Adding Xanthan gum powder to the primary ingredients when making ice cream produces a smooth texture ice cream, in part by preventing the formation of large ice crystals when the ice cream is hard frozen. The reality is that ice crystal formation is limited also during the initial making of the ice cream. The smooth texture also results from increasing the final volume of ice cream produced from a given volume of ingredients.
Xanthan gum powder is one of a few different thickeners/stabilizers used to enhance ice cream physical properties commercially. Thickeners/stabilizers are unfortunately often used to cheat you, for the apparent volume of one and one half quarts of ice cream in a box, if allowed to totally melt, will be far less than one and one half quarts. Beyond that, if the thickeners/stabilizers were not used the difference would be even greater. Read below to learn how to test ice creams to measure the severity of the cheating problem for any given brand.
Food Nirvana recipes for frozen desserts do not include any specific reference to using Xanthan gum powder. What you are to do is remember the directions shown below in this primer and apply them to each Food Nirvana frozen dessert recipe as you find appropriate. In general that means you may want to try making the ice cream without Xanthan gum powder first, then decide if you need to eliminate large ice crystals that form during hard freezing. If so, by all means use the directions shown below.
What I have done later in this primer is provide one vanilla ice cream recipe that combines the best of the best and creates totally excellent ice cream. I'm calling it, "All Out Vanilla Ice Cream." You definitely want to get all of the ingredients and make it as it will make you look like a professional! A dish of it with my homegrown fresh sliced strawberries on top got rave reviews. What a fine combination ...
I've had variable ice crystal formation results making many different ice creams, and in my search to find best solutions to address ice crystal formation I came across an Internet discussion about using Xanthan gum powder to make ice cream "creamy." Unfortunately, I became irritated with the presentation that basically said cream really isn't necessary to have great ice cream. Hogwash! The result is my caustic comments in this advisory on how to make creamy ice cream, so I ask for your forebearance in advance. I simply got angry reading distorted, incomplete "information."
Smooth texture ice cream made by the addition of Xanthan gum powder tastes high in fat, but does not "require" heavy cream to produce a creaminess effect, so you can easily understand what commercial producers of ice cream typically do to save money (Dairies? Let's get real!). What the producers do is cheat you of heavy cream with a cheap substitute. You are misled into believing you are eating a quality product, simply because it appears to be creamy. That misconception is easily identified if you sample some truly high quality ice cream at the same time you sample the cheap stuff (cheap in ingredients, not price!). The difference(s) will be quite obvious.
My favorite example of absurd change is related to Breyer's® frozen product that is sold like ice cream in the same freezer sections in supermarkets, but nowhere on the box is it called ice cream. Why? Well, simply because it isn't ice cream! It is a concoction of various ingredients to make it seem like ice cream ... and the price? Oh, yes ... also absurd given the cheap cost of the ingredients. It is kind of like seeing a girl you used to love when you were young, who was so perfect ... but who then fell in with the wrong crowd and became something else. She kind of looks the same, but inside you know she is different, and clearly not the dream of your youth. How sad.
Okay. Some limited use of Xanthan gum powder does make a lot of sense to avoid ice crystal formation, which can/will often happen during the hard freezing period after the ice cream has been made, regardless of the quality of the ingredients you use. So, what is this stuff?
Xanthan gum is made from the fermentation of sugars found in corn starch, making it ideal for people allergic to gluten. Look for Xanthan gum powder on the Internet. Buy it by the pound from bulk suppliers, like www.bulkfoods.com. Do not waste your money on small amounts from numerous ripoff sellers found on Amazon® and other places, like health food stores.
You can add Xanthan gum powder to the ice cream base when you are making your favorite ice cream, sherbet or sorbet recipe to create a creamy frozen dessert, even with low fat ingredients. This, of course, is cheating, unless you are on a strict diet.
The elimination of ice crystals is sufficient reason to use a small amount of Xanthan gum powder. Reduction or elimination of heavy cream is, in contrast, idiotic. Ergo, do you want to eat artificial goo or do you want a genuinely fine ice cream with no ice crystals?
