Old Fashioned Butter Pecan Ice Cream Recipe

Photo by Mark Weinberg. Prop Stylist: Ali Slagle Food Stylist: Sam Seneviratne

Author Notes

For amend butter pecan water ice cream, skip the ice foam auto, and double downward on the butter and the pecans. Hither'due south the scoop (sorry, I couldn't help it): You'll melt some butter and toast a lot of pecans on the stovetop, for roasty season and crunchy crunch. (Make sure you stick them in the freezer as soon as they're out of the pan, so they're cooled down past the time you stir them into the finished ice cream base.) Next yous'll melt even more than butter until it browns, intensifying in flavor and making your kitchen scent like the happiest place on earth. And while a classic no-churn ice cream template calls for condensed milk (sweetness, custardiness) and whipped cream (richness, airiness), nosotros're upgrading the latter component past throwing raw pecan pieces and cold heavy cream into a blender. The machine does all the hard work, yielding a whipped pecan cream that adds both cloudlike fluff and majuscule-P Pecan flavor to every bite. Now, nigh those other ingredients: Resist the temptation to skip the salt. It balances all the sweetness. And when you add the vanilla extract (pure is preferable), take a cue from my mom, who always lets the measuring spoon overflow merely a chip. Equally I've learned from these Genius blondies, information technology's hard to overdo the vanilla in just about any dessert, and specially hither. —Emma Laperruque

• Test Kitchen-Approved

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No-Churn Butter Pecan Ice Foam

• makes one quart

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
  
• 1 ¹/_two cups (171 grams) pecan pieces, divided
  
• Kosher salt
  
• 1 (14-ounce) tin can sweetened condensed milk
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  
• 2 cups heavy cream
  

Directions

1. Stick a quart container or loaf pan in the freezer.
2. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a large skillet over medium estrus. Add together ane loving cup (114 grams) of pecans, plus a pinch of salt, and toss to coat. Toast for about 5 minutes, stirring often and lowering the heat as needed and then the nuts don't burn, until very fragrant. Transfer to a large plate and immediately stick in the freezer to chill out. (If there are any pecan bits or browned butter left behind, wipe out the pan with a towel.)
3. Empty the tin can of condensed milk into a big bowl.
4. Add together the remaining ii tablespoons of butter to the emptied skillet and return to the stove over medium oestrus. Cook, watching closely, until the milk solids in the butter outset to brown and smell like roasting hazelnuts. Cascade the brownish butter direct into the condensed milk, scraping every concluding chip out of the pan.
5. Add the vanilla to the condensed milk, plus another pinch of salt, and stir to combine.
6. Add the remaining 1/2 cup (57 grams) of pecans to a blender. Process until powdery. Add a big splash of cream and process to combine, scraping down as needed. Add some other large splash and echo. Now pour in the rest of the cream and blend until the cream is whipped.
7. Scrape the whipped foam into the condensed milk mixture and gently fold to combine. At present fold in the toasted pecans from the freezer.
8. Remove the container from the freezer and add the water ice cream. Embrace and freeze for at least vi hours, until however house you like your ice cream.

Emma is the food editor at Food52. Before this, she worked a lot of odd jobs, all at the same time. Think: stir-frying noodles on the fly, baking dozens of pastries at 3 a.1000., and writing well-nigh the history of pie in North Carolina. Now she lives in New Jersey with her hubby and their cat, Butter. Stay tuned every Tuesday for Emma'due south award-winning column, Big Trivial Recipes (also the cookbook in November 2021!). And see what she'south up to on Instagram at @emmalaperruque.

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