Pistachio Nut Ice Cream
In the interest of full disclosure, we are sharing the whole story about how this pistachio ice cream came to be. Developing this ice cream recipe has been a couple months in the making. Back when we made the pistachio gelato that kicked off National Ice Cream Month in July our Chief Culinary Consultant tasted it and wasn’t blown away. And since he is always 100% honest in his reviews of our concoctions (which we totally love since we know when something is REALLY good or still needs work), we know if he tells us our pistachio gelato needs an overhaul to become great pistachio ice cream, we need to head back to the kitchen with our mad scientist cap on. Since pistachio is one of his favorite ice cream flavors, we set out to reliable from-scratch pistachio ice cream.
We should note that some other people did try the pistachio gelato and liked it. It doesn’t have the same consistency as ice cream and is chock full of finely chopped pistachios so it is different than store-bought pistachio ice cream, so you can use your own judgment based on your personal preferences to determine which you’d like to try. Or try both and come back and let us know what you thought!
Now the problem that we ran into is that we couldn’t actually find many recipes for pistachio ice cream that were what we were looking for. So we set out on creating our own. We knew a few things from the start:
#1: Lots of little chunks of nuts = no good. We needed to get the pistachio flavor in the ice cream without all the ground up nuts in order to preserve a creamy ice cream consistency.
#2: Egg yolks. We knew that using egg yolks as the base of our custard would greatly enhance the texture of the ice cream.
#3: But where are the nuts? Even though we wanted to get rid of the ground nuts we still needed nuts in the recipe because, well, it’s pistachio nut ice cream.
Okay, so here’s how it all came together. We started reading cookbooks and looking at recipes online, even though we knew we wouldn’t use any of them in their entirety. We were looking for how the flavor was developed, and how ingredients and methods were used. We remembered back when we made vanilla ice cream, that the vanilla bean and seeds were steeped in the milk and cream to extract a lot of the flavor. Bingo! We still ground up the pistachios, but then steeped them in the hot milk/cream mixture, and then strained them out so that all of the flavor remained, but the ice cream wasn’t full of ground pistachio chunks. We basically proceeded with the rest of the recipe has we had with the vanilla, adjusting the flavors slightly and then folding in coarsely chopped pistachios at the end.
We are happy to report that we developed a winner. We used this ice cream as the pistachio layer in our Italian spumoni, which also got rave reviews from everyone who tasted it.
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Don’t forget! If you’re dying to make from-scratch ice cream and cursing yourself for not having an ice cream maker, head straight to this tutorial on how to make from-scratch ice cream without an ice cream maker!
Pistachio Nut Ice Cream
Yield: 1 quarts This from-scratch ice cream is to good not to try!- 1 ⅓ cups (164 g) shelled pistachio nuts
- ¾ cup (150 g) sugar
- 2 cups (476 ml) heavy cream
- 1 cup (244 ml) whole milk
- Pinch of salt
- 6 large egg yolks
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon (0.5 teaspoon) almond extract
- ¾ cup (92.25 g) pistachios, coarsely chopped
- 1. Grind the 1 1/3 cups of pistachios in a food processor until finely ground, but not to a paste. Set aside.
- 2. In a medium saucepan, warm the milk, sugar, 1 cup of the cream, and salt, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Stir in the ground nuts. Cover, remove from the heat, and let steep for at least 30 minutes.
- 3. Strain the warm nut mixture, pressing on the nuts to extract as much liquid as possible, and discard the solids. Return the milk and cream mixture to the saucepan. Pour the remaining 1 cup cream into a large bowl and set a mesh strainer on top. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warm mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly, then scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan.
- 4. Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula. Pour the custard through the strainer and stir it into the cream. Add the vanilla extract and almond extract and stir until combined.
- 5. Refrigerate until cold. Pour into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s directions. Once finished churning, fold in the ¾ cup pistachios with a rubber spatula.
- **You’ll notice this pistachio isn’t bright green like you find in stores. We didn’t use any food coloring, so this is all natural, but you can add a couple drops of green food coloring if you’re looking for a deeper green shade.
Notes
Nutritional values are based on the whole recipe
- Yield: 1 quarts
- Prep: 30 minutes
- Cook: 15 minutes
- Total: 45 minutes
Ingredients
- 1 ⅓ cups ( 164 g ) shelled pistachio nuts
- ¾ cup ( 150 g ) sugar
- 2 cups ( 476 ml ) heavy cream
- 1 cup ( 244 ml ) whole milk
- Pinch of salt
- 6 large egg yolks
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon ( 0.5 teaspoon ) almond extract
- ¾ cup ( 92.25 g ) pistachios, coarsely chopped
Method
- 1. Grind the 1 1/3 cups of pistachios in a food processor until finely ground, but not to a paste. Set aside.
- 2. In a medium saucepan, warm the milk, sugar, 1 cup of the cream, and salt, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Stir in the ground nuts. Cover, remove from the heat, and let steep for at least 30 minutes.
- 3. Strain the warm nut mixture, pressing on the nuts to extract as much liquid as possible, and discard the solids. Return the milk and cream mixture to the saucepan. Pour the remaining 1 cup cream into a large bowl and set a mesh strainer on top. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warm mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly, then scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan.
- 4. Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula. Pour the custard through the strainer and stir it into the cream. Add the vanilla extract and almond extract and stir until combined.
- 5. Refrigerate until cold. Pour into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s directions. Once finished churning, fold in the ¾ cup pistachios with a rubber spatula.
- **You’ll notice this pistachio isn’t bright green like you find in stores. We didn’t use any food coloring, so this is all natural, but you can add a couple drops of green food coloring if you’re looking for a deeper green shade.
