Pork products, bacon in particular, are today’s it ingredients. I have a vegetarian aunt-in-law that used to allow bacon into her diet. My brother had a no-pork policy for a time, but even then he allowed the crunchy strips of pork belly onto his plate. I’ve seen references on numerous blogs to bacon ice cream (3M hits on the Google search). The top results are from acclaimed pastry chef, David Lebovitz, who has written a few books on dessert. His recipe is for Candied Bacon Ice Cream, which sounded good, but I didn’t want the overdone sweetness that I expected from the candying.

I wanted to not only achieve the obvious synergy of smoky-salty-sweet-crunchy-smooth that this recipe is destined to exhibit, but I wanted to improve upon my previous ice cream making adventures. In the past, I’ve made ice cream that was over-cooked, I’ve over-churned, I’ve under-churned, I’ve burnt the cream. I also wanted to use some of my new powdery additives to improve upon a classic.

I took a basic ice cream recipe, flavored it with a little vanilla and cinnamon, added some stabilizers, and folded in bacon at the end. Here’s the recipe:

Bacon Ice Cream

2c heavy cream
1c milk
1 cinnamon stick, broken
2 eggs
3/4 c sugar
1.1 g locust bean gum (optional)
0.5 g xanthan gum (optional)
1t vanilla extract
5-7 slices crispy cooked bacon, well-drained and chopped or crumbled into small pieces

In a 2-3 quart pot, heat the cream, milk, and cinnamon over medium heat. Let it come just to a boil, and turn off the heat.

In a bowl, use a whisk to beat the eggs with the sugar until it lightens in color.

Temper the eggs with some of the hot cream: take a ladle of the hot cream and pour into the egg/sugar mixture, whisking constantly until fully incorporated. Repeat with a few more ladles of the hot cream. This reduces the chance of your eggs curdling into scrambled eggs.

Add the rest of the hot cream to the eggs and beat to fully incorporate, then return all of it to the pot.

At this point, I decided I really wanted to use some stabilizers. It’s not that I’ve had stability issues with previous ice creams I’ve made, but I do feel like they could be, well, better. Many products that you consume have some sort of stabilizer or emulsifier, they are just there to improve food quality. You don’t need them, but I wanted to see if they made a difference. I decided upon using locust bean gum and xanthan gum. They generally are measured out as a percentage of the total mass, and I was adding about .04% and .1% of LBG and Xanthan gum, respectively. I found this on some food manufacturing site as the middle of the range for ice cream stabilization. If I come across it again, I’ll edit the link in here.

The stabilizers, if using, should be added to the custard mixture with an immersion blender.

Turn the heat on to medium-low. Stir it as it heats. You want to heat it to about 170 degrees. Other clues that you’re done: the custard will coat the back of a spoon (nape), the bubbles will disappear. The heat cooks the eggs, which thickens the custard. It also allows the gums to fully hydrate so that they can do their thing.

At this point, you should remove it from the heat, cool it down and refrigerate for at least 4 hours to let the flavors develop. I didn’t, because I was impatient, and it still tasted great.

Freeze in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions and fold in bacon bits. I use this Cuisinart model.

Put into some sort of container to harden in the freezer.

Serve with a crisp bacon garnish if you like that sort of thing. You should end up with something like this:

I expected it to be pretty good, but not this good. The bacon gives a crunch, the cinnamon and vanilla base are just flavorful enough to set a nice background for the bacon, which is the star of this creation. I’m not sure if the stabilizers made a difference or not, if you try it without, let me know how it goes. I used some bacon that was otherwise languishing in the freezer (Hormel Black Label if you must know). When I make it again, I think I’d use a thicker and/or more flavorful bacon. Other ideas: a bourbon & brown sugar swirl, maple syrup flavor in the base. I have another pound of bacon in the freezer… maybe a follow-up is in order?