Gelato
Gelato is an Italian frozen dessert made from milk (or also soy milk) and sugar, combined with other flavourings. The gelato ingredients (after an optional pasteurization) are super-cooled while stirring to break up ice crystals as they form. Like high end ice cream, gelato generally has less than 35% air - resulting in a dense and extremely flavoursome product.
Gelato has become a generic Italian word for ice cream, though true gelato contains no cream. The same word is commonly used in English speaking countries to refer to "ice cream" that is prepared in the Italian way. "Gelato" comes from the Italian word gelare, meaning "to freeze."
Overview
Gelato is typically made with fresh fruit or other ingredients such as chocolate (pure chocolate, flakes, chips, candies, truffles, etc.), nuts, small candies, sweets, or cookies. Outside Italy it is often made using flavors imported from Italy. Gelato made with water and without dairy ingredients is also known as sorbetto. Traditionally, milk-based gelato originated in Northern Italy, while the fruit-and-water based sorbetto, came from the hotter parts of Southern Italy and Sicily.
Dairy gelato is made with whole cow's milk and contains 4–8% butterfat depending on the ingredients (nuts, milk, or cream increases the fat content). North American-style ice creams contain more butterfat than gelato, ranging from 10% to 18% since more cream is used. Like high-end ice cream, good quality gelato combines high quality ingredients with milk and cream, soy milk, or water. Gelato is usually made with whole milk which is 3–4% butterfat, and often cream is added to increase creaminess. Unlike ice cream, gelato ingredients are not homogenized together, and the result is that the product melts faster than ice cream.
Some gelato recipes call for eggs, although with the homogenization of the Italian gelato culture and mixes and stabilisers readily available and in use, eggs are being phased out as emulsifiers.
Some people have the misconception that the word "gelato" is related to "gelatin" and that the latter is an ingredient, chasing away vegetarians and those wishing to avoid gelatin. However, although some rogue gelaterias might use gelatin, traditional gelato recipes do not call for it and most gelato is not made with gelatin. "Gelato", as stated above, comes from the word for "freeze" or "frozen".
Gelato is served from a different freezer than American style ice cream—a forced air freezer—which is usually held at about -15°C (5–8°F). This allows the gelato to be served immediately after being extruded from the gelato machine—the "forced air" blowing around holds the product at a consistent temperature. The best gelato is made fresh daily. Much of the gelato experience lies in its semi-frozen consistency, therefore, you may serve ice cream from a gelato freezer but you may not serve gelato from an ice cream freezer; the gelato would become too frozen.
Other countries make ice creams similar to gelato. In Argentina, helado is made much the same way. In France (though usually slightly higher in fat) glace is a very similar product and, in fact, was introduced to France by Catherine de' Medici (of Florence).
Some Italian food products use gelato as a main ingredient. These may include ice cream cake, semifreddos (gelato cake), spumoni, cassate, Tartufo, and fruit-filled gelato candies and mignon.
Traditional flavours
- Chocolate
- Bacio (chocolate and hazelnut)
- Donatella (Chocolate and hazelnut)
- Hazelnut
- Sicilian Pistacchio
- Stracciatella (vanilla and chocolate) with nuts covered in sugar
- Strawberry
- Lemon
- Vanilla
Production
It is common for a producer to use different ingredients for several reasons:
- instead of fresh ingredients, powdered milk, fruit concentrates and other sweeteners (such as glucose) can be used to save money
- stabilisers and preservatives can be added to make it last longer
- colourants can be added to make it look nicer