato character; a bland oil disappears and leaves only fat behind.
- Always add the oil to a cold mix. In a hot one its aromatics would simply boil away.
- Do not skip the salt — without it the gelato tastes hollow. Two grams per kilogram sits exactly at the point where salt stops reading as salt.
Why it works
Olive oil is the only ingredient here that is pure fat: it adds no extra solids and no anti-freezing power at all. That is why the cream drops to 60 g and the milk solids are topped up with milk powder — fat lands at 7.9 % (gelato runs 4–10 %) and milk solids non-fat at 10.8 %. Vegetable fat also sets in smaller crystals than milk fat, so the gelato stays smooth even at this dose of oil. Salt is not only flavour: in the composition it counts as an anti-freezing agent, so those two grams lift the PAC slightly.
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How we calculate the composition · What PAC and POD mean · Balance this mix in the calculator