Recipe Test: Matcha Ice Cream
An earthy ice cream treat from the Land of the Rising Sun.
Update (9/19/24): because matcha has caffeine, be careful if eating this in the evening. I had a very small amount of it last night, and it significantly impacted my sleep. I was wide awake at 1am, which everyone knows is decidedly not like me.
If you’ve watched the Great British Bake Off (GBBO), you’ll be familiar with the fact that Paul Hollywood has, on numerous occasions, made it clear that he’s not wild about the taste of matcha.1 Being the cold and prickly customer that he is, it would be easy to attribute Paul’s distaste to some sort of culinary chauvinism, or at the very least, an undeveloped palate.2 I’m pretty certain I had that reaction when I first heard him express his aversion to the flavor of matcha in pastries.
Yet here’s the thing. Sometimes people just don’t like certain flavors. Humans have preferences when it comes to taste, and that’s totally okay.3 To be honest, I don’t really love the taste of matcha when it’s featured in sweets. Part of that is probably due to my upbringing, but maybe it’s also just not my favorite flavor. Don’t get me wrong: I like matcha ice cream. And I’ve had a lot of matcha-flavored pastries over the past few years that were quite good. But matcha just doesn’t hit for me the same way other flavors do.
But I can tell you one place where matcha desserts are very popular, and that place is Japan.
Ah, Japan! As readers of this blog already know, I was quite taken with the island nation when I first visited in the summer of 2023 and can easily wax poetic about it at length. Indeed, the impression was so strong that for the past eighteen months, I’ve engaged in what can only be described as reverse cultural chauvinism when describing Japan’s superiority to the United States. I won’t bore you with any of that here, especially since many of you have had to listen to me prattle on about the “wonders of Japan” in person.
Instead, what I will say is that matcha ice cream is ubiquitous in Japan—the number of establishments and food stalls selling matcha soft serve was probably equal to the number of places that sell coffee in America. In other words, almost everywhere. Based on my limited observations, it also seemed like the most popular flavor of ice cream in Japan. So I’m excited to try my hand at making some here at home.
This week’s recipe is based mainly on Salt & Straw’s4 base recipe. What makes Salt & Straw’s homemade recipe unique is that it uses xanthan gum as a stabilizer. Tyler Malek, the co-founder and head ice cream maker of Salt & Straw, notes in his NY Times tutorial video that xanthan gum sounds scary because it starts with an X. In reality, it is a naturally occurring bacterium that is produced during the sugar fermentation process (or so Wikipedia tells me).
I may do a whole post on different stabilizers at some point, but in this case, xanthan does the work of eggs. Malek claims eggs give ice cream an eggy flavor, which is why he prefers using xanthan. gum I recommend watching the video linked above to hear Malek explain his thought process.
Now that you’ve been primed on xanthan gum, here are the ingredients for the recipe:
Making the base was ridiculously easy. You heat the milk, sugar, corn syrup, and xanthan gum, then cool it slightly before adding in the cream. That’s it.
With the base squared away, I needed to figure out how much matcha to use. I triangulated between this recipe from Just One Cookbook, The World of Ice Cream’s matcha recipe, and The Perfect Scoop’s green tea recipe. Namiko Chen of Just One Cookbook calls for 5 tablespoons of matcha. Adrienne Borlongan calls for 3 tablespoons. David Lebovitz calls for 5 teaspoons. Chen is a native of Japan. Borlongan is an American Filipina. Lebovitz is an American White guy. Draw your own conclusions!
Friends, I have to admit: I psyched myself out a bit. Five tablespoons just seemed like too much for a first matcha ice cream-making effort. Matcha flavor can be subtle, but at the same time very intense (to me at least). So I figured I would do less than Chen’s recipe. Where I ended up landing was just north of Lebovitz’s recipe: 5 teaspoons (approximately 1 and 1/2 tablespoons). The ratio of milk and sugar to matcha is, however, higher in mine than Lebovitz’s, because the Salt & Straw base uses less cream and sugar than most recipes I’ve encountered thus far (more on that later). Anyway…
Here’s the churn!
When the churn finished, the first thing I noticed was that despite using a third less cup of dairy than many of the other recipes I’ve tried (most tend to use 1.5 cups of milk and 1.5 cups of cream), the output from Malek’s recipe seems almost identical. I wonder if that’s the magic of xanthan gum?
The ice cream itself was excellent. The texture stood out to me more than anything else. It scooped very easily and had a smooth, creamy consistency. It was even a bit chewy, but in a good way, like store-bought ice cream (which often use stabilizers like xanthan and guar gum). I guess the xantham really does help give it that “professional” ice cream texture!
The matcha flavor was also quite good: very noticeable, with that trademark astringent aftertaste—but not at all overpowering.5 I thought the sweetness level could be increased, but no one else in the fam agreed.
In sum, I will definitely be using the Salt & Straw recipe again. It is super easy to make, can be customized into any flavor you can imagine, and yields a wonderful consistency of ice cream. I also really enjoyed—but did not love—the matcha flavor. As I said at the outset, I have my preferences.
But wait! We’re not done just yet!
While the ice cream was quite delicious, the consensus among the fam was that I should have added more matcha. Fudgie the whale!6
And so, as you might have guessed, I made a second batch! This time with 3 tablespoons of matcha (thank you Adrienne Borlongan)—and a bit more sugar. Here’s the final result:
This batch had the same consistency but a deeper green color. And the flavor? Well, I’ll let my family give you the verdict:
My wife: “Yep! The matcha flavor really punches you.”
My son: “That is definitely it!”
My daughter (nodding her head): “That’s really good.”
I must admit: I agree! I also thought the increased matcha made it better. Maybe I should try five tablespoons next time!
So there you have it: matcha ice cream. If you’ve never had it, give it a try!
Next week: A mango lassi-inspired frozen yogurt. Plus a second, as-yet-to-be-determined flavor, since my daughter is allergic to mango.
See you then!
If you haven’t watched GBBO, you should check it out.
For the record, I very much enjoy Paul’s presence and role in GBBO.
Yes, okay, having a cultural flavor bias when you’re the host of one of the most popular cooking shows in the world is perhaps…taste biased. But you get my point.
Readers should be thankful I didn’t follow through on my original plan and base the entire intro to this post around the argument, “Salt & Straw is a terrible name for an ice cream business.” To those wondering (and those who weren’t): Salt & Straw is not named as such merely to evoke some twee, alliterative, and artisinal sort of vibe. No no no! They named it Salt & Straw because apparently, way back in the day, ice cream used to be packed in salt and straw to keep it cold.
The issue here is twofold. Let’s start with the temporal issue first: Why does it matter that during the time of Ben Franklin people used salt and straw to refrigerate ice cream? Even if you’re trying to evoke a simple, old-fashioned process, I don’t see the relevance. If you were to start a car company, you wouldn’t call it Horse and Buggy. And in terms of the linguistic angle, when people think of ice cream, I’d wager that very few think about straws, and hardly anyone thinks about salt (even if it is a trace ingredient in most ice creams). Also, you’ll notice their base recipe doesn’t even include salt!
But what do I know? The name might make it seem like it’s a farmhouse home decor store, but with more than 40 locations—and very good ice cream I might add—they clearly know what they’re doing. And the name does have a certain ring to it when said aloud. Very marketable! I guess it’s another case of Jeni’s-esque jealousy on my part.
Matcha has caffeine, and we were sampling this on a school night, so portions were deliberately kept small.
An inside joke for me and anyone else who knows.