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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