Curious Cook

Recipe: Ice Cream in a Bag

Time: 40 minutes

3 to 4 pounds ice (10 cups or more)

1/2 cup table salt or 1 cup kosher salt, plus a pinch

1 cup milk

1 cup heavy cream

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract.

1. Pour all the ice into a large glass or plastic bowl, cover it with salt, and stir.

2. In a bowl, mix milk, heavy cream, sugar, vanilla extract and a pinch of salt together until sugar dissolves. Pour into a sealable 1-gallon freezer bag, push out as much air as possible, and seal.

3. Place a wide plastic bowl with a lid, like a salad spinner bowl, on a kitchen towel. Fill bowl with about half the ice. Lay freezer bag on ice and flatten it with your hand. Dump rest of the ice, along with any melted water, on top of bag, leaving zipper edge exposed. Place lid on the bowl. Let rest for 15 minutes, shaking it once or twice to redistribute ice and brine.

4. Pour about half the ice and brine into another bowl. Lift bag out by the zipper edge and lay it on a towel. (Avoid touching ice or brine, which are cold enough to cause frostbite.) Cover your hands with another towel and gently knead frozen areas for about a minute to mix them with liquid.

5. Return freezer bag to bowl, laying it flat on ice. Cover it with reserved ice and brine. Put lid on bowl and freeze as above for another 15 minutes.

6. Remove bag and carefully towel off the brine. Serve ice cream, or keep bag in freezer until ready to serve.

Yield: One pint.

Note: You can use this method to freeze any ice cream or sorbet mix. If you make ice cream regularly, you can eliminate ice cubes and reuse salt. Make a brine with 3 quarts water and 1 pound salt, divide it between two 1-gallon freezer bags, and store bags flat in freezer. To make ice cream, sandwich the bag of mix between brine bags, enclosing stack in towels.

August 6, 2008

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

In the Summer Kitchen, the Thrill of the Chill

IT lasted only a moment, but it was the most refreshed I’ve ever felt at the dining table. All of a sudden my mouth was shockingly cold, so cold that I could see my breath. As the cold dissipated I could sense acidity, astringency, the aroma of lime. Meanwhile, there was the sight of my companions, eyes wide open and vapor jets shooting from their lips and nostrils. Each of them looked like Yosemite Sam blowing his stack.

The morsels that had cleansed our palates and minds were a mixture of lime juice, green tea, vodka, sugar and egg white that was whipped into a light foam, portioned into spoonfuls, and frozen. At 320 degrees below zero. In liquid nitrogen.

The nitro-poached mousse was invented in 2001 at the Fat Duck, near London, and has been much emulated since. These days there is less talk in cutting-edge kitchens about burners and B.T.U.’s, and more about the Antigriddle, a boxy flat-top appliance that keeps its surface at minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit. With it you could, for example, freeze puddles of crème anglaise and flip them into soft-center ice cream flapjacks. Cold is the new heat.

In the summer kitchen, cold is welcome relief from heat. And it’s an underexploited asset. You can do many useful and delicious things with an ordinary refrigerator and ice cubes, but you need to know a few tricks to make the most of them.

Curious Cook in the New York Times: Cold in the kitchen

In today's Curious Cook column I write about the uses of cold in the summer kitchen, including a method and recipe for freezing ice cream and sorbet mixes in 30 minutes without a machine.