Dedicated to SirBadkon.

This week is a small pit stop before I attempt the Pumpkin Pie concept later next week. This week is a little bit more “Asian themed” and I hope there are some things which can be taken away from this post, particularly with illustration of how you can approach something in a number of ways. The red bean idea was drawn out into 3 different possibilities; all of which have a working version 1. I will update the post as pictures roll post churn but for now, it will remain as draft specs. I was supposed to have done a black sesame faux cream this week but I couldn’t find a paste up to standard so I will leave that for another day.

I’m sure that most people are familiar with the Maeda-en US brand. I think their green tea ice cream is really good but some of the others are a bit underwhelming especially the black sesame one. Others may disagree but I think the only positive point is the novelty factor and the fact that it is not in the catalogue of flavours from ‘bigger brands’. One thing that I would like to point out is that red beans aren’t even red when you make the paste so there’s no way you’ll get a pink ice cream if you use enough of the paste. Following on from that, the black sesame tasted like a fairly plain ice cream that happened to be grey. Colour me disappointed.

So a few things to note from here; red beans and their ‘fibre’ tend to turn into bricks when you harden the mix in the freezer and you will have a brown bean ice cream so don’t be too put off by the colour. There will be three formulations in this post and a bonus green tea (matcha) one:

Red Bean Sorbet Red Bean Ice Cream “Ichigo Daifuku Sherbet”

The sorbet itself is a faux cream a la MC so it doesn’t abide by the standard rules but it requires a lot of sugar and I could only bring it to -14°C before it becomes unbearably sweet in order to maintain a suitable texture. This variation is fairly melt resistant and is very creamy when tempered without relying on a Pacojet. The red bean here is extremely frontal so it tastes like a concentrated red bean soup in dessert form.

The Red Bean Ice cream is a lightly flavoured (subjective) custard which is typical for most ice creams on this blog.

The ID Sherbet is a bit of a takeaway from the other two because it doesn’t have the red bean as a frontal flavour. Instead, the sherbet is sweetened with red bean paste. The strawberry is very dominant and you may need to temper for a good dose of the red bean (or adjust the scaling of red bean paste).

NOTE: ALL THE RED BEAN PASTE USED HERE IS SWEETENED!

Red Bean Sorbet @ -14C

Mineral Water 497.8g

Red Bean Paste 225g

Coconut Oil 60g

Dextrose 195g

Invert Sugar 15g

Lambda Carrageenan 2g

Locust Bean gum 3g

Polysorbate 80 0.2g

Salt 2g

Mix the dextrose, salt, carrageenan and locust bean gum in a dry bowl. Add the polysorbate and invert sugar to the mineral water over high heat on a stove At 40°C, add the dry ingredients and whisk until they are incorporated. Add the coconut oil and take off the heat at 85°C. Maintain the temperature for 2 minutes. Using a countertop blender, blitz the sorbet base until the emulsion is opaque. Add the red bean paste and blend until homogenous. Strain over an ice bath and age under refrigeration for at least 8 hours. Blend the base again and churn in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Harden in freezer to desired consistency.

You may choose to use a neutral oil here or a refined coconut oil with no odour. I would say that I prefer this one the least because it’s too frontal but there’s uses for min-maxed desserts on a restaurant plate.

Red Bean Ice Cream

Whole Milk 497g

Heavy Cream 120g

Red Bean Paste 100g

Skim Milk Powder 30g

Dextrose 180g

Invert Sugar 10g

Egg Yolk 60g

Stabilizer 3g

Mix the dextrose and stabilizer in a dry bowl. Heat the milk and invert sugar over a stove. Incorporate the skim milk powder at 35°C Add the dextrose and stabilizer mix at 40°C. Temper the egg yolks into the mix and add the red bean paste. At 85°C, maintain the temperature for 2 minutes and incorporate the heavy cream during the cooling process. Strain over an ice bath and age for 8 to 24 hours. Blend the base before churning in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Harden in freezer to desired consistency.

This is a super typical ice cream with 10% flavour weight. Not much more to say.

