Gentle Mint-Chip Ice Cream

Mint-chip has always been my favorite ice cream, but I know many people don't love it. As my husband put it "I don't feel the need to eat toothpaste."
This mint-chip recipe, taken from SeriousEats, is a different story. Rather than having an aggressive, tooth-pasty flavor, it has a delicate, gentle minty freshness, with hints of something sweet and herbal. It is also, you will note, not a bright green. The chocolate chips are crunchy delicious nuggets of goodness.

Note: This recipe requires an ice cream maker, and of course you do need to make sure your maker container is pre-frozen. You also need to take into account time to steep the mint leaves, and allow the mixture to cool. So if you're planning to serve it in the evening, you need to start in the morning, or preferably make it a day in advance. 

Gentle Mint-Chip Ice Cream

Ingredients (for about 1 qt/1 liter of ice cream): 

- 2 cups heavy cream

- 1 cup whole milk

- 1 large or two small bunches fresh mint (or na'na) leaves

- 6 egg yolks

- 1/2 cup sugar

- 1/2 teaspoon salt

- 4 oz/ 110 grams dark chocolate 

- 2 tbsp neutral oil such as vegetable or canola 

Preparation: 

1. Heat the cream and milk in a medium saucepan until just simmering. Remove from heat, stir in the mint leaves, cover, and allow to steep for two hours. 

2. When the leaves are ready, put the yolks and sugar in another saucepan, and stir until combined. Using a fine sieve, strain the minty cream/milk mixture into the egg/sugar mixture, and then press on the mint leaves to get as much of the flavor as possible. Discard the leaves. 

3. Put the saucepan on medium heat and cook, stirring constantly, until you get a smooth custurd-like texture, that coats the back of a spoon. You know it's ready when you can draw a line through the custard on the spoon with your finger and have it stay there, without having the custard flow back together. Note that the custard will not be very thick. 

4. Pour the custard through a fine sieve into an airtight container. Place in the fridge for at least several hours, and up to overnight, until it is quite cold. 

5. Place the ice cream into your ice cream maker and churn per instructions. While it's churning, place the chocolate and the oil into a microwave-safe bowl, and melt carefully (put in for 30 seconds, sit, then again, until the chocolate is fully melted, but not burnt). 

6. When the ice-cream is almost fully churned, but not quite, pour the chocolate into the ice cream maker and allow to churn with the ice cream, creating ribbons of chocolate bits in the ice cream. If your ice cream is already too hard to turn at this point, just turn off the maker, and vigorously stir in the chocolate by hand. 

7. Transfer ice cream to an airtight container and allow to harden for a few hours before serving.

Enjoy!