Hand-cranked Vanilla Ice Cream

Excerpt from Life of Fire, Pat Martin

Makes about 1 gallon

2 ¾ cups granulated sugar
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
6 large eggs
12 ounces evaporated milk
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 quart whole milk
2 ½ cups iodized table salt
Sugared Fruit, for serving

A day or two before you make the ice cream, prepare the ice: Fill 5 clean half-gallon milk or orange juice cartons with water, fold the tops closed, and place them on the lowest (coldest) part of your freezer until they’re frozen solid.

To make the ice cream base, in a large bowl, whisk together the sugar, flour, and salt. Add the eggs and use an electric mixer to beat until well combined. Add the evaporated milk and vanilla and stir to combine. If you’re not making ice cream right away, refrigerate the base until ready to use.

Remove the ice from the freezer and hold one carton sideways over a concrete surface. Smack one side of the carton firmly on the concrete, then rotate it a quarter-turn and smack the next side. Repeat until you’ve smacked each side twice, or until you can hear that all of the ice block has been shattered into small, powdery shards.

Pour the ice cream base into the canister of a hand-crank ice cream maker and add whole milk until the liquid reaches about 3 inches from the top; you may not end up using the whole quart. Insert the dasher (the blades that do the churning), attach the top, and insert the crank. Add one carton of crushed ice to the bucket, then sprinkle about ½ cup of the table salt on top of the ice.

Repeat, packing each layer of ice down as you go, until you’ve filled the bucket tightly with ice and it’s slightly mounded over the brim; this should take 4 to 5 cartons of ice.

Drape a couple of kitchen towels over the top of the bucket; this will both insulate the ice below and provide a bit of cushion for your behind—if you, like us, end up sitting on the thing to get it to crank in the end. Churn the ice cream, slowly and steadily, packing in more ice and salt as needed to keep the bucket full. After 15 minutes or so, the ice cream will be semi-frozen and the cranking will get more difficult. Continue cranking until the ice cream is so firm that you can barely move the crank. In my family, this takes about 30 minutes total, and in my family, it takes the power of two boys and a few grown men.

Remove the top of the ice cream maker and check the ice cream’s texture. It should be firm and compact, similar to commercial ice cream pulled straight from the freezer.

Serve the ice cream with sugared fruit and immediately freeze any leftovers in an airtight storage container