Brown Butter Ice Cream, Glace au Beurre Noisette

By Dustin

Ingredients

• 225 g/8oz/1cup butter
• 350 ml/12oz/1.5 cup milk
• 350 ml/12oz/1.5 cup cream
• 110 g/1/2 cup sugar
• 6 yolks
• 1 teaspoon salt

Details

Servings 1
Adapted from chezpim.com

Preparation

Step 1

First you make the beurre noisette. Cut butter into cubes and place in a medium pot over medium heat. As the butter cooks it will bubble up quite a bit so make sure you use a big enough pot to prevent a boil-over. Let the butter melt, shake the pan occasionally so there’s no hot spots. As the big bubbles in the pot begin to subside, keep a watchful eye over it, as soon as brown specks appear and the liquid butter is golden brown, remove the pot from heat and pour the brown butter into another bowl immediately. Left in the hot pot, the butter will continue to cook and might turn too dark. Frankly this sounds more complicated than it really is. It’s really not that hard. If your brown butter turn just a tad too brown, just strain it and don’t use the brown bits. If it’s perfectly brown, like the picture to the above right, you don’t need to strain it, the brown bits are butter solids which add flavor to the brown butter and, eventually, your ice cream.

The you can make your ice cream base. (I do this mostly in a blender. Yes, you read it right, your regular old blender will do just fine.) Rinse out the pot you just made brown butter in and give it a quick wipe, divide the sugar evenly (or evenly-ish) between the pot and the glass bowl of your blender. Pour the milk into the pot over the sugar and place the pot over low heat. Stir to blend and leave the pot over the heat to warm up the milk. Turn your attention back to the blender, add the yolks, and give it a whirl (that’s to say turn it on) for a few seconds to blend. Then, as the blender is running, slowly pour the warm brown butter into the yolk and sugar mixture and blend until the liquid butter is fully incorporated into the sugar/yolk mixture. When this is done, turn your attention back to the pot, the milk/sugar mixture should be close to a simmer by now. As soon as it does, turn the blender on again and pour the warm milk into it and process until well-incorporated. Add the salt, give it another whirl to mix.

At this point, if you’re somewhat germ-phobic, or if you’re not entirely confident of the quality of your eggs, you can pour the whole mixture back into the pot and bring everything to a simmer (or 160F/70C if you want to be all precise about it.) If you do this, make sure you do it over very low heat and keep stirring to prevent the ice cream base from curdling or being overcooked.

If you were me, you’d skip the previous paragraph entirely. What I do next is just pour the cold cream into the custard base in the blender, give it another whirl to mix. Then pour the ice cream base into a bowl, cover and place in the fridge until completely cold before churning, in your ice cream maker, according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Also, if you were me, you’d also sprinkle a big pinch of flaky fleur de sel into your ice cream machine when it’s close to done. I love the surprising crunch when I come upon one of those flakes as I devour the ice cream.

The ice cream is great on its own, and amazing served à la mode with a slice of fruit tart or pie.