There is one special point to make that is very important. Xanthan gum powder will tend to clump together in any stationary liquid medium, making it hard, or nearly impossible, to mix in evenly into the ice cream base. You avoid that potential problem by sprinkling the powder into an agitating mixture of ingredients. Ergo, use an electric mixer for introducing the powder when you are making frozen desserts or use a blender when you are making food products like salad dressings.
Directions:
At the time of creating this primer on using Xanthan gum powder for ice cream I did not actually know the best amount to use. After making a batch of mint chocolate chip I concluded the recipe amount recommended from the Internet recipe is pretty good. That means the texture and creaminess right out of the gelato maker are fine. I tested the ice crystal formation by hard freezing the ice cream and waiting an additional 24 hours to check the final texture ... and the answer is the Xanthan gum really works well to make the ice cream easy to dispense and with no detectable large ice crystal formation. But read on ...
Normally an ice cream maker or gelato maker will cause freezing and expansion of the volume of liquid put into the machine. As Ben & Jerry note, a good ice cream should be expanded about 20% from the original liquid volume due to the introduction of air during the freezing process. Were it not for the introduced air then the ice cream would be hard like a block of ice.
This means that one of the dirty tricks used in making ice cream commercially is to introduce around 30% or more air from extended mixing and by using products like Xanthan gum powder to thicken and thus stabilize the ice cream later when it is starting to melt. Were it not for thickeners acting as stabilizers the cheap ice creams would melt into little puddles and provoke your anger at seeing how badly you are being cheated.
If you are curious you can do a very simple test of any ice cream to detect excessive use of thickeners/stabilizers. The basic idea is to compare the weights of a given volume of product, across multiple products. Weigh one pint of a 2 to 1 mixture of heavy cream and milk and multiply the answer by 3. Then weigh a one and one half quart package of typical commercial vanilla ice cream, subtracting about 3% for the weight of the box. Then weigh a pint of high quality vanilla ice cream removed from it's container and multiply that weight by 3. The cream/milk mixture weight corresponds to no expansion of liquid ice cream ingredients. The ordinary commercial ice cream weight corresponds to the amount of expansion due to introduction of air in the presence of thickener/stabilizer. The multiplied weight of the high quality ice cream corresponds to what the ice cream should weigh with the proper amount of air expansion. I guarantee that you will be shocked to learn how badly you are cheated when buying ordinary commercial ice creams.
I've noted that the use of Xanthan gum powder increases the final volume of the ice cream, and you can do what commercial producers do by doing extended mixing time to increase volume by introducing more air, the point being that thickeners like Xanthan gum powder keep the ice cream from freezing hard in the ice cream or gelato machine. In effect, the ice cream you take out is like soft serve ice cream even with extended mixing/freezing time. The effect is pretty obvious, in that liquid ingredients of a volume of seven cups can easily produce ten cups of ice cream if you do extended mixing, like 40 minutes instead of 25 or 30 minutes (the normal freezing time). Going from seven to ten cups is actually a 43% expansion! A proper 20% expansion of seven cups of liquid would produce only about eight and one half cups of ice cream.
The soft serve effect is, of course, temporarily gone when you hard freeze the ice cream. But note that the extra expansion and elimination of large ice crystal formation makes the ice cream easy to dispense. That is an obvious advantage. It is up to you to decide the proper balance point in mixing time to control ice cream density.
I've provided the general directions from the Internet recipe I found for using Xanthan gum powder, rather modified, in the instructions below.
Combine the ice cream base ingredients in an electric mixer mixing bowl as directed by your recipe.
Determine the amount of Xanthan gum powder to use by multiplying the number of quarts of liquid in the recipe by ¼ to calculate the number of teaspoons of Xanthan gum powder needed. For example, a recipe with 2 quarts of liquid would need: 2 x ¼ = ½ teaspoon of Xanthan gum powder.
Measure the correct amount of Xanthan gum powder and use anything you have that will allow you to sprinkle the powder into the ice cream base gradually/lightly while it is being mixed. What I chose to do was sprinkle the powder onto a paper towel and then tap it gently over the mixing bowl to introduce small amounts of the powder into the ice cream base being actively mixed via my Kitchen-Aid® electric mixer. That method worked just fine and it was easy to do.
