How to achieve a flexible consistency on ice cream? (photos attached)

Question

I'm an amateur ice cream maker. I've tried to emulate this ice cream without success: it is thick and flexible; the texture reminds me of melted marshmallows yet it´s not overly sweet. It's so flexible it hangs from the spoon without dripping even when it was already soft. I bought it from a small shop downtown.

It is a dairy based ice cream. I've done ice creams with milk, cream and cream cheese but the resulting flavour is overly milky and barely creamy.

I don´t know what should I add/do to achieve this kind of consistency: more animal fat, vegetable fats, sugar, whipped egg whites, some special chemical?

I add photos for visual proof.

Answer 1

Ice cream is smooth because churning breaks up ice crystals, and sugar, fat and egg yolks prevent the ice crystals from re-forming. Pure ice cream can be relatively elastic when frozen just by having lots of sugar, fat, and egg yolks in it. However, you cannot achieve this sort of elasticity in ice cream when it's above freezing without stabilizers like Xanthan Gum and Guar Gum. These are more effective emulsifiers/stabilizers than eggs and work at a higher temperature than eggs do.

Many stabilizers are natural products, Xanthan gum is the product of bacterial formation and Guar gum is processed bean paste, so I personally have no problem with them and use them in my ice cream sometimes to improve the texture. Mostly I just use more egg yolks - my ice cream rarely last long enough to melt anyway.

I think in this case the creaminess you describe is more of a mouth feel thing rather than a flavor, if you want to replicate it I'd suggest getting more eggs in your recipe and consider adding some guar gum.

Answer 2

There are a few places that make 'ice cream' that is really frozen pudding -- especially the places that 'mix in' other stuff in front of you. It keeps it from turning into a complete liquid as they're working. Although many assume the trick is from American industrialization, it's possible that it's derived from techniques used in warmer climates.

Dondurma (Turkish ice cream) uses salep (an orcid root) flour, which is similar to guar gum and mastic gum. As you can't get salep outside of Turkey, there are alternate recipes that use other gums.

I remember seeing a tv show that was talking about 'stretchy' ice cream, and I thought they mentioned that it was a South American style. It's possible that I'm mis-remembering, but I wouldn't be surprised if another hot climate found a way to make ice cream using stabilizers.

You might also want to consider how much air you're whipping into the ice cream. Both gelato and what Serious Eats calls 'New England Ice Cream' have a bit more body to them than other ice creams.

Answer 3

What you’re describing indeed looks like Turkish Dondurma. As it was mentioned, Dondurma uses Salep, a root extract from some species orchards, unfortunately it’s very low in supply (it’s wildly grown); and can not be exported from Turkey. Salep owes its texture to Glucomannan, and Konjac also has the same molecules. So it can be substituted with Konjac.

Simple custard based ice cream with 1% Konjac is what you need to get that consistency.