The Late Night Gourmet
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- Joined
- 30 Mar 2017
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- Detroit, USA
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- absolute0cooking.com
As I mentioned in the What Did You Cook/Eat Today? thread, this is what I did with a massive amount of strawberries. In fact, I made this recipe twice. I assume the same could be done with other fruits. I do know that there are some who swear that gelato can only contain milk, but I love the luxuriousness of half-and-half here. I also imagine that almond milk or some equivalent can be used for the lactose-intolerant. This is really all about the strawberries.
To retell the story for those who didn't see it...
I went to the local fruit and vegetable market, and I saw this ridiculously cheap pallet of strawberries: 8 pounds for $2:
It's obviously the end of the season, and a lot of them were bad. But, after throwing out the bad ones, I still ended up with about 6 pounds of strawberries. So, what to do with all those strawberries?
I couldn't get it in the picture, but I also wore a red apron. You know...for consistency.
The next day, I want back to the same market, expecting that they wouldn't have any of these strawberries left. They had the regular $1.99/pound strawberries (which is still not a bad price), but just as I was about to leave, I noticed a few more of these cases of strawberries, so I bought another. This one was half bad, but at 50 cents a pound, that's still amazingly cheap. So, what does that mean? More gelato, of course!
Ingredients
2 lbs strawberries (weight after removing stems/leaves)
2 cups white sugar
4 tablespoons lemon juice
2 cups half-and-half
Directions
- Cut stems and non-red parts from strawberries and discard. Cut strawberries into quarters.
- Mix strawberries with sugar and lemon juice to coat fully. Allow to rest at room temperature for half an hour (this process macerates the strawberries to draw more flavor out of them).
- Transfer strawberry mixture to a food processor. Puree with 1 cup of half-and-half. Transfer to a plastic container with a lid and repeat for the remaining strawberries and half-and-half.
- Move container of strawberry mixture to freezer and freeze for at least 4 hours, stirring every hour to scrape gelato from edges of container. Continue freezing until it reaches desired consistency. Churn in an ice cream mixer in batches for a few minutes at a time then serve.
