The. Best. Ever.
As we didn’t get off the dock yesterday to begin our davit reinforcement project, the rain conspiring against us, we instead invested most of the day organizing the boat. Placing the various items in locations where they can still be accessible while guests are on board, without disturbing the guests’ belongings all that often, is taking some planning.
While that was going on, we also made plans to give our ice cream maker another trial run and invited some friends over to share in the results. One of the key ingredients in the ice-cream-making process is rock salt, the type of stuff that people in colder climates put down on their sidewalks to make the ice melt. As you might imagine, there is not a great call for that here in Grenada. While you can often find small packages of the stuff in supermarkets, overpriced and marketed as ice cream salt, we knew that we’d need a better source. Fortunately we found a supply at the local Ace Hardware store. A 50 lb. bag of Pool Salt could be purchased there for about $12.00 US. Deal! Of course, we still had to make sure that it worked, hence last evening’s test.
I am happy to report that both the salt and the ice cream maker performed flawlessly netting us a large batch of tasty vanilla ice cream. So tasty in fact that our friends on Banyan declared our home-made ice cream to be “The Best Ever!”
For the record, it is officially OK to have dessert before dinner when on One Love! 🙂
We reclassified ice cream (and other desserts) as an APPETIZER years ago. Problem solved.
Good thinking.
Hey!!!! there’s a finger mark in that Ice Cream. It is now tainted, I must eat it all to save everyone else from possibly being poisoned. 🙂
Busted!
Sorry if you have said before, but is that a 12volt ice cream maker?
Mike
Negative. 120 vac.
I’m going to go out on a limb with a guess that you might be able to add salt water to the fresh ice and get the same result as the pool salt. If I understand correctly, water freezes at a lower temperature when salt is added, so by adding rock salt (or salt water), you can chill the ice cream mix below zero Celsius and cause it to freeze.
It might not work the way I envision, and you’d need to put a cork in the drain of the ice cream tub, but most of us landlocked folks don’t have ready access to clean salt water.
If you need even saltier water and can tap the effluent of your watermaker, then you could really lower the freezing temperature of the water by a few degrees with that super-salty water (and save yourselves the cost of pool salt).
Just a thought – might be worth trying.
That could work, I don’t know. The watermaker brine discharge would definitely be salty enough. The rock salt we found is pretty cheap though so I’m not sure it’s worth reinventing the wheel.
Sure wouldn’t hurt to run another “test”. I’ll be on STT in thirty days if you need any help.
Maybe we can make that happen. 🙂
And my dad always told me not to eat the rock salt or pool chemicals…..lol
And your dad was right. The salt does NOT go in the ice cream.
A. I’m pretty sure it has to be salt, not brine. In fact, it is required that you drain the liquid continuously to get the required cold.
B. Never go the low fat way on home made;only the real deal.
I churned my first batch 45 years ago. I still have the same hand crank machine.
I think the hand crank thing would get old really fast! The electric one does draw some serious current though.
Interesting comment about using the effluent of the water maker. It might not be the cost of the salt but more like having a place to store it on a boat and keep it usable.
Not a fun as the old fashioned ice cream maker but for my sons school science project we made small batches of ice cream just using freezer bags. We put the ice cream mix in quart size bags and doubled it to prevent the brine from contaminating the mix. Put the ‘mix’ bag in 1 gallon freezer bag with at least 4 cups of crushed ice and 1 table spoon of salt per cup of ice. The brine temperature should go down to 8 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit for rapid cooling of the mix, we never took a reading of the temp but hey it worked without a mixer. We also wore gloves and every now and then squished the bags around to prevent the ingredients from separating.
Useless factoid: As a pool builder, I understand that the only difference between “pool salt” and table salt is the lack of iodine and metals like iron which make the pool water brown (dirty) at the application area and can stain white plaster pools plus it’s cheaper. 🙂
The thing is, if the brine thing did work, you’d still need a place to store it too. Storing a solid like salt is likely easier than storing liquid.
Make your own vanilla extract for an even more awesome taste experience. It’s very easy with vanilla beans and Vodka. Plus you get the. little black dots and bursts of flavour throughout. Score.
Interesting!