Strawberry Ice Cream

Nothing is more innocent than strawberry ice cream, right? It's just strawberries with milk and there you go — a perfect strawberry ice cream. I thought so too, but it's a bit more complicated than that. In fact, nailing the right proportions of cream versus fruit is a hard task. Strawberries are high in water, and it's hard to get a good ice cream consistency that won't get completely crystallized in the freezer over time. The standard ice cream guidelines are constantly changing, and it's important to evaluate (and experiment with) various proportions to get to the desired consistency.

A few insights for a great strawberry ice cream

• Use the best strawberries. This rule applies to every ice cream or sorbet, but it's actually crucial for this one — you really want a sweet, strong flavor here, not a dull, boring one. I often ask myself if the ice cream is even made from real strawberries.

• Go for a light-body ice cream. Trying to make it with a rich base will give you a tender scoop easily, but it'll result in a mild strawberry taste. For this flavor, I actually prefer strawberry sorbet, so convincing me to skip the egg yolks was easy.
• Add fresh chunks of strawberries soaked in alcohol. The benefits of sugar and alcohol in ice cream — reducing freezing point and melting temperature — are well known.

The recipe below was adapted from Serious Eats — they nailed the right proportions of fat versus fresh fruit and got a great result. My modifications were reducing the sugar and replacing some of the half-and-half with milk and heavy cream. I've tried different strawberry ice creams, and I have to say each recipe has its advantages. It also depends a lot on personal taste. But a good ice cream is just a good ice cream — if you can pull off a strong fruit flavor with a solid consistency, you've done a good job.