The innovative ice-cream makers at Salt & Straw serve up secrets and recipes in a new cookbook

Japan Today

17-05-2025

By MARK KENNEDY
If you're intimidated by the idea of making ice cream at home, just think of it as making soup. That's advice from Tyler Malek of Salt & Straw, the innovative gourmet ice cream maker known for its ever-changing lick-able treats.
'Making a pint of ice cream is very similar to making a pot of soup where if you have a good stock recipe — like chicken stock, vegetable stock — then you start just adding to it until it tastes good,' he says from his kitchen in Portland, Oregon.
'If you have really good stock base recipe, you could blend strawberries into it and make strawberry ice cream. You can drizzle chocolate into it and make chocolate ice cream. You can do really anything.'
That ice cream base is also at the heart of Malek's latest cookbook, ' America's Most Iconic Ice Creams: A Salt & Straw Cookbook.' Just as another summer beckons, he and co-author JJ Goode teach the fundamentals, which then can be built on to make all kinds of delicious treats.
That means learning the bases for gelato, custard, sorbet, coconut and ice cream. Only down the road can you confidently turn them into awesome flavors like Strawberry Honey Balsamic with Black Pepper, or Banana Parsnip Sherbet.
'My dream, at its heart, is that someone can take this book and they just pore through it and have so much fun and then it ignites this Pandora's box of imagination,' Malek says.
The cookbook focuses on 10 iconic flavors: vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, coffee, green tea, pistachio, cookie dough, salted caramel, cereal and rum raisin. Once you've mastered their 'core principles in flavor, in technique,' Malek says, "you can just go wild.'
And wild it gets in the cookbook, with flavors like Toasted Sourdough, Chocolate and EVOO, and Lemon Earl Grey Shortbread.
'We wanted it to feel like you were imported into our R&D test kitchen and you could feel like you're writing recipes beside us and understanding why we're testing this and adding more salt or adding more sweetness,' he says.
Take salted caramel, which most people think is salty and sweet.
'They're completely wrong,' Malek says, laughing. 'It's salty sweet and bitter. Once you get that flavor trinity, you start understanding that the combination of salty, sweet and bitter can completely open your eyes to different combinations. '
Malek and his cousin, Kim, became ice cream entrepreneurs in 2011 when they opened a small food cart in Portland. Since then, they've expanded to over 40 stores in seven states, becoming known for their refreshing and off-beat approach and rotating menu, with new flavors added every month.
Other flavors have included Malted Potato Chip Cupcake and Black Olive Brittle and Goat Cheese. For Thanksgiving, they once offered Caramelized Turkey & Cranberry Sauce. 'I've written 2,500 recipes and maybe 20,000 fails,' says Malek.
Salt & Straw leans on xanthan gum, which Malek uses to combat 'heat shock,' when ice cream melts and freezes again into bigger crystals. ("It's as innocuous as cornstarch or baking soda," he writes.) He also harnesses the power of acids, like citric, malic and tartaric, calling them 'an ice cream maker's secret weapon.'
'I think he is part scientist — maybe a mad scientist — and part artist,' says Clarkson Potter editor Francis Lam, who with Susan Roxborough helped craft the book. Lam first encountered Salt & Straw when he ate their prosciutto ice cream at an event in Portland. At another event, he had their sea urchin flavor and felt compelled to meet Malek.
'He's one of these people who doesn't shut down an idea before he runs with it for a little bit,' Lam said.
Salt & Straw is part of an artisanal ice cream boom in recent years that includes companies like Van Leeuwen, Gelato Fiasco, Lick Honest Ice Creams, Morgenstern's and Wanderlust Creamery.
Malek has leaned on partners for innovations; he and a doughnut maker in Florida, for instance, created a cream cheese ice cream with glazed brioche doughnut chunks and guava curd. He has interned at breweries to learn the ins and outs of beer making to incorporate it into his desserts.
'My passion is in learning and storytelling. If I weren't making ice cream, my dream job was always to be a travel writer," says Malek. 'I had no idea when we first started the company that ice cream is like the coolest medium to channel that through because it really is like writing a story through every single ice cream.'
He learned that different regions of the country have their blind spots; when Salt & Straw opened in Los Angeles, few knew what rhubarb was. At the same time, he didn't know there were different types of avocados.
