Pistachio Ice Cream - Real Sicilian Flavour

Recipe: Pistachio Ice Cream Recipe »

This homemade pistachio ice cream tastes just like the pistachio gelato I ate across Sicily-full of real pistachios and a silky custard base. No artificial green here, just true flavour!

About This Pistachio Ice Cream

This pistachio ice cream is based on the flavours of the pistachio gelato I ate all over Sicily. The method combines pistachios and the French method for making ice cream to produce a creamy ice cream strongly flavoured with real pistachio!

The French method for making ice cream uses cream, egg yolks and sugar to form a rich custard base. The reason why I decided to make this pistachio ice cream is because I wanted to taste a real pistachio ice cream just like the pistachio gelato we had in Sicily.

What gives this pistachio ice cream its flavour? Real pistachios and Sicilian pistachio cream. Check the labels of the pistachio ice cream available at the supermarket and they contain a very, very small amount of pistachio - between 1% and 2.5%! Pistachio gelato is different and contains more pistachios but pistachio ice creams are very under-pistachioed!

Can I make ice cream with pistachio cream? Yes, pistachio cream is perfect for making pistachio ice cream that is one of the two things that flavour this ice cream.

What is pistachio ice cream made of? It is made using Sicilian pistachios, cream, milk, sugar, egg yolks, vanilla and salt.

This pistachio ice cream does have some texture to it from the ground up pistachios. I love the texture because that means it contains real pistachio (and often they did in Sicily too). If you really don't want any texture make it purely with the pistachio cream replacing the 100g/3.5oz weight with more pistachio cream and adjust down the sugar to taste (pistachio cream is very sweet, like the pistachio version of Nutella).

Video How To Make Pistachio Ice Cream

Video: How to Make Pistachio Ice Cream

Ingredients For Pistachio Ice Cream

Pistachios - Start with whole, unroasted shelled pistachios.

Cream - Thickened cream is great for ice cream. Also using pure cream is fine too. You don't need double cream for this as it is already quite rich.

Milk- Use full cream milk instead of skim or low fat to give the ice cream a rich mouthfeel.

Pistachio cream - I use Pisti pistachio cream, not pistachio pesto. Pistachio cream is a sweet cream, similar in sweetness to Nutella. It is made with Sicilian pistachios (45%), milk powder, whey powder, vegetable fat, extra virgin olive oil and emulsifiers. Because it is so sweet, we don't add a lot of sugar to this ice cream.

Vanilla - use vanilla bean paste, vanilla extract or essence.

Sugar - we use caster or superfine sugar to blend up the pistachio.

Egg yolks - These are used to thicken up the custard and to give it body. Egg yolks also act as an emulsifier and prevent ice crystallisation.

Salt - use fine or kosher salt as this can melt and disperse in the mixture.

Tips For Making Pistachio Ice Cream

1 - We roast the pistachios at a slightly lower temperature than we would normally roast nuts (usually 180C/350F conventional or 160C/320F fan forced). Here we roast them at 140C/280F fan forced because we want them to toast but not really darken in colour. 

2 - Sicilian pistachio gelato is not bright green, it is the colour of roasted pistachios like a browny green or olive green.

3 - I think adding salt brings out the pistachio flavour so I put 1/2 teaspoon of salt in my mixture. But if you don't love salt as much as I do, use salt according to taste (you can always add more but can't take it out).

4 - Try not to over process your pistachios - you don't want them to become a paste. If it does happen, just make sure to whisk it well so that there are no lumps of paste at the bottom of the custard.

5 - Churning ice cream is an important step with this ice cream as it prevents ice crystals from forming and gives ice cream its creamier texture. For a no churn ice cream recipe try this one. You can adapt that to add pistachios and pistachio cream.

6 - There are two types of ice cream makers/churners: the first is a simple one using a frozen bowl and a churning mechanism. This requires freezing the bowl overnight in a freezer. Tip: make sure that when you shake the bowl, you can't hear any liquid sloshing around. If you do, freeze for longer until the liquid has frozen hard. The second ice cream machine has a built-in compressor so you don't need to freeze the bowl before you churn it. 