Run the mixer on medium speed for about four minutes to give the Xanthan gum powder time to incorporate and thicken the ice cream base. That sure did happen for me.
Pour the right amount of ice cream base into an ice cream maker or gelato maker (this depends on the volume capacity of your machine, allowing for expansion) and freeze it according to the manufacturer's directions. Then package it and hard freeze it for a few hours in a deep freeze.
Note that the custard base ice cream recipes in Food Nirvana do not require mixing with an electric mixer, but to use Xanthan gum powder in a custard base ice cream the initially hot base should be chilled in an electric mixer bowl. Then add the Xanthan gum powder, introducing it slowly (from a paper towel) while the custard ice cream base is being mixed with the electric mixer on medium speed. Mixing time should be about four minutes. That process is described next in detail with the All Out Vanilla Ice Cream recipe. You can easily adapt other ice cream recipes to use the steps indicated below.
Now we proceed to the recipe for the "All Out Vanilla Ice Cream." It may appear daunting but it is actually very simple to make. It has only one additional step more than the regular Food Nirvana custard base ice cream recipes.
Ingredients: (makes about 2 1/4 to 2 1/2 quarts of ice cream from about 1 3/4 quarts of ingredients)
3 cups of heavy cream
12 ounce can of evaporated milk
1 1/2 cups of regular milk
8 jumbo egg yolks, whisked
3 tbsp. of pure vanilla extract
2 vanilla bean pods (buy them via www.MySpiceSage.com for a reasonable price)
3/4 cup of sugar
1/3 cup of malted milk powder (buy it via www.bulkfoods.com for a reasonable price)
1/2 tsp. of Xanthan gum powder (buy it via www.bulkfoods.com for a reasonable price)
1/8 tsp. of salt
Directions:
Prepare the custard ice cream base in the regular way, which means starting by putting the cream, milk, evaporated milk, sugar, malted milk powder and salt into a thick bottomed two quart or larger saucepan. Note that the malted milk powder is not easy to mix in with the other ingredients until the mixture is heated.
Whisk the eight egg yolks in a one quart bowl.
Stir the saucepan contents while heating to 140 degrees F. Use an instant read thermometer and keep a close eye on the temperature, then remove the saucepan from the heat when the contents are at 140 degrees F.
Gradually dispense one cup of the hot mixture into the egg yolk bowl with continuous whisking.
Pour the egg yolk mixture into the saucepan.
Heat the saucepan contents on medium heat to 175 degrees F with constant stirring. Keep a very close eye on the temperature and do not let it exceed 175 degrees F.
Pour the cooked custard base into/through a fine mesh sieve that is over a one gallon or larger electric mixer bowl.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate the custard base until it is thoroughly chilled, about two to three hours.
While the custard base is chilling you can dispense the vanilla extract into a small cup. Then process the two vanilla bean pods on a wood cutting board to scrape out the contents. Add those contents to the vanilla extract and discard the pods. Set the cup of vanilla flavorings aside.
Dispense the 1/2 tsp. of Xanthan gum powder onto a paper towel lightly, covering a few square inches of area. Set it aside.
When the custard ice cream base is chilled, put the mixing bowl in place on the electric mixer.
Run the mixer on medium speed with the regular beater.
Add the processed vanilla bean pod contents and pure vanilla extract to the custard base and run the mixer for three minutes.
Very gradually dispense the Xanthan gum powder from the paper towel into the custard base while the mixer is running. This should take about two minutes. You want to avoid adding a lot at the same time or it will clump together and be useless.
Mix on medium speed for four minutes.
Transfer half of the contents into your gelato maker and run it until the ice cream is soft frozen, usually about 30 minutes.
Dispense the soft frozen ice cream into a chilled three quart plastic container and place it, covered, into the freezer.
Process the other half of the ice cream base in the gelato maker, and when it is soft frozen dispense the ice cream into the same plastic container used for the first batch of ice cream.
Hard freeze the ice cream for a minimum of four hours. Freezing it overnight is best.
Enjoy a simple but truly perfect dish of vanilla ice cream, or get fancy and make some type of sundae.
You will be highly pleased with this "perfect" ice cream ... it is very creamy and very tasty.
It will tend to disappear quickly so be prepared to make additional batches upon request.