“Ichigo Daifuku Sherbet”

Strawberry Juice 454g

Red Bean Paste 100g

Natural Yogurt (neutral flavour) 200g

Heavy Cream 40g

Dextrose 190g

Maltodextrin 10g

Sorbet Stabiliser 4g

Malic Acid 2g

Mix the malic acid granules, dextrose and sorbet stabilizer in a dry bowl. Heat up half of the strawberry juice in a pot with the maltodextrin. Add the dry ingredients at 40°C. Once the dry ingredients are incorporated, add the red bean paste and whisk well. At 85°C, remove from the heat and strain over an ice bath. Add the remainder of the strawberry juice when the base is cooled down and age for 4 to 8 hours. Blend the sherbet base with the natural yogurt and heavy cream. Freeze in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Harden in freezer to desired consistency.

I loosely refer to this a sherbet because it is 2% fat with minimal milk solids. It is a re-imagining of a ‘reconstructed sherbet’ because instead of using low fat milk as the liquid base, strawberry juice is used instead and yogurt and cream to substitute for the fat. Red bean is a background flavour so it gets dominated very heavily and the paste is merely used a sweetener.

Green Tea Ice Cream

Whole Milk 561g

Heavy Cream 135g

Skim Milk Powder 30g

Matcha Tea Powder 15g

Sugar 25g

Dextrose 165g

Invert Sugar 15g

Egg Yolk 40g

Stabilizer 4g

Sodium Bisulfite (optional) 1g

Mix the dextrose, sugar and stabilizer blend in a dry bowl. Incorporate the matcha tea powder and invert sugar into the milk with an immersion blender. Heat the milk over a stove and incorporate the skim milk powder at 35°C. Add the rest of the dry ingredients at 40°C. Temper the egg yolks into the base. At 85°C, remove from the heat and incorporate the heavy cream. Strain over an ice bath and age for 8 to 24 hours. Incorporate the sodium bisulfite here if you are using it. Blend the base before freezing in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Harden in freezer to desired consistency.

Protip: The sodium bisulfite is to preserve the flavour of the green tea and prevent oxidation. You may choose to leave it out depending on the conditions of how you store the base or how long you decide to age it.

Sodium metabisulfite may be more accessible. In this case, make a solution with water and vent well. You will be left with the residual sodium bisulfite.

On transparency and ‘additives’

I think there will always be backlash with regards to stabilizers and whatnot for preserving food. This goes without saying that a lot of things are bad for you and can be consumed up to a certain tolerance level. Too much of anything is bad for you, in fact. But more and more people turn a blind eye to learning new things and immediately get disgusted when they hear or read something they don’t understand. Little do most people realize that there is hardly anything natural about ice cream or most food products we have in the first place. If you really think that your homogenized milk is udder to bottle or that sugar falls from trees, you need a reality check. If/when someone starts calling regular granulated sugar sucrose, it might have the same stigma as ‘atomised glucose’. Perhaps I should call xanthan gum thickening powder. Maybe there is some solace in the fact that I use scaling for hydrocolloids akin to a small seller or restaurant.

Right now, there are a lot of problems with conventional machinery, transport and storage for frozen products. The stabilizer aids us in counteracting defects and for the most part are extracted from plants such as seaweed/Irish moss. With greater control over every aspect of the process from manufacturing to packaging, movement and delivery to end user, I am sure a lot of these things can be taken out. But of course, the evil corporations are trying to save money and kill you by cutting corners. I’m sure all the top pastry chefs in the world are also cutting corners by using such things as hydrocolloids. It may be a bit of pedantry to get irritated at people attempting to undermine a movement which forges new ground or has become a requirement for maintaining quality but I think the proper answer is transparency.

As much as you have a choice for the ingredients that go into the things you make, the end user should also have a choice for whether they choose to consume the product or not. Transparency and letting everyone know what goes in is always necessary because it allows the user to make an informed decision as to whether they should eat it or not. As you may know, many big manufacturers already abide by this through legislation/lawmakers. However, here, there are some smaller sellers or even in different industries (non ice cream) that claim to be 100% natural but have zero information on their product. Honestly, I think this is even worse than the ‘evil corporations trying to kill you’. A lot of healthy superfoods or ‘natural purveyors’ are the real deal but for every one seller, there will probably be fifty selling you snake oil. If you have no toxic chemicals and whatnot, I’m sure your potential customers would be enthused to see your list of ingredients which are not likely to harm them in any way, shape or form. Instead, it is preferable to hide behind the moniker of ‘natural’ to evade accountability and transparency. I think this is disingenuous and borders on deceit. As always, keep an open mind (even on things which may be hard to understand).

Anyways, it’s time to wrap up this blog and hopefully the pumpkin pie will be ready next week.