7 - I love this pistachio ice cream straight out of the churner because I like the softer texture that is more like gelato. If you prefer it more scoopable (like in the second pic), place the freshkly churned ice cream in a container in the freezer for 2 hours.If you freeze the ice cream overnight, it will need a bit of time to "ripen" and come to a scoopable texture in the fridge, around 45 minutes is usually enough to make it easily scoopable depending on how cold your fridge is.

If you're looking for ways to use up the rest of the jar of pistachio cream I have a lot of recipes using it from the Dubai pistachio chocolate dupe, pistachio tiramisu or pistachio cheesecake.

Pistachio Ice Cream Recipe

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Recipe Overview

Preparation time: 15 minutes plus 40 minutes churning and overnight freezing time

Cooking time: 8 minutes

Makes: 750g or 1.5 pints of ice cream

Ingredients Needed

• 100g/3.5ozs pistachios
• 300ml/10.6fozs pure or thickened cream
• 200ml/7flozs full cream milk
• 175g/6.ozs pistachio cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon fine salt (or to taste)
• 70g/2.5ozs caster or superfine sugar
• 2 egg yolks

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1 PREPARE - Place your ice cream maker bowl in the freezer for at least 12 hours until frozen solid. Do this 1 day ahead of time.

Step 2 ROAST - Place pistachios in a single layer on a baking tray and bake for 10 minutes at 160/320F conventional or 140C/284F fan forced. You want them to be roasted but not to change colour. Cool.

Step 3 SIMMER -  Place the cream and milk in a small saucepan and heat until almost bubbling. Whisk in the pistachio cream and vanilla until smooth. 

Step 4 TEMPER - Add a ladleful of the hot cream to the eggs and whisk to temper the eggs, then add the eggs to the rest of the hot cream along with the salt. Bring to a gentle simmer and allow to thicken while stirring to prevent it catching.

Step 5 PROCESS - By now the pistachios should be cooled. Process these with the sugar in a food processor until fine powder (Thermomix: 15 seconds, speed #9). Once the custard is ready, whisk in the pistachio sugar powder. 

Step 6 COOL - Place some cling film directly on top of the custard to prevent a skin forming. Cool completely (I place it in the fridge once most of the heat is taken out of it).

Step 7 CHURN - When your ice cream bowl is completely frozen solid, churn this chilled pistachio ice cream mixture for 40 minutes. It will have a soft serve/almost gelato texture when it has finished churning (which is when it is best!). Transfer it to a container in the freezer and freeze for 2 hours where it will be scoopable.

Substitution notes:

Some like subbing vanilla for almond essence but I am not a fan of almond essence personally. But you do you!

If you can't access pistachio cream you can use the same weight in ground pistachios. You will need to add more sugar to replace the sweetness in pistachio cream. Add another 100g/3.5ozs of sugar on top of the existing sugar (or to taste).

Personal Note

The funniest thing happened when I was making my first batch of this gelato. Mr NQN's brother Manu had been staying at our house while we were away and left a range of food in the fridge behind. He goes through all of the eggs we have and he usually replaces them (we don't ask him to, he's just being thoughtful).

I saw a carton of eggs in the fridge so I thought that these were the replacements. When I went to add them to my egg tray I noticed that there were only six eggs in the carton which was a bit odd but I just added them to my egg tray anyway.

When I made the Matilda chocolate cake I cracked one egg and it felt a bit different, like the shell wouldn't crack. Then I realised that Manu had left them in the carton because the eggs were already boiled!

The only problem was that I didn't know which eggs in my egg tray were boiled or raw. So for the next few recipes I had to take out extra eggs just in case I came across another boiled one. So far I've only come across another boiled egg so this guessing game will continue util the tray is finished!

So tell me Dear Reader, do you check the labels of what you buy? Would you be annoyed if something only had 1% of an ingredient or do you expect that?

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