Hi Alton brown here with uh my new book, Good Eats 4: The Final Years, which encompasses all the culinary know-how in recipes from two seasons of Good Eats: The Return and three seasons of Good Eats: Reloaded. Ah! You say there were only two seasons of reloads. True. But we prepped a third that we never actually got to shoot, and all those recipes are here too. Take, for instance, our serious vanilla ice cream from the 1999 episode "Churn Baby Churn." Now the original ice cream was was good, but it relied on peach preserves. Why? Pectin, a starch, a heteropolysaccharide, technically. Think of it as the gelatin of the plant world. It's like glue that holds cells together, and when extracted allows things like jam and marmalade to set into gels. also used by premium ice cream makers because it enhances mouth feel and slows the melting process by literally holding the liquid, that ice cream is, together longer. The problem not everybody wants peach in their vanilla, so we're switching over to a liquid pectin, okay? Um also in this reload, we're moving away from vanilla bean, whole bean, to vanilla bean paste. Which is more intense in something like ice cream. Certainly a lot, you know, easier to use than the beans. And don't get me started on extracts, I do not like them at cold applications. Okay! Hold on, because this is our best ice cream period. Once upon a time, there were two cups of half and half. A cup of heavy cream. 150 grams, three quarters, of a cup of sugar. A quarter of a cup of water. A tablespoon, it's 15 grams, of liquid pectin. Available in most mega marts. Two tablespoons of vanilla bean paste. And an eighth of a teaspoon of kosher salt. Combine one quarter cup, 50 grams, of the sugar with the water in a small saucepan. Place over medium-high heat, and bring to a boil, stirring frequently. About three minutes. Stir in the pectin. Return to a full boil, and then continue stirring and boiling for exactly one minute. Remove from the heat, and leave at room temperature to cool. About 25 minutes. Yes the pectin liquid will set up kind of like the blob. That's actually a good thing. Also look, I know that powdered pectins are preferred by a lot of jam makers, but I find that liquid pectins, uh, provide better mouth feel in frozen desserts. So just go with me on this. Combine the remaining half cup of sugar with one tablespoon of the vanilla bean paste. [Bell Ring SFX] Vanilla paste is sticky stuff, so I weigh the sugar first to make a little divot in the top, add the paste and re-weigh. No muss no fuss. With the half and half cream, add the salt in a medium saucepan. Place over medium heat, and stir frequently until the mixture comes to 185 degrees. It'll take five to seven minutes. Then remove from the heat, cover, and steep for 20 minutes. So vanilla bean paste may be new to some of you. It's a sugar thickened paste. It contains a vanilla bean powder and solids, meaning those little seeds that you see, you know, in a lot of ice creams. Now, I think that it's more intense, um and kind of more rounded than whole bean or extracts. And it's easily found on the interwebs. Where was I? Oh yeah! Thoroughly stir the cooled pectin mixture into the dairy, along with the remaining tablespoon vanilla bean paste. Why the second dose of vanilla, you ask? Well, think of the first dose of singing bass, and the second one, after the heat, singing soprano. You're not buying that. Okay fine, just trust me, I've tried it a bunch of ways and this tastes better. Pay attention. Set the pan inside a bowl of ice and stir to shock the mixture down to room temp. Transfer to airtight containment, and refrigerate for at least six hours or up to 24. Okay. Steeping allows for infusion of flavors, uh mellowing, if you will. But also, it gives us a head start on cooling. And we want it cool, because we're going to refrigerate this mixture for at least six, and hopefully more like 24 hours, before churning. Now that's partly because of the flavor development, but also because of enzymatic changes in the dairy, that will enhance the texture of the final ice cream. this aging process is absolutely necessary for top ice creams. Assemble your ice cream churn according to the manufacturer's instructions, of course. Now if you're using an electric machine, with or without, a frozen core turn it on, and then pour in the mixture to prevent seizing. Turn the ice cream until it reaches soft serve consistency. 20 to 30 minutes, depending on the ice cream maker. Okay, that right there is called soft serve consistency, and that is the best that you can expect from most countertop machines. At this point, you move the mixture quickly to three pint containers. That's right, the mixture is expanded because of the ice crystals. So now instead of two pints, it's two and a half. Lucky. You. But it needs to harden in the freezer for at least a few hours before you serve it, okay? Now I like to do this in separate containers rather than just a big one, because then you can just soften what you need. Single servings in my case. Alright, as for serving options. Well I think this should be done in a bowl. Cone!?! We don't need no stinking... Oh, well maybe... There. And so goes our reloaded serious vanilla ice cream. Hmmm, I'll get to that later. Now that, um, and a lot of other recipes will be at your fingertips, if you purchase your own copy of Good Eats 4: The Later Years. Available wherever books, of this general size and shape with photos of bald guys on the cover, are sold. [Bell Ring SFX] Can I eat that ice cream? Okay good! Cut!
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