Why Fresh Strawberries Work Best In Homemade Ice Cream

Strawberries are delicate fruits. If you wash them, they go bad quickly; if you store them with the wrong humidity level or temperature, they lose their flavor. But when you get that perfect strawberry — the one that's grown with care and picked when it's just right — that bright, sweet flavor is euphoric. And this is why fresh, locally-grown strawberries are best for homemade ice cream; even the ripest strawberries at the store won't taste as good due to transport time.

Fruit-flavored ice creams aren't overwhelmingly popular, but strawberry is the exception. However, the homemade version isn't so easy to make for two main reasons: strawberries emit plenty of water, giving the ice cream more ice and less creaminess, and that sweet fruit flavor is so easily overpowered by richer, creamy ingredients. There's a time and place for frozen or canned strawberries, but the best way to ensure the balance in ice cream is to only make strawberry ice cream with in-season berries and to avoid cooking them. Otherwise, the flavor will fall flat.

You don't want to cook the strawberries because the heat alters the delicate sweetness and fragrant flavor that fresh strawberries are so lucky to have. And using anything other than a locally-grown berry at its peak means duller flavor which will get swallowed up by the other ingredients. To get the best results from your fresh strawberries, wash and hull them, then let them sit in a mixture of sugar and alcohol for up to two days. Before incorporating them into the recipe, blend and strain them to remove any seeds and ensure a smooth texture.

Speaking of other ingredients, build the ice cream around your strawberries, don't let the ice cream become the star of the show. For making a custard-like ice cream, eggs are recommended, but in this case they bring too rich of a flavor, leading to an imbalance. Omit them altogether and instead opt for an ice cream base made from half-and-half and corn syrup; the half and half has enough fat to give the ice cream that creamy base, while the corn syrup prevents that notoriously icy texture from the fresh fruit.