In March, I wrote about some of the ice creams I had made, which prompted frequent and knowledgeable commenter Faustian Bargain to say, “You should try goat's milk ice cream with nothing to flavour it but luscious, fat vanilla beans. It will be a revelation, I assure you.”
I like Lãloo's commercial goat milk ice cream, and so FB's comment nestled into my head until I spied goat milk in the refrigerator at Rainbow Grocery.
I came home like a little boy with a snazzy toy. The Perfect Scoop doesn't have a goat milk ice cream, but On Food and Cooking notes that goat milk has the same fat and protein content as cow milk. Given that, I made a batch of my basic ice cream, replacing the whole milk with my new ingredient.
That first batch was delicious, rich with the flavor of cream and egg and vanilla. But it lacked the grassy tartness of the goat milk. My second batch, sporting 2 cups of goat milk and 1 cup of cream instead of equal amounts, gave me the exact flavor I wanted: a tangy finish and a grassy, barnyardy undercurrent. It was less creamy, obviously, so on the next round I might add a tiny bit of vodka to soften the final ice cream.
Technique: Goat Milk Ice Cream
- 2 cups whole goat milk
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 vanilla bean
- 2 egg yolks and 1 egg
- good medium-sized pot
- good thermometer
- fine-mesh sieve
- Put goat milk and 1/2 cup sugar into pot. Split vanilla bean down the middle, scrape the seeds into the milk, and add the denuded pod. Stir well to combine. Make an ice bath, put the cream into a bowl, and set the bowl into the ice bath. Put the sieve over the bowl.
- Combine eggs and 1/4 cup sugar in a bowl, and whisk them until light and fluffy. Meanwhile, put the pot with milk, sugar, and vanilla over a medium flame.
- Heat the milk until it reaches 175°. Temper the egg mixture by pouring 1/2 cup of the hot milk into it, whisking constantly, and then add the eggs back to the pot, whisking as you do. Heat the custard until it reaches 185°, stirring constantly.
- Pour the custard through the sieve and into the bowl with the cream that's sitting in the ice bath. Stir the mixture until the base cools. Add the vanilla pod back into the custard (it will have been caught by the sieve), and cover the bowl with plastic wrap, pushing it down so that it touches the custard's surface.
- Refrigerate for 8 hours, and make ice cream according to your machine's instructions.
