Fire It Up - Andrew Schloss [170]
Grilling Ice Cream
Grilling ice cream is a bit of sleight of hand. The trick is getting a grilled flavor, or a crispy texture, or a charred appearance while keeping the ice cream frozen solid. This can mean protecting the ice cream inside a wrapper or crust, putting something on the outside of the ice cream that will brown quickly (before the ice cream gets hot enough to melt), or getting the ice cream so frigid that it keeps its shape while its surface melts. However you choose to achieve the feat you will need high quality ice cream to do it.
During ice-cream production, air is incorporated into the mix. The air inflates the volume of the ice cream, making it creamy rather than hard. In ice-cream manufacturing, all the volume in excess of the volume of the original mix is called overrun. In very fluffy ice creams, the overrun can be as much as 100 percent, which means the ice cream is half air. Budget ice creams, with the most overrun, have little substance per square inch of volume, so they melt easily. They cannot be grilled. Premium ice creams and denser gelati tend to have less overrun than budget ice cream, usually less than 25 percent. The denser the ice cream, the better it is for grilling.
Grilling Custard
Custards are suspensions of milk and eggs. As custard heats, the protein in both the milk and eggs becomes firm. At a certain temperature, usually about 190°F, the mixture turns solid and smooth. At that point the custard is set, and the cooking must stop. If it gets hotter, the protein will coagulate too much and the custard will separate. Because temperature is harder to control on a grill than it is in an oven or on a stove top, custards are not usually cooked over an open fire. We have found that not only is it possible to get custard to set smoothly on a grill, but also, if the heat is kept very low, you can achieve a delicate consistency infused with subtle, smoky aromas.
The trick is to build a fire small enough yet hot enough to generate a good amount of smoke while maintaining a gentle ambient temperature under the grill hood, around 200°F (one burner on a multiburner gas grill works). We have cooked some excellent baked custards and cheesecakes over a fire using this technique (a cheesecake is just custard in which cream cheese or ricotta cheese replaces the milk).
Grilling Eggs
Like milk, raw eggs are fluid. In order to grill them you have to contain them in some way. Fortunately, eggs come in their own natural containers, and it is easy to hard- or soft-cook eggs in their shells. You can also fry an egg in a frying pan set on a grill, or bake them in ramekins over a fire, but the pans keep the fire so far away from the food that we have found there is little to no difference between cooking eggs in a pan over an open fire and cooking them on a stove top. Unless you are cooking over fire out of necessity (you’re camping or your electricity is out), the process seems more like a gimmick than a legitimate grilling technique.
We have found two ways of cooking eggs over fire that have a significant effect on texture and flavor—slow-smoking and grilling on a salt block.
“Hard-boiled egg” is really a misnomer if you’ve cooked them properly. Boiling is not a good way to cook eggs. An egg white begins to coagulate at 145°F and finishes at 180°F. Yolks set between 150 and 158°F. Boiling water, which occurs at 212°F, overcooks egg proteins, making them tough and rubbery. Which means that when cooking eggs in hot water, you don’t want the water temperature to get much hotter than a simmer, about 190°F.
That got us thinking about smoke. The temperature for slow-smoking on a grill is around 200°F. By putting some eggs right in the smoking pan over very low indirect heat, we were able to get incredible smoke-laden, hard-cooked eggs with a gorgeous amber patina. In a smoking rig, where you can get temperatures around 170°F, you can