I’d seen many a video of Turkish dondurma but was wondering about both how it was made and its history. Random stuff online said it wasn’t the ice cream you used to know and my interest was piqued. I’ve neither the credentials or the sources for a realistic recreation of dondurma but I found a recipe made by Dave Arnold Fake Fryable, Brûlée-able Salep Dondurma Ice Cream: A Legal Recipe – Cooking Issues He uses low alcyl gellan which can be subbed for agar which I had much easier access to for this recipe. Even from that recipe you can see the discussion about freeze thaw stability and what you would use to make an “ice cream” work. Also I still don’t have access to LN2 so I had to figure out how to bring everything together. For the sake of folks that want a recipe instead of me waffling about pipe thread I’ll drop that now with a few notes.
Chef’s notes:
- Glucomannan is the secret ingredient for dondurma as you would find in Turkey. You can source it from orchids in Greece which don’t have the export ban or use the powder of the konjac root though I have no ratios for success for that sub at this point.
- The replacement saleb recipe made by Dave used gellan which in theory requires half of what you would use for agar based on my research. The problem here is how much agar likes to sweat and setup. I designed the following recipe as a straight sub and it failed for strechiness.
- This recipe is freeze thaw stable, bruleeable, and probably deep fryable albeit small balls and crust size would be important. Temp resets generally follow the agar curve but the guar helps keep things together.
- I did this in old school ice cream maker. You won’t find any overrun because of the thickeners so once your ice cream is cool you can either beat it with a stick as the vendors would or break out your kitchen aid . The biggest thing is that you have to take your time. Twenty minutes post -2C beating it with a stick or a mixer is a must.
500 grams cold milk
500 grams cold cream
12 grams agar
40 grams honey
3 g salt
5 grams guar gum
130 grams granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 egg yolks (beaten)
Combine the milk, cream and add agar, salt, and guar. Whisk vigorously to combine. Bring the mixture to a boil while stirring (to hydrate the agar). Simmer for 1 minute (ensures the agar is hydrated). Remove from heat. Add sugar and vanilla and stir (drops the temperature a bit). When mixture drops to 83 or 82C add the egg yolks and stir (if you go higher you might curdle the eggs. The yolks increase the creaminess of the recipe). Put mixture in an ice bath to set. When mixture is completely set, blend in a high-speed mixer till creamy. Freeze with liquid nitrogen in a Kitchen-Aid mixer fixed with a paddle attachment. Beat until the ice cream gets stringy and stretchy.