Fresh Mint-Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

Steeped with fresh mint leaves and studded with a delicate swirl of stracciatella chocolate chips, this rich and creamy homemade ice cream takes a classic flavor to the next level. With just a handful of ingredients and an at-home ice cream maker, you can create the most decadent mint ice cream you’ve ever tasted. One bite of this fresh mint-chocolate chip ice cream and you'll fall in love with this classic flavor all over again.

Step aside, fake neon green ice cream. Now that this fresh mint-chocolate chip ice cream has come into our lives, your days are numbered.

OK, in all fairness, maybe that was harsh. I've actually always loved that green-dyed mint chocolate-chip ice cream you get from Baskin Robbins or your favorite store brand. Would I even bother making my own mint-chocolate chip ice cream if I didn't? Doubtful.

But once you try fresh mint ice cream, you'll have a hard time going back. Sure, that store-bought mint-chocolate chip ice cream is tasty, but extract just can't compete with fresh mint. True story.

Ingredients

Let's first gather our ingredients for this homemade mint ice cream. Here's what we'll need.

• Fresh mint leaves
• Whole milk
• Heavy cream
• Sugar
• Egg yolks
• Vanilla extract
• Chopped chocolate
• Canola oil

What Is Stracciatella Ice Cream?

You might have noticed that chocolate chips don't appear in the ingredient list for this fresh mint-chocolate chip ice cream. Weird? Not quite. Instead of chocolate chips, like the kind you'd eat in my favorite brown butter chocolate chip cookies, we're making a stracciatella ice cream.

For a stracciatella ice cream, we melt chopped chocolate with a little canola oil and drizzle it into the custard during the final minutes of churning. The melted chocolate instantly hardens and breaks into these delicate, little chips of chocolate --- or chocolate chips. Whatever you want to call it. These small flecks distribute all throughout the ice cream, adding the perfect crunch and burst of chocolate in each bite.

Sounds delicious, huh? Trust me. Stracciatella ice cream is the way to go when your ice cream recipe calls for chocolate chips. No one wants to bite into hard chunks of frozen chocolate and break a tooth.

No Food Coloring Mint-Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

We're also skipping the food coloring in this mint ice cream. Honestly, I'm not one of those people who freak out over food coloring. I'll happily eat a dyed red velvet cake and refuse to be shamed by food coloring haters. That said, I don't feel the need to add green food coloring here.

After all, the point of fresh mint ice cream is to use fresh ingredients. See what I did there? Adding green food coloring seems to go against the theme.

Of course, if you're dying for a green-tinted mint ice cream, by all means, add the food coloring. No judgment here. I just don't find it necessary in this recipe.

Step-by-Step Instructions

All right, I think that was a thorough rundown of the ingredients, so let's jump into it. We start by simmering our whole milk, heavy cream, sugar and fresh mint. For a good punch of mint, I suggest using a whole handful like so.

Once the mixture comes to a simmer, we lightly muddle the mint to help release the oils and then turn off the heat and cover for at least an hour. This gives our mint leaves time to infuse that delicious fresh flavor into our cream mixture.

With our cream mixture steeped, we give it a quick test to see if it's still warm. If so, we then strain and slowly add half of it to our whisked egg yolks and vanilla extract.

We want the mixture to be warm because we're adding part of it to our egg yolks. This is called tempering, and it gently cooks the yolks, so they don't turn into scrambled eggs during the last step. As you can imagine, if you add cold cream to the eggs at this point, it defeats the purpose.

So test the cream and if need be, reheat it on the stove until warm. And I do stress heat just until warm --- not boiling. We never want to boil our ice cream mixture.

Once we temper our eggs, we put everything back on the stove and cook until the custard thickens. We’re now ready to refrigerate our ice cream custard and churn once it’s nice and cold. If possible, I recommend letting the custard refrigerate overnight. Our custard must be cold going into the ice cream maker to set properly, and an overnight chill ensures it’s at the perfect temperature.

With our custard base chilled, we're ready to make ice cream, so grab your ice cream maker and churn according to the manufacturer's directions. As the ice cream churns, we'll prepare our chocolate and drizzle it in at the end.

After churning, we give our ice cream a few hours to freeze and then grab an ice cream scoop and fix ourselves a big bowl of fresh mint-chocolate chip ice cream. Take a moment to close your eyes and enjoy this refreshing bite because it doesn’t get much better than this.

Perfect Pairing

You need an imperial stout with this mint ice cream. Imperial stouts have a residual sweetness from the high alcohol content, which make them one of my favorite dessert beers. The chocolate presence in the stout obviously matches the stracciatella chips and works nicely as a canvas for other complementary flavors, such as our mint and vanilla.

Feeling wine? Moscato d’asti is a sweet, fortified sparkling white wine that works perfectly here. This wine variety has a light floral profile that blends with the mint as well as stone fruit notes that accent our vanilla custard.

When only a bowl of indulgent, creamy ice cream will do, I hope you try this fresh mint-chocolate chip ice cream. I’m sure you'll fall in love with that fresh mint flavor as much I have. Please let me know how you enjoyed this fresh mint-chocolate chip ice cream recipe in the comment section and don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter. You can also catch me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter.

Cheers!

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