Why ice cream freezes hard in a freezer ? Why it does not give smoother and creamier texture unlike parlor’s or restaurant’s ice cream ? Even when we use the same ingredients as that of used in upmarket parlor’s, we are unable to get the same results. Well, to achieve these goals, we first need to know the reasons and the right technique. Making ice cream is not just pouring and mixing ingredients all together. There is a whole science behind it. Let’s discuss it in detail.
Ice cream is made up of these major ingredients : milk, fat, sweeteners, air, ice crystals and other solids. Each of them plays a vital role. But among these, which ones are major responsible for softer and smoother texture?
Reasons for the hardness of the ice-cream
The following are the two major reasons, why ice cream at home gets harder in freezer :
1) Air Occupancy :
When we make ice cream at home in a traditional way, we first start with preparing its custard like base and then cooling it down. After that, we keep the cooled base in the freezer. This whole process skips the most important phase of ice cream preparation i.e. “Churning”. Continuously churning or whipping the mix helps in adding the air volume which gives the resultant ice cream a softer texture. The ideal amount of air in an ice cream by volume is 30 to 50 percent. By skipping churning, it reduces the percentage to below 10%. Moreover, added air into your ice cream controls the sweetener taste and making the flavor last longer.
2) Ice Crystals Formation :
The second reason is the rapid formation of ice crystals. The formation of ice crystals occurs when the water in the ice cream starts freezing. An ideal ice cream contains 90% of water content which means the structure of solid water can affect the taste of your ice cream. That is whether your ice cream will be soft or grainy? For a smoother texture, the size of ice crystals should be small. And this can only be achieved by continuously beating the base during freezing. In homemade ice cream, we directly put the ice cream base in the freezer and skip the beating process. This leads to formation of larger ice crystals and makes the ice cream harder.
3) Unproportionate recipes: To make the soft ice cream proportion, we need to make sure we have used the ingredients in equal proportion. In case all ingredients are does not mix properly, like sugar, cream, milk, flavor power, etc. There are higher chances of its hardness once it is frozen.
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Softy machine ice cream verses home made
If the quality of your homemade ice cream is not satisfactory, we must opt for commercially made soft ice cream. The softy ice cream preparation requires high-end freezing technology. And the final product that we get is soft and proportionate. Here we can see a clear difference in the quality of ice creams with the different freezing technology as per the ingredient differences:
Ingredients used: Softy ice cream uses ingredients like sugar, premixes, and milk, and its mixing and preration styles are different using the softy making machine. On the other hand, we use ingredients for homemade ice creams like cream, milk, sugar, vanilla, salt, etc.
Freezing technology: To make a softy, we use the machine, and it freezes at the auto-temperature set for the machine. However, we have to set the standard hardness in the summer between 6 and 7 °C. And in winter, it is set between 3 and 4 °C. Hardness is decided by the speed of the motor. As the material becomes harder, the load on the motor increases. The freezing stops on one set load (as per hardness).
On the other hand, a home-made ice cream is frozen at freezer temperature, so there is no chance of seeing any kind of hardness parameter. This makes the final ice cream hard to eat.
Conclusion
This is why, there are specially designed ice cream machines, which fulfill both these criteria. Our ice cream machines are designed with in built air pumps and a beater. The beater constantly beating the ice cream mix while freezing thereby stops the formation of larger ice crystals. And the air pump inserts air into the mix while beating. This makes your ice cream softer and increases the volume of ice cream. You can also control the amount of air in mix. Thus, resulting into a better taste, smoother and softer texture like a readymade ice cream. Now, there is no hustle and you can prepare your ice cream whenever you want and customize it all by yourself.