This was a wonderful experiment for the 113°F Phoenix summer. My FiL got an automated garden for Christmas and has been growing mint like crazy. He warned me about it taking over my raised planter and I dismissed that because I love mint. Naturally, it took over half of it and had to be dealt with. I harvested half of it which yielded 250g of mint leaves. In retrospect, I could easily have doubled the mint quantity in this recipe. A couple reviews I got said that it was too minty and could use some vanilla. I think the vanilla is right, but man I would double down on that green mint flavor for the next iteration.
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| Heavy Cream | 4 Cups |
| Whole Milk | 1 Cup |
| Mint Leaves | 100g |
| Egg Yolks | 12 |
| Kosher Salt | Available |
| Dark Chocolate | 10 Ounces |
| Canola Oil | 4 Teaspoons |
Adapted (stolen and modified) from Serious Eats
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In a stainless steel saucepan, bring cream and milk to a simmer. Remove from heat, stir in mint leaves, cover, and let steep for 2 hours.
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In large bowl, whisk together egg yolks and sugar until well combined. Temper dairy throught a strainer into bowl with egg yolks, pressing on the mint with the back of a spoon to extract as much mint flavor as possible. Whisk until fully combined, then return to pot and set over medium heat and cook, whisking frequently, until a custard forms. 170°F is the magic temperature. Salt to taste.
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Strain custard into your large bowl that fits in another large bowl. Your goal is to create an ice bath, so figure it out. You want the mixture to reach 40°F. Chef John says that the colder you can get the custard, the better the ice cream will taste. I can’t argue with that man. Ideally overnight but I doubt you could really wait.
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Churn ice cream. While ice cream churns, melt chocolate in a double boiler and stir to combine with oil. In my beast of a maker, wait about 20 minutes until the ice cream looks like soft serve. Remove the lid and drizzle in all of the chocolate goop. As quickly as you can, restart the churning, topping up the ice and salt as needed. Your goal is to get the chocolate in there as a liquid, but not melt the ice cream too much. Keep going as far as you can with the machine. Probably 40 minutes total. Remove the ice cream from the churn and freeze for at least 4 hours.
