Stracciatella ice cream 🍨 Authentic Italian gelato recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is stracciatella gelato made of? ›

While stracciatella ice cream traditionally involves milk ice cream and milk chocolate, modern variations can also be made with vanilla and dark chocolate. Manufactured versions, especially in North America, often use grated or chopped chocolate chips in place of fine drizzled streams.

Meaning little rags, stracciatella is the name for three different Italian foods: soup, cheese, and gelato – the only thing they have in common is their name.

Stracciatella ice cream is a bit like chocolate-chip ice cream, but the chocolate is finer. It traditionally uses milk chocolate, but dark chocolate works as well. Stracciatella cheese takes the fat-rich part of the curd that's leftover from making mozzarella and mixes it with salt and cream.

What is the secret ingredient of gelato? There isn't really a “secret” ingredient in gelato – the magic lies in the process. However, what sets gelato apart from its frozen dessert counterparts is the quality of the ingredients used and the low amount of air incorporated during the slow churning process.

The main difference between ice cream and gelato is their fat content. With only 4-9% fat to the usual 10-25% of ice cream, gelato usually is lighter and healthier. Per portion, however, the answer is clear, gelato is typically healthier than ice cream.

Substitutes. Fresh ricotta may be substituted for stracciatella as a condiment or an ingredient in a topping or filling. Stracchino, a fresh, unripened Italian cheese with a milky flavor and light tang, may also be used. For melting, such as on a pizza, fresh mozzarella or burrata can be used in place of stracciatella.

After dining out in Italy last summer and finding it served straight up – literally, Italians will eat this cheese as an appetizer with a spoon. Sometimes with accoutrements like nuts, jams or honey. I have since brought the Italian approach to stracciatella home.

This popular Italian soft cheese is widely used as a topping for pizzas, pastas, and risottos. It perfectly pairs with salads or fresh bread and tomatoes. When eaten alone, it should be tasted at room temperature. Remove it from the fridge at least 30 minutes before serving.

In Italy, stracciatella is referred to as vanilla gelato with crunchy chocolate pieces on top or throughout the gelato. It can also be used to create a chocolate flavored gelato. Offering a chocolaty, crunchy chocolate chip texture, it's hard not to become an amante (lover) of this flavor.

Because there's less butterfat coating your palate, gelato's flavors tend to taste more intense. Gelato also contains less air than American ice cream — that helps keep it dense, fluid and creamy.

What does egg do in gelato? ›

Eggs leverage the fat already present in the ice cream base (the butterfat in cream and milk) and make it work even further for a creamier texture. But wait, there's more! Egg yolks also improve the stability of an ice cream, reducing its tendency to melt before you can get it from freezer to cone to mouth.

"Sorbet is made with fruit but no dairy (eggs or milk/cream) so it's generally vegan-friendly and suits those with egg or dairy allergies, too," she says. The pureness of the fruit makes it icy and refreshing, and it won't be silky or rich in its texture as some other kinds of ice creams and sherberts may be.

A stracciatella cheese's taste is similar to that of mozzarella cheese, mild and a little sour and acidic. Since it's made with cream, stracciatella tastes incredibly rich. The texture is silky, buttery, and creamy.

In the most basic sense, burrata is a thin layer of mozzarella housing a stracciatella filling. Stracciatella, in turn, is a combination of fresh cream and mozzarella shreds, likely a way for cheesemakers to utilize the scraps of the mozzarella-making process.

Gelato has a lower milk fat content than ice cream, usually 4 to 9%, yielding a softer, denser texture and smaller ice crystals. That's a result of the base, which typically includes less cream and more milk, as well as a slower churning process that introduces less air into the final product.

And Stracciatella is not cookies and cream. Stracciatella comes from the Italian word stracciato which translates to "torn apart'. In the culinary world, Stracciatella is one of Europe's most popular Ice cream flavours. Europe's version of 'chocolate chip' you could say.