Mint Chocolate Chip Gelato
Mint Chocolate Chip Gelato
My favourite flavour in the gelato series – a lovely fresh mint chocolate chip!
If you haven’t tried fresh mint in a gelato before – it brings this amazing fresh flavour, very different to the usual artificial mint flavouring. We cheat a little bit with a touch of green food colouring (otherwise the blended mint leaves turn the mixture grey!) and then stir through some chocolate curls at the end. A really sophisticated taste in my opinion!
A high end gelato/ice cream machine is really important here too, as the built-in chiller will maintain a constant cold temperature to ensure small ice crystal formation while the mixture churns. I use the Musso Lussino 4080.
Ingredients
Method
Pick the fresh mint leaves and place them onto a large silicon mat. Sprinkle over 50g of the caster sugar and fold the silicon mat over the leaves. Use a rolling pin to roll back and forth until it breaks downs the leaves and forms a wet paste. It can be a little dry initially but just scoop up and leaves that might fall out and keep rolling! It will only take a minute or so. Add the mint mixture into a large bowl.
Stir the remaining 55g of sugar into a small dish with the ice cream stabiliser and set to one side.
Into a medium saucepan, add the milk, cream, skimmed milk powder & glucose.
Place it over a medium heat and cook it until it reaches 45C/113F on a digital thermometer. Immediately tip in the egg yolks and sugar/stabiliser mixture and continue to whisk until it reaches 85C/189F on a digital thermometer.
Immediately pour it over the mint leaves and add just a touch of green food colour powder. Briefly blend with a hand blender with a few pulses to incorporate. About 6-10 pulses should be enough. Don't blend like crazy.
Pour it through a sieve and into a large bowl.
Place the bowl in a sink full of ice water and stir occasionally, for about 15-20 minutes. In the gelato books it will tell you to cool it to around 4C/39F but that is tough at home so once it is around 12-15C that is fine! Cover the surface of the mixture with clingfilm and refrigerate it overnight so that the gelato base can mature. This will improve the texture and taste.
The next day, if you are using an ice cream/gelato machine with a chilling unit, turn it on about 15 minutes ahead of time to get the bowl cold. If you are using a stand mixer freezer bowl there is no need to do this - although note you will not get the best texture with one of these as they cannot chill the gelato to the correct temperature.
Blend the mint gelato base one more time and then pour it into your machine to churn. It will take anywhere from 15-30 minutes depending on your machine.
Just as the gelato is finished, churn in the chocolate curls right at the end.
The gelato should be a scoop-able texture but depending on your machine, may need to go back into the freezer for a few hours to firm up. Scoop it into a container and freeze it. Ideally this needs to be churned and served on the same day so up to 6 hours in the freezer is long enough. As the gelato freezes, the sugars begin to re-crystallise which makes the gelato go icy. As the recipe has a stabiliser in it along with skimmed milk powder, we are doing everything we can to trap as much water too, but eventually the texture will deteriorate.
Note - if you are using a different fat percentage of cream, say 36%, there is no need to adjust the recipe. It will just have slightly more fat in compared to 32% so will be a slight difference in texture/mouthfeel.
Ingredients
Directions
Pick the fresh mint leaves and place them onto a large silicon mat. Sprinkle over 50g of the caster sugar and fold the silicon mat over the leaves. Use a rolling pin to roll back and forth until it breaks downs the leaves and forms a wet paste. It can be a little dry initially but just scoop up and leaves that might fall out and keep rolling! It will only take a minute or so. Add the mint mixture into a large bowl.
Stir the remaining 55g of sugar into a small dish with the ice cream stabiliser and set to one side.
Into a medium saucepan, add the milk, cream, skimmed milk powder & glucose.
Place it over a medium heat and cook it until it reaches 45C/113F on a digital thermometer. Immediately tip in the egg yolks and sugar/stabiliser mixture and continue to whisk until it reaches 85C/189F on a digital thermometer.
Immediately pour it over the mint leaves and add just a touch of green food colour powder. Briefly blend with a hand blender with a few pulses to incorporate. About 6-10 pulses should be enough. Don't blend like crazy.
Pour it through a sieve and into a large bowl.
Place the bowl in a sink full of ice water and stir occasionally, for about 15-20 minutes. In the gelato books it will tell you to cool it to around 4C/39F but that is tough at home so once it is around 12-15C that is fine! Cover the surface of the mixture with clingfilm and refrigerate it overnight so that the gelato base can mature. This will improve the texture and taste.
The next day, if you are using an ice cream/gelato machine with a chilling unit, turn it on about 15 minutes ahead of time to get the bowl cold. If you are using a stand mixer freezer bowl there is no need to do this - although note you will not get the best texture with one of these as they cannot chill the gelato to the correct temperature.
Blend the mint gelato base one more time and then pour it into your machine to churn. It will take anywhere from 15-30 minutes depending on your machine.
Just as the gelato is finished, churn in the chocolate curls right at the end.
The gelato should be a scoop-able texture but depending on your machine, may need to go back into the freezer for a few hours to firm up. Scoop it into a container and freeze it. Ideally this needs to be churned and served on the same day so up to 6 hours in the freezer is long enough. As the gelato freezes, the sugars begin to re-crystallise which makes the gelato go icy. As the recipe has a stabiliser in it along with skimmed milk powder, we are doing everything we can to trap as much water too, but eventually the texture will deteriorate.
Note - if you are using a different fat percentage of cream, say 36%, there is no need to adjust the recipe. It will just have slightly more fat in compared to 32% so will be a slight difference in texture/mouthfeel.
Hi Matt! Can a Ninja Creami machine be used as a substitute to your fancy gelato machine?
Should be fine!
Can we use any ice cream stabliser? And substitute for dextrose?
Any generic pre mixed stabiliser works! I’m afraid dextrose is important in gelato for the texture and sweetness balance, but you don’t need it in this recipe, just glucose.
Hi Matt, I’m using this recipe for basil and lemon! Above you say dextrose is important (in response to another comment) so now I’m confused as the recipe has glucose syrup I. It and I can’t see anything about dextrose?
Sorry I think they were referring to another recipe in their comment. no dextrose in this one!
Hi Matt, can you use Ground Arrowroot instead of Locust Bean Gum ?
I’m afraid I haven’t used that before
Hi Matt,
This is my all time favourite ice cream flavour!
Being from South Africa, I am not sure if I would be able to find ice cream stabiliser here. Could it work without and what do you expect would be different as a result?
You can skip it, but the texture will not be as good unfortunately as it won’t set as well and will be slightly icier as the stabiliser helps to reduce ice crystal size. But if you serve it fresh out of the churner I’m sure it will still be delish!
Thank you for your reply!
Hi,
Just finished this, mint from the garden and some good chock, very good mint flavour.
I have to say it came out a tad watery. As I could not find a good cream I ended up mixing single and double cream. Looking back at at the NSNF I might have been a tad low and should probably have compensated this via upping the SMP.
Thoughts?
Thanks Jason! Yes single cream will be too low in fat so it will affect the texture. Have a go with all double cream and see how you get on!
Could you suggest any egg replacement or eggfree recipes please.
I’m afraid not
Would rather use xanthan gun. Arrowroot is a start won’t have the same effect