Another tip borrowed from soup: As with soup bases, Malek says, home cooks should make big batches of different ice cream bases, separate them into containers and freeze them.
'Then when you're ready to make ice cream, defrost it in your microwave real quick and blend in your strawberries that you got fresh from the farmer's market and make strawberry ice cream,' he says. 'That's the trick: to make ice cream within a day or literally within hours of finding a really special ingredient.'
Here's a recipe from the new cookbook 'America's Most Iconic Ice Creams: A Salt & Straw Cookbook' by Tyler Malek and JJ Goode:
Makes about 2½ pints
3 cups 17% Butterfat Base (see separate recipe below)
1½ teaspoons molasses (not blackstrap)
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
½ teaspoon Diamond
Crystal salt
1 cup packed Malted Cookie Dough (recipe follows), frozen
¾ cup Malted Fudge (recipe follows)
In a medium bowl, combine the ice cream base, molasses, vanilla and salt, and whisk until smooth. Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker and turn on the machine. Churn just until the mixture has the texture of soft serve, 30 to 40 minutes, depending on the machine.
Alternate spooning layers of the ice cream and generous dollops of the cookie dough and fudge into freezer-safe containers.
Freeze until firm, at least 6 hours or for up to 3 months.
Makes about 3 cups
½ cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons nonfat dry milk powder
¼ teaspoon xanthan gum (yes, I'm easy to find!)
1 1/8 cups whole milk
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1 1/8 cups heavy cream, very cold
In a small bowl, stir together the sugar, milk powder, and xanthan gum.
In a medium pot, stir together the whole milk and corn syrup. Add the sugar mixture and immediately whisk vigorously until smooth. Set the pot over medium heat and cook, stirring often and reducing the heat if necessary to prevent a simmer, just until the sugar has fully dissolved, about 3 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat. Add the cold cream and stir until fully combined.
Transfer the mixture to an airtight container and refrigerate until well chilled, at least 6 hours, or for even better texture and flavor, 24 hours. Stir well before using.
The base can be further stored in the fridge for up to 1 week or in the freezer for up to 3 months. Thaw completely and stir well before using.
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Makes about 1 ½ cups
4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
¼ cup lightly packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon flaky sea salt
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
1 teaspoon molasses (not blackstrap)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
½ cup all-purpose flour, toasted
2 tablespoons malt powder
¼ cup finely chopped (chip-size pieces) dark chocolate
In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle, cream the butter, both sugars, and the salt on medium high speed, scraping down the sides as necessary, until the butter takes on a lighter color, about 2 minutes. Stop the mixer and add the cream, corn syrup, molasses, and vanilla, then mix on medium-low speed until the mixture is just combined, about 1 minute more.
In a medium bowl, sift together the flour and malt powder. Add the flour mixture to the stand mixer and mix on medium speed, scraping down the bowl once, until there are no more clumps of flour (specks of malt are just fine!), about 1 minute. Add the chopped chocolate to the stand mixer and mix on low speed until it's well distributed.
Pack tightly into an airtight container and store in the freezer until ready to use or for up to 2 months.
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Toasting flour note:
Our cookie dough excludes eggs for some just-in-case food safety assurance, since as you've probably heard, consuming raw eggs carries a minor but real risk of salmonella. What you might not be aware of is that eating raw flour does, too. So if you're someone who avoids sunny-side-ups or carbonara, consider playing it extra safe and cooking the flour for this recipe: Spread it on a sheet pan and bake in a 350°F oven for 15 minutes.
Makes about 2 cups
1/3 cup malt powder
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 teaspoons cocoa powder
1/8 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/4 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt
3/4 cup chopped (chip-size pieces) good dark chocolate
In a small saucepan, combine the malt powder and 1/4 cup cold water and whisk until most of the lumps are broken up. Add the corn syrup, cream, and butter and cook over medium-low heat, whisking constