Brown Butter – FROZBROZ

May 13, 2015

Ginger Brown Butter Vanilla Bean

We haven’t done a vanilla centric flavor in awhile, so I took the opportunity this week to remedy that. While it’s true my sons are completely spoiled in their access to ice cream, the wide assortment of flavors we make are often complex and a little challenging for them. I wanted to tailor something more for them, especially with birthdays coming up – we HAD to have some kind of ice cream to eat with the cake. Hence, we arrived at this week’s flavor – very much a vanilla but tinted with just a twist as we do.

The process for this flavor is relatively simple – it’s all in the base.

First, the ginger is finely grated and added fresh to the cream base, along with fresh vanilla bean. Vanilla extract works fine in a pinch, but nothing compares to actual vanilla bean flavor. All of these flavors steep and infuse into the ice cream base during the cooking process – so it is important that they go in beforehand or their flavor will not be as intense.

A little bit of butter is browned in a pan, and whisked in once the ice cream base has reached a temp around 120 degrees Fahrenheit. If added in while the ice cream base is cold, it coagulates immediately and you get chunks of brown butter which you most likely don’t want. When added in while warm, it gets whisked into the base and emulsifies to become one. Harmonious brown butter flavor in an umami concert with ginger and vanilla bean and cream.

The scoop – a beautifully rich, ginger and brown butter tinted vanilla bean ice cream.

Ginger Brown Butter Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

(makes approx 1-1/2 quarts)

Ingredients:

2C Heavy Cream
1C Milk (use any fat percentage you prefer – higher lends to a creamier base)
2 Eggs
3/4C Sugar
1 Whole Vanilla bean
1Tablespoon of finely grated ginger
2Tablespoons of melted butter (browned)
1/2 tsp salt

Instructions:

Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add grated ginger, vanilla bean (scraped from pod) and sugar to eggs and whisk until all are combined well. Add cream,milk, salt and whisk again until all are fully incorporated. Note: You can add in the vanilla bean pod to steep during the cooking process for more vanilla flavor, but make sure to pull it out and discard before freezing the ice cream. Place ice cream mix in heavy pot and cook over medium heat, stirring continuously. Once mix reaches 115 degrees Fahrenheit, whisk in the melted browned butter until emulsified into the ice cream base. Continue to heat ice cream mixture until temperature reaches 165 degrees. Remove from heat. Cool the ice cream base to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Once cool, place ice cream mix in a container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

3. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Freeze in a tightly covered container for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight if you can wait. Then, enjoy!

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints of ice cream.

If you’d rather not make it, you can be one of two lucky winners of this fabulous, scratch made craft ice cream in our weekly pint giveaway. Enter your name in the comments section here, or on our facebook page under the posted contest. Two winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 5/15/15 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally in Minneapolis. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

March 25, 2015

Chicken and Waffles

Seriously, we’re doing this. It has been a long time coming, but we finally stepped up and made this thing happen. Fried chicken, waffles, maple syrup, brown butter and ice cream? Hell yes! If you’ve ever ordered chicken and waffles at a restaurant, you couldn’t tell me that it all wouldn’t be better with a scoop of ice cream on top. And instead of putting the ice cream on top, this week we’re going to break it down and put it all in the ice cream. So come on, let’s do this Chicken and Waffles Frozbroz style.

First thing we’re going to work on is the ice cream base. I contemplated swirling maple syrup right into the ice cream for this one, but I wanted that maple flavor prevailing throughout, so I decided to use maple sugar as a sweetner for the base. Also, wanted to try and deepen the maple flavor with some caramel tones, so I went with a half and half mix of maple sugar and brown sugar. Question: would waffles be complete without butter? No, they wouldn’t. That’s the answer. Not just butter though, because plain butter tends to get lost in ice cream, so I’m going with it’s much more flavorful iteration; brown butter. This will also bring extra depth to the ice cream base adding a nutty component. Once the ice cream base is pasteurized, it’s cooled and ready to churn.

Next, we’re preppin the fried chicken. Well, fried chicken skin anyway. This has always been our hesitation with this flavor, for how it will hold up in the ice cream. I wanted an ultra crispy skin, and after a little research, I decided to use a technique used by chef Matthias Merges of Yusho in Chicago. These are skins from the chicken thigh. They’re laid out on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper and salted. Another piece of parchment is placed over the top, and then sandwiched with another sheet pan. Into the oven and drained on paper towels, these are incredibly crispy salted chicken skins. They’re amazing actually! We chop them up, and they go into the ice cream at the end of the churn. It turns out that they’re crispiness doesn’t hold up that well in the ice cream, but the skin is so fried, that the little bits almost dissolve into salty chicken flavored pockets within the ice cream. It’s a good thing, trust me.

