Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream (yummy!) (1 Viewer)

[DaveF]

Inspired by a recent Popular Science Article, I made my first batch of peppermint liquid-nitrogen (LNO) ice cream . Sweet, creamy, and rich -- I highly recommend it if you can get liquid-nitrogen.

I went to the University today, to help a student doing similar research as I did, borrowed the dewar and brought home a gallon or two of liquid nitrogen.

For the ice-cream base, I used a cookbook recipe intended for slow-freezing in a normal freezer (and not with an ice cream machine); it was the simplest and seemed well suited to my approach. But any recipe should work fine.

I mixed up the ingredients: sweetened condensend milk, heavy cream, vanilla extract, crushed peppermint candies, eggs, and half-and-half. I poured the mixture into my pressure cooker pot. Armed with a wooden spatula, I stirred vigorously as my roommate slowly poured the LNO into the mixture. Per OSHA regulations I wore my ski gloves and had a box fan blowing to disperse the evaporated nitrogen gas.

A couple times I capped the pressure cooker for a minute; I read that can expedite the freezing process. Doing that caused the surface of the mixture to freeze, but then I had to break it up and work it back into the mixture. Overall, the best success came with having the intermittently LNO poured slowly into the ice-cream base with constant stirring. The pouring was stop occaisionally to check the ice-cream.

The whole process took about 90 minutes to decide on my recipe, mix, and freeze it. Using the same recipe, I could make the ice cream in about half an hour. My recipe produced about 3/4 gallon and used maybe two gallons of LNO.

Yummy!

 

[Philip_G]

I'll remember that next time I have a few extra quarts of liquid nitrogen :frowning:

 

[Jagan Seshadri]

DaveF, are you the ice cream man?

HEY EVERYONE! IT'S THE ICE CREAM MAN!!!
Me me me me me!!

-JNS

 

[ThomasC]

If any of you that are reading this live around Columbus, Ohio, you can try some at the Ohio State Fair.

 

[SteveA]

and had a box fan blowing to disperse the evaporated nitrogen gas

Yeah, heaven forbid you should breathe some of that noxious shit!

 

[Peter Kim]

Not so much noxious (isn't our atmosphere primarily nitrogen?) as it is physically harmful - I'm guessing the supercooled molecules could damage, if not collapse your lungs if inhaled.

But then, I'm not the chemical, beaker-flavored ice cream making superfreak like Dave.

 

[Philip_G]

in gas form it shouldn't be that cold, should it? it would displace O2 though, I guess you could get hypoxic and pass out er something.
I really do want to try this

 

[DaveF]

it would displace O2 though, I guess you could get hypoxic and pass out er something

That's the reason. I wasn't seriously concerned about it, but sufficient Nitrogen displaced the Oxygen, I could asphyxiate.

I wore gloves because the liquid can splash when being poured and it can sting a bit if it hits skin.

I don't know if LNO is commercially available, but dry ice might be a fair substitute -- just take care to do it in a well ventilated area. Or you could befriend someone in the chem department at your local college, for a LNO source.

The real pity is I never did this while a grad student; it would have made for a good snack time. But, I do know that chemical fume hoods work well at sucking up the odors from a Fry Daddy

 

[Mike Voigt]

As Dave said, it's because it can displace the O2 in the air. Not a good thing - and liquid nitrogen, uncontained, isn't great either. It'll usually evaporate slowly; add some sort of significant heating element, though...

On the skin, the effect is similar to burning. It is sometimes used to remove unwanted growths - moles, small tumors - from the skin.

And, yes, those vent hoods are handy!

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Just be careful with the dewar, because if you drop it, you will have a case of dewar die.......:p)








(Dennis ducks for cover after the terrible pun.)

 

[DaveF]

It is sometimes used...

It's also useful in case of attach by a T1000 terminator from the future.

Does anyone know if it's possible to buy LNO commercially in small amounts? I'd like to do a speech for my Toastmasters club about making ice cream and it'd be nice if I could tell people how they could actually do it themselves.

 

[Philip_G]

my old man worked at bendix or somewhere assembling components for different instruments in like, the 60's. I remember him telling stories of freezing warts and moles off on his own with LNO.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Back when I was a physics undergrad, we used liquid nitrogen to freeze candy bars and then drop them. Nothing like fragments of Snickers bars so you could eat them more slowly.....

Ever try the frozen goldfish routine? I read a long time ago that live goldfish dropped into liquid nitrogen would go into suspended animation. They supposedly would revive OK when dropped frozen into room temperature water.....

 

[Joseph Howard]

Ah, the fun of liquid nitrogen freezing. I use the stuff all the time for class demonstrations when talking about heat/temperature & kinetic molecular theory. Plus, my wife (a chemist) makes liquid nitrogen ice cream during chemistry society functions and/or when local school kids come to the univeristy for a "science day."

Dr. Joe

 

[wally]

How 'bout a new flavor;

Diver Dave’s Blueberry Bend?



All the alliteration fit to print...

 

[DaveF]

I was wondering if I could get nitrogen narcosis making my ice cream ...

I'm going to try it again in two weeks, when my sister and brother-in-law are visiting. Though it'll probably be chocolate, instead of blueberry.