Why it is important to agitate the mixture of ice cream while freezing it?

You make ice cream at home using a metal cylinder, containing the liquid ice cream mixture, turning in a bigger tub, which contains ice and rock salt. One doesn't actually "agitate" but rather one uses muscle or motor power to turn the cylinder against melting ice on the outside and fixed paddle blades on the inside.

Melting ice literally sucks the heat out of the mixture through the metal cylinder walls, resulting in a thin sheet of frozen ice cream adhering to the inside walls. If you didn't keep it turning and the paddle stirring, the milk would separate from the eggs and sugar, because they freeze more slowly. So one function of turning against the blade it that it keeps the ingredients in mixture.

Paddle blades also scrape the ice cream from the sides of the metal cylinder as it freezes. This allows more ice cream mix to freeze onto the cylinder walls, and get scrapped off, until the mixture gets so thick with frozen ice cream that it won't turn any more.


Bob Millard
http://www.avoicecryinginthebewilderness@blogsite.com

salt

First answer by Bmillard. Last edit by Jdiaz. Contributor trust: 15 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 15 [recommend question]