Next, Belgium waffles! I recently got a waffle maker, so I have been making a lot of waffles for our family on the weekends. Belgium waffles do differ from a classic waffle. They’re more tender, airy and spongy all at the same time. To achieve that texture, the eggs are separated. Here’s the difference: the egg whites are beaten to stiff peaks and folded into the waffle mix. After a ride in the waffle maker, we have Belgium waffles. But that’s not all. They’re going to take another ride through the oven after chopping them up into croutons. This process will dry them out a little more, and allow them to hold up in the ice cream. The waffle croutons are tossed into the ice cream at the end of the churn along with the fried chicken skin.

Maple brown butter ice cream with bits of salty fried chicken skin and Belgium waffle croutons. Chicken and Waffles Frozbroz style!

Chicken and Waffle Ice Cream

Maple Brown Butter Ice Cream Base:
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
2 large eggs
1/3 cup maple sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar
2 Tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon sea salt

Fried Chicken Skin:
3 chicken skins, removed from thigh
Kosher salt

Belgium Waffle Croutons(This makes more waffles than you need):
2 cups AP Flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups milk
1/2 cup canola oil
2 eggs, separated
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions:

1. Prepare brown butter: Place butter in saute pan and simmer over high heat until brown. Remove immediately and reserve

2. Make ice cream base: Crack eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk fully. Add maple and brown sugar and whisk. Add heavy cream, milk, and salt. Whisk until ingredients are combined.

3. Cook/pasteurize ice cream base: Over medium heat, whisk or stir base continuously. Whisk in reserved brown butter between 110-140 degrees. Keep stirring continuously until temperature reaches 165-170 degrees. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature (an ice bath will do this in about 15-20 minutes). Strain base through a fine mesh strainer and put base in a clean container, cover, and chill in refrigerator overnight.

4. Prepare crispy chicken skin: Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. On a parchment lined baking sheet, lay out chicken skin flat. Salt skins and cover with another piece of parchment paper. Sandwich with another sheet pan on top and place in the oven for 45-50 minutes rotating pan half way through baking. Remove from oven and drain skins on paper towels. On a cutting board, chop skins into tiny pieces and reserve until needed.

5. Prepare Belgium waffles: Whip egg whites to stiff peaks. In a separate bowl, sift dry ingredients together. In a 3rd bowl, mix oil, milk and egg yolks and vanilla. Stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients, and then fold in whipped egg whites. Prepare waffles according to waffle makers manufactures instructions.

6. Prepare waffle croutons: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut 1-2 waffles into 1/2 inch pieces. Place pieces on sheet pan and bake in oven for 10-15 minutes until crunchy on the outside. Cool and reserve until needed.

7. Churn ice cream base in ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. At the end of churning, add in chopped chicken skin and waffle croutons. Place ice cream in airtight container and freeze.

*Yields approximately 2.5 pints

If you’d rather not make it, you can be one of two lucky winners of this fabulous, scratch made craft ice cream in our weekly pint giveaway. Enter your name in the comments section here, or on our facebook page under the posted contest. Two winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 3/27/15 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally in Minneapolis. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

May 21, 2014

Soy Brown Butter

About a month ago, I made a soba noodle salad with a sesame ginger soy dressing. Per the usual, my thoughts gravitated towards ice cream, and in the end, concentrating on soy sauce in ice cream. Salty? Sweet?…it has to be great. Days later, I overhear the other bro_z having a conversation about how butter and soy sauce are supposed to be some sort of magical combination. I was immediately thinking brown butter and soy, and so this week’s flavor was born – Soy Brown Butter. Let’s get started…

The New York Times calls it “The Sublime Combination”. Soy sauce, in this case Wan Ja Shan Tamari Soy made in the Hudson Valley of New York, and Brown Butter made from Hope Creamery butter in Hope, MN. This flavor may be simple, but these two very high quality ingredients make for more complex in flavors. Without the other, the flavors of one may not fully rise. There is the salty, malty, caramel-esk components in the soy and the nutty, buttery components of the brown butter. Together they bring tastes of sweet, salty, and umami. Gold! Usually we would be concerned about adding the liquid content of the soy into our ice cream base, as its water content would make for an icy batch, but with the butter’s fat content to counteract, there’s nothing to be concerned about here. The tamari soy and brown butter are mixed into our brown sugar ice cream base.

Soy Brown Butter! The sublime combination of sweet, salty and umami all wrapped up in a scoop.

Like to try some? You can be one of two lucky winners of this fantastic, scratch made craft ice cream in our weekly pint giveaway. Enter your name in the comments section here, or on our facebook page under the posted contest. Winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 5/23/14 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally. Prizes must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

November 28, 2013

Brown Butter Brickle

While we spend all of this time in search of wild flavor combinations and new avenues to explore – once in awhile we run across a classic that slaps us right in the mouth. I come from a family of passionate ice cream lovers, and when they brought up Butter Brickle I knew it had to be done. It instantly reminded me of my childhood, and after doing some research I found it was pretty true – it is very hard to find the flavor on shelves these days. It wouldn’t be ours if we didn’t put a subtle twist on it, so we incorporated our brown butter brown sugar base and made the toffee bits from scratch.

The key to this ice cream flavor is the toffee bits. They can’t be overly chewy or overly crunchy. Ideally, they should have a “tender crunch” and will begin to almost “melt” into the ice cream once they’ve bathed in it for a few days.

Our toffee process is relatively similar to making caramel, except we use butter along with the sugar and water, and cook it to a “hard crack” to get the right texture. Once the mixture hits approximately 298 degrees, it is removed from heat and spread out onto a lined sheet pan to cool.

Once the toffee has had time to cool completely, it is broken up into small chunks, varying in size so the small ones melt into caramelly pockets and the bigger ones provide the crunch. The “brickle” is stored in the freezer until we’re ready to spin the ice cream.

This is where we put our little signature on the flavor, using our brown sugar, brown butter ice cream base. It all gets tossed into the machine for a spin and..

Voila! A brown sugar, brown butter ice cream, full of delicate scratch made toffee bits. FrozBroz Brown Butter Brickle ice cream, just in time for the holidays.
Want to try it? You can win one of the only two pints in the world, filled with this fabulous, scratch made craft ice cream in our weekly pint giveaway. Enter your name in the comments section here, or on our facebook page under the posted contest. 2 lucky winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 11/29/13 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally and give us feedback. Pints must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!

November 21, 2013

Thanksgiving Stuffing

Why not start the holiday season a week early? We’re gonna. Right here. Right now. With Thanksgiving coming next week, we thought we would release this fresh new flavor, so that the two lucky pint winners could maybe, just maybe, pick up their pints for the big feast itself. Pints of what, you’re probably asking? Stuffing. Thanksgiving stuffing…but in ice cream. Whaaaaaaa? That’s right, let us explain this Frozbroz flavor of the week: Thanksgiving stuffing…

This is a flavor we kicked around about a month ago in preparation for the Thanksgiving holiday. We went through a handful of different flavor ideas, trying to decide what to do, until Ben said it; “stuffing”. Yes! For those of you who follow this blog, you know how often we bake some sort of cake, bread, or pastry into croutons and toss them into our ice cream. So the idea of stuffing in ice cream, acually makes a lot of sense. We started by making both cornbread and caraway rye bread croutons. Our process is the same as always; cubed bread tossed with butter, and into the oven for the crunchy finish. We added a bit of brown butter to our ice cream base to bring out the nuttiness of the cornbread and the caraway rye. And to add a slightly chewy texture, we agreed that Medjool dates would not only contrast in texture, but add earthiness. The croutons and dates are added into the ice cream at the end of the churn. The brown butter is added in during the steeping process. That’s right, there’s more!

We’ve never used time in our ice cream, and of course, this seemed like the perfect thyme :). So along with the brown butter, we steep the thyme in our base. This week’s base consists of equal parts organic cane sugar and brown sugar. The thyme is strained out before the churn and celery salt is added. We had to. It kind of sounded perfect.

And not surprisingly, it is kind of perfect. FrozBroz Thanksgiving Stuffing – Thyme-infused ice cream with brown butter and celery salt mixed with medjool dates and cornbread and caraway rye bread croutons. We’re just trying to start this 2013 holiday season off right.

Want to try it? You can win one of the only two pints in the world, filled with this fabulous, scratch made craft ice cream in our weekly pint giveaway. Enter your name in the comments section here, or on our facebook page under the posted contest. 2 lucky winners will be drawn randomly on Friday 11/22/13 at 4pm. Winners must be able to pick up locally and give us feedback. Pints must be claimed by email within one week or we will redistribute. 🙂 Good luck!