Caramelized Onion Ice Cream | Custard versus Gelato

These recipes are originally from Dave Arnold, adjusted slightly to standardize everything into grams. This post won’t include detailed instructions, but is merely documenting the experiment that was the part of this video.

Pressure Cooker Caramelized Onions

  • 1000g Sliced Yellow Onion (1.9 fructose, 2.3 glucose, 1.6 sucrose, 5.8% total sugar. 70.4% of total initial mixture.)

  • 250g Whole Milk (17.6% total initial mixture)

  • 170g Brown Sugar (12% total initial mixture)

  • 3.0g Salt

This results in a mixture with the following sugar profile: 19 fructose, 23 glucose, 181 sucrose, 7.5 lactose, 230.5 total sugar. After cooking, the total was 1300g. Which was used to calculate the estimated sweetness and anti-freezing power. (18.2 sweetness, 20.6 AFP per 100g.) The sweetness was also slightly adjusted to account for the caramelization. The recipe was originally designed for a stovetop pressure cooker. This first attempt went for one hour using a countertop electric pressure cooker, but may have needed even longer.

Custard Base

  • 10 egg yolks - 185g (14.23%)

  • 500 ml milk - 500g (38.46%)

  • 500 ml heavy cream - 440g (33.85%)

  • 170 grams sugar (13.08%)

  • Enough salt - 6.0g (0.46%)

Target fat content: 16.5-17.0%, target sweetness: 15.0%, estimated AFP: 150. Each ingredient is listed as the original measurement from the recipe, converted to estimated grams when necessary, and the overall percentage within the mixture. This makes it easier to scale the recipe down to a 1000g batch. The procedure was fairly simple, primarily blending ingredients, cooking sous vide to 85°C, mixing again, and refrigerating overnight.

1:1 Custard Base and Pressure Caramelized Onions

Target fat content: 8.5-9.0%, target sweetness: 16.5-17.0%, estimated AFP: 180.

Caramelized Onion Gelato

  • 500g Pressure Caramelized Onions (from above)

  • 215g Heavy Cream

  • 125g Whole Milk

  • 90g Dextrose

  • 30g Molasses

  • 20g Toasted/Skimmed Milk Powder

  • 5.0g Salt

  • 2.0g Sodium Citrate

  • 2.0g Xanthan Gum

  • 1.5g Locust Bean Gum

  • 8.0g Acid Phosphate

Target fat content: 7.5-8.0%, target sweetness: 18.0-18.5%, estimated AFP: 305. My original recipe built around the caramelized onion mixture. For testing it was simply blended and directly cooked in the blender, to 85°C to activate the stabilizers, before chilling and refrigerated overnight. It was then blended one time, before pre-chilling and churning like all of my gelato recipes.