I scream!

Ice cream. It holds a special place in our hearts, and in our freezers. To say that my family adores it would be a gross understatement. We will gleefully consume it, at any time of the day, on any day of the year -- even in the peak of winter! Or should I say, especially in winter! And contrary to many Indian grandmothers, mine won’t be caught warning the young ‘uns: “Don’t eat ice cream at night, you’ll get a sore throat” because then she’d be a hypocrite: she usually likes to end any good day with a nightcap -- of ice cream! :D

But recently my dream bubble about delicious ice cream popped loudly when I discovered some horrifying facts about mass-produced ice cream. Just wait till you hear what they’re pumped up with: Playing the role of Milk, we present to you… (drum roll, please)… Vegetable Fat! Then there’s the whey protein for the legally necessary “dairy protein” component!! And lots and lots of an ingredient so cheap, that in fact it costs nothing! That’s right, AIR. Not to mention all the chemical emulsifiers to hold the entire concoction together…

(Source: http: //www.americanpalmoil.com/publications/ice%20cream.pdf)
Labels: Glucose Syrup, Skim Milk Substitute, Palm Kernel Oil + Palm Oil, Emulsifier + Stabilizer, Sugar, Flavour + Colour, Water.

I stumbled upon these terrible truths when I was looking for Indian substitutes for heavy cream (we only get low fat fresh cream here), and I came across a suggestion for “oil based ice cream”. Intrigued, I dug a little deeper and found this article. 

Of course, this article is about ice creams in UK, but it could well apply to Indian ice creams too.

Ice cream brands that are offshoots of dairies are more likely to use real milk. But certain other brands admit to using vegetable oils. And they call their products “frozen desserts”, because without a certain minimum content of milk, they cannot legally call their products ice cream!

I’m sure there must be some serious health repercussions to eating frozen oil and chemical emulsifiers, but I shan’t even go into that; eating fake ‘ice cream’ is bad enough! And the moment I learned this chilling truth, I vowed that I would educate my fellow ice cream lovers.

I’ve always been lucky (or was it sound strategic planning on the part of my ice cream-manic family?) because wherever we’ve lived, we’ve always been close to good ice cream parlors that sell real ice cream, with genuine ingredients, made in small-scale churners. This ice cream is firm, thick, creamy and absolutely delicious!

My favorite flavour : Coffee!

My advice to you is to stick to the real stuff. Find yourself a small-scale producer of this sort, selling homemade or natural ice cream. And if all else fails, make it yourself! :D

Here are two recipes I’ve been dying to try:
Nigella's "One Step No Churn Coffee Ice Cream"
Jamie Oliver's "45 Second Ice cream"

If you try making any of these, do let me know how it turns out, and maybe I’ll drop in for a bowl or three…