We don’t throw away much ice cream. The other day I found a bad batch of Strawberry Sorbet and a bad batch of Raspberry-Blueberry. A batch equals four 3-gallon tubs. The Strawberry Sorbet was coarse in texture and I thought easy to fix. It is easy to melt and refreeze sorbets. Ice creams are usually impossible to refreeze although some expensive restaurants claim to melt and refreeze ice cream every day.

After melting the four tubs of Strawberry Sorbet I put them all together in a big tub and used a scary kitchen tool to further puree the berries. A burr blender looks like something from a slasher movie or a very adolescent sex movie. It enables cooks to puree large quantities of food in a big container instead of subdividing into batches. I pureed the now melted strawberries a lot and added more sugar in order to improve the texture of the sorbet. Using leftover orange juice and sugar I made an Orange Syrup that also changed the flavor from Strawberry Sorbet to Strawberry-Orange Sorbet. Everything worked and after freezing in the ice cream machine the sorbet was excellent.

The ice cream had been made by simply adding frozen blueberries to a pretty good Raspberry ice cream. Simply adding frozen blueberries to an ice cream results in an unfortunate texture that makes one think of Macadam roads and glacial till. This flavor was beyond repair. Saved one and failed with another. Probably gained a new sorbet flavor and lost $100 on the bad ice cream.

1. Joshua W. Scott on April 18th, 2009 at 11:01 pm

   All the fats and proteins in an ice cream base get pretty heavily abused being beaten into a frozen foam the first time around. This commitment greatly affects the base, and I’m quite dubious that anyone can refreeze a product and have the end result of the same quality.

   You really have to let blueberries thaw completely before you put them in ice cream. An infusion is even better.