The Strawberry Ice Cream Conundrum—A Review of Max Falkowitz’s Strawberry Ice Cream Recipe

Few things in life are more wholesome and refreshing than strawberry ice cream made from real strawberries. I’m not talking about anything that’s icy or made with artificial flavoring—nothing compares to the real stuff.

For the home cook, homemade strawberry ice cream presents a dilemma present in many fruit ice creams: How do you make a fruit-flavored ice cream without it turning icy?

Ice cream needs some water, and milk supplies more than enough. Adding fruit to an ice cream base increases the amount of water, and without adjusting for the added water content, you’re looking at a disappointing ice cream that’s too hard to be scooped.

The solution seems easy. You might think that, for strawberry ice cream, the best solutions are to either cook the water out of your strawberries or just opt for freeze-dried. These two options, however, have their limitations.

Cooked strawberry, while delicious, does not taste as refreshing and bold as fresh strawberry. Additionally, while freeze-dried strawberries can work well in terms of flavor, they first must be grinded down to a fine powder, then fully blended into the ice cream base. For home cooks without an immersion blender, breaking up all the clumps of strawberry powder might prove impossible.

To get around all of this, you could, in theory, just use strawberry extract and call it a day. You could also use plain, boiled rice and grocery-store tuna to make sushi. You could also use Harshey’s to make pain au chocolat. I just can’t, in good conscience, recommend it.

Enter stage left, Max Falkowitz’s genius recipe for strawberry ice cream, with real chunks of strawberry that add texture and flavor without any iciness.

Falkowitz’s answer to the conundrum of flavor versus iciness feels so simple and obvious, I’m mad I didn’t think of it myself. Don’t serve this ice cream to anyone eating halal, because alcohol is what keeps those delicious chunks of strawberry soft and inoffensive even to your most sensitive tooth.

I made this strawberry ice cream almost a year ago, and I’ve been thinking about it since. When I made it and an older family member tried it, she said it tasted just like the locally famous, farm-fresh strawberry ice cream that used to be sold here decades ago, the very same ice cream that I as an infant sneaked a bite of while she held me in one arm and her strawberry ice cream in the other. Saying that my ice cream tasted like that ice cream is a glowing review if I’ve ever heard one.

Based on the ingredients I had, I made a few simple changes when I made this recipe. First, instead of fresh strawberries picked from an overpriced u-pick farm, I used frozen strawberries from the grocery store and let them thaw. Using higher quality strawberries would result in a better ice cream, but I struggle to imagine how this ice cream could even get any better.

The second change I made was replacing vodka for gin. It was what I had on hand, and it worked perfectly. Gin has a light, flowery taste that pairs well with strawberries. If I’m being totally honest, my palate wasn’t sensitive enough to taste the gin at all, though. That just goes to show how powerful the strawberry flavor is.

This recipe is perfect for summer, and I hope you find it as delicious as I did. Find it here.

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