Name: Strawberry Gelato
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 40 min
Yield: 12
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 3 cups strawberries, untrimmed. After roughly chopping and trimming should produce about 2 cups or 285 grams; 1-2 teaspoons lemon juice; 1 cup heavy cream; 1 cup whole milk; 1/2 cup simple syrup (see note 1); 2/3 cup sugar

Jump to Recipe

This strawberry gelato recipe can be considered a starting point for any fruit gelato. You may have always thought that authentic gelato sadly is out of reach short of traveling to Italy, but you will be pleased with how close you can come. With the right equipment and some secrets, you can come pretty close to the Italian experience. After much research and much trial and error, I have developed some tips for successful gelato at home. The key to this is using simple syrup supplemented by the best equipment your budget allows. Please check out this discussion and tips here.

Hopefully, following this advice, you will have some great gelato at home to enjoy while you stroll around your own piazza.

Notes on Ingredients

Strawberries

Although this recipe uses strawberries, you can use this as a starting point for almost any fruit gelato. Because the sweetness of the fruit may vary, the quantities of the attached recipe should be considered as a guide as detailed below. Increase or decrease the simple syrup and/or sugar as needed. Taste your unfrozen mixture to determine if you got the sweetness right. The gelato frozen will not taste as sweet as unfrozen. Therefore, the unfrozen mixture should taste a bit too sweet.

Simple Syrup

This Strawberry Gelato recipe like many of my gelato recipes uses simple syrup. This is nothing more than sugar boiled in water. However, the impact of this transformation in gelato is almost magical. Full credit is owed to Gina Stipo of Ecco La Cucina who offers the solution to up the amount of simple syrup quite a bit. This is discussed in greater detail in my overview of gelato, but simply it is replacing large molecules of sugar with smaller ones making for a less icy texture.

Prepared for blending
Simply combine ingredients together.

Immersion Blender — Blend Completely
Use an immersion blender to dissolve sugar and blend strawberries

Strawberry Churning
Gelato churns slower adding less air.

Notes on Technique

Ice Cream Maker and Immersion Blender

The choice of ice cream maker is key to making gelato. In particular, you want a maker with a gelato setting that will more slowly churn the mixture. This ensures there is less air in the final product producing the desired texture. Please see my discussion on equipment for making gelato.

Lastly, an immersion blender is a super useful tool for completely mixing the strawberries, sugar, and liquids. If you don’t have one, a regular blender will be fine.

Final Notes

Serving

Visit a gelateria in Italy and you will notice the servers, called “gelatai” Italian, using paddles to constantly move the gelato, stirring and smoothing — almost zen-like. It breaks down the ice crystals giving a smoother tastier gelato.

If you have a gelato paddle – great, a strong spatula or ice cream scoop – fine, or even a large spoon will do. Do your version of the gelatai performance before serving; you will find it helps smooth your gelato.

Storage

Gelato is best when enjoyed fresh. It allows for the use of fresh fruit and other ingredients. Therefore, it is not intended for long-term storage. Furthermore, I have found that completely filling multiple pint containers (as opposed to one large container) improves storage time.

Even under the best of storage, after about 3 or 4 days, the gelato will become a slightly bit icier. Still tasty yes, but not quite as good of texture.