I’ve watched a lot of students struggle to make a smooth ice cream base, but it doesn’t have to be that way. In this video, you’ll learn both the traditional way and a much better and simpler way to make a really smooth base for almost any kind of custard.

Traditional French-style ice cream is made from a sauce called Crème Anglaise. Crème Anglaise is also used in desserts like bread pudding and soufflés, and it’s a key component in a dessert called Île Flottante, which we’ll make in a later video. So, it’s a great thing to learn how to make. And even if you don’t have an ice cream maker, you can use the sauce for all kinds of other things. Or — you can just drink a glass of it before you go to bed, like I do. It’ll put you right to sleep.

Crème Anglaise is a type of custard, and custard is basically just a mixture of a liquid — typically milk and cream — that’s thickened by mixing it with eggs and gently cooking it.

The traditional method of making Crème Anglaise uses a technique called “tempering.” To temper, you scald your milk mixture (which means you heat it to a little under a boil), and then you take about a third of the mixture and pour it into your egg mixture while you’re madly whisking, and that warms it up a bit. And then you take that now-warmer mixture and mix it into the rest of your hot milk mixture, and that heats it up the rest of the way.

This works okay, and it’s pretty quick. But it’s easy to end up with bits of overcooked egg in it which can ruin both the texture as well as the taste. And there’s a much simpler method: and that is the “cold-start method,” where we mix everything together while it’s still cold, whisk it together, and then heat it up gradually while stirring. Using this method, you’ll get a better, smoother product every time.

Okay! So, let’s get started. Here’s the whole formula: We start with 170g of milk, 510g of heavy cream, 120g of sugar, 60g of corn syrup, six large egg yolks, and one vanilla bean which we’ll split and scrape. Now, a real vanilla bean is going to give you a much more complex flavor than using vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste. But if you don’t have vanilla beans — and they can be expensive — you can use a teaspoon and a half of vanilla extract or bean paste.

Another advantage of this method is that I can measure everything into the pot at once. So, rather than having to scale everything into separate bowls, it makes it very simple and easy.

So, I’m going to start by taking my milk and pouring it into the pot. Next, I’m going to tare my scale, and then I’ll pour in my cream. “Taring” means resetting it back to zero. That makes it a little easier, so you don’t have to do the math. Now I’m going to tare my scale again, and I’m going to measure out my sugar. And then I’m going to put in my corn syrup. Now, corn syrup is very thick, and it’s difficult to measure into a separate container and get it all out. It’s super sticky, so this is another advantage of putting everything together into the pot. You can just measure directly, and when you’re getting close to 60g, you just need to slow down your pour a little bit. And if you put in a little too much or too little, it’s not really the end of the world, so don’t worry too much about it. You can be within a few grams.

Now, at this point, I still need to put in my egg yolks and my vanilla bean. You want to always crack your eggs on a flat surface rather than on the side of a bowl because if you crack them on the side of your bowl, you’re more likely to end up breaking the yolks or getting little bits of shell in there.

And now, I’m going to separate my eggs. Some people will take the yolk and pass it back and forth in their eggshell. This works okay… It’s slower if you’re cracking a lot of eggs, and you can break the yolk on the sharp edges of the shell, so I prefer just to do it by hand. You always want to separate your eggs when they’re really cold because when they warm up the yolks break a lot more easily.

Now I pass it back and forth between my fingers, and I like to pull off those little stringy bits called the chalazae (ka-LAY-zee) that hold the yolk in the center of the egg. This is not really necessary because we’re going to end up straining the Crème Anglaise anyway, but if you want to be extra fussy like me, you can pull those off. Just be very careful not to break the yolks when you do that. And if you’re going to save the egg whites for something like making a meringue, you want to be very careful not to get any yolk in there, because even a little bit of yolk will ruin the meringue.

I’m going to go wash my hands and refrigerate my egg whites. We’ll use those for a frittata or something later. Now I’m going to turn my induction burner onto medium-low. I’ll include notes below about different types of burners. I’m going to pop my eggs in; I break them up a little bit and mix everything nice and evenly with the whisk. It doesn’t have to be perfect right now, because you’re going to be stirring this for a while, so it will end up evenly mixed. Now I’m going to pull out a vanilla bean and split it with a paring knife. And I’m going to use the back of the paring knife to scrape out the seeds. Drop the pod in there as well so that we get all the flavor possible out of the vanilla — we don’t want to waste any of it. If we were using vanilla extract or bean paste, I’d put it in at the end of the cooking because a lot of the aromatic molecules will evaporate out while you’re cooking. But you really want to extract all the flavor from the vanilla beans, so we put it in in the beginning of cooking to extract as much as possible.

Now, I have two different instant-read thermometers here that I’m going to show you. The first one is made by ThermoWorks. This is a really great thermometer. It takes less than a second to read the temperature accurately. They also make less-expensive models that take, maybe, 3 to 4 seconds. I also have a thermometer here that’s made by FireBoard. This is a really great thermometer as well. It’s very fast, and with this one you can hook up a separate probe to it to read two temperatures at once. This thermometer can also track the temperature over time using a smart phone or web browser. Both of these companies also make multi-port thermometers, and both of them will track the temperature over time with phone and web apps, so they’re really both great companies. I highly recommend them.

And now at this point I’ve switched from the whisk to a silicone spatula. I’m just going to cook it on a medium temperature, and I’m going to continuously scrape to make sure I’m getting all of the egg off of the bottom and the sides of the pot, and this will keep it from overcooking the egg that’s touching the metal. It’s best to stir pretty constantly, but if you need to leave it for a minute or two it’ll be just fine. Just make sure you don’t overcook the egg.

You can see that it’s very thin right now, and as we cook it you’ll notice it visually thicken, and you’ll get to the point where you can tell just by looking at it when it’s fully cooked. But we’re going to use our thermometer today to also check the temperature.

We’re going to cook the Crème Anglaise to just a little above 180°. Anywhere between 180 and 185 is fine. If you cook it too hot, you’ll get a little bit of a sulfur smell [thiols/mercaptans], like the smell of rotten eggs or a sewer… so, we don’t want that.

All right. And now you can see that it’s getting much thicker. In cooking, there’s a term called nappé which is a thickness that we like to get many sauces to, and we check for nappé by swiping the back side of a spoon, and if the channel that you make with your finger doesn’t fill in too quickly, then that’s an indication that you’re ready.

And to keep the ice cream extra smooth, I’m going to pour it through a strainer to get out any little bits of egg and any larger bits of the vanilla.

Normally I would put the lid on to keep it colder as it’s processing, but for to the video today so you can see the whole process, I’m going to go ahead and leave it off.

Now, this recipe calls for 36% cream, which is what you’ll typically find in a supermarket. That means that 36% of what’s in the container is fat. Professional kitchens often use 40%, which you can find at some grocery stores. I’ll include both formulas in the comments as well as at food science.org with some more detailed instructions. And if you don’t have a thermometer, you can check for nappé instead. But get a thermometer.

It’s also good to know that the colder a food is, the harder it is for us to taste it and smell it. So, we really want to keep all of that vanilla aroma in the ice cream.

And now it’s done! And we end up with a quart of beautiful, creamy, really nicely aromatic ice cream. The last and most important step in making ice cream is to find some friends and loved ones to share it with.