An unsuccessful broccoli ice cream, but a very nice broccoli dip.
Tonight while my eldest was refusing to go to sleep I was threatening to feed him nothing but broccoli tomorrow. Broccoli for breakfast, broccoli for lunch, broccoli for afternoon tea, broccoli for dinner, broccoli .. icy pole? Dare I say broccoli ice cream?
Most of the time when I come up with a new recipe idea for ice cream and Google it I get lots of hits. Not so much with broccoli strangely enough. Perhaps this is telling me something? Perhaps not. Challenge accepted!
Is it possible to make a palatable icy pole or ice cream with broccoli? And not just 'I waved a head of broccoli over the mix and therefore it's broccoli'. Actual broccoli???
To start with I steamed, cooled and blitzed up and strained some broccoli and stuck it into the kids icy pole makers. The results, predictably enough, were pretty revolting.
Next I thought about what flavours go well with broccoli and what I know makes it taste good. If you Google best ever broccoli recipe there's a lot of roasting and seasoning going on.
So I cut up about 300gms of broccoli into small florets, drilled it with olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper and added two thinly sliced cloves of garlic. Roast in a pre heated oven at 220C for 30 mins. Allow to cool. So far, so good.
Blitz in a food processor with 2 table spoons of olive oil, 2 table spoons of lemon juice and of lemon zest. Blitz. And blitz and blitz some more. Scrap down the sides, add 150gms of sour cream annnnd blitz. Season.
Try, some may say in vain, to get roast broccoli with stuff added to a nice smooth texture. The mix at this point actually tastes pretty good but does not resemble any ice cream mix I've ever come across.
Chill in the fridge for several hours. Mix has dried out and resembles green bread crumbs. It really needs more sour cream, but I've run out because I used the rest in the roast nectarine ice cream.
I decide to churn mix anyway. Churn mix for 20mins. Broccoli ice cream is now cold, slightly sticking together green bread crumbs, has a weird texture and is nigh on impossible to scoop.
It does not, in my opinion taste That bad. Hubby hated it. My eldest refused to try it, my youngest ate two bowls but he eats any thing.
So did I succeed in my challenge to make broccoli ice cream? In a word no.
After blending initially what I succeeded in making was quite nice broccoli dip if you added some more sour cream to thin it out. But not ice cream.
Recipe for broccoli ice cream aka dip below if any one want to try it.
Broccoli ice cream aka dip
Equipment
- food processor
- strainer
- ice cream churner
Ingredients
- 11 oz (300 gms) broccoli florets about half a small head of broccoli
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2 tbsp olive oil, plus more for drizzling
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 2 tbsp lemon zest
- ⅔ cup (150 ml) sour cream more to make dip, which you will be
- salt and pepper to season
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 430°F (220°C)
- Cut broccoli into small florets. Peel and thinly slice garlic.
- Drizzle broccoli with olive oil, season
- Put broccoli on a tray, sprinkle with garlic slices and roast for 20mins. Broccoli should be just starting to brown, if not put it in for another 10 mins or so.
- Allow roasted broccoli to cool, then blitz in a food processor with olive oil, lemon juice and zest. Once quite fine add sour cream.
- For broccoli dip, add more sour cream until desired consistency is reached
- There is no step 7 to go onto turning this into actual ice cream, did you not read the bit about how bad it is? Make the dip, the dip is yummy 🙂
I tried this, I couldn't quite take it as an ice cream, but If i put that idea out of my mind, it does make a pretty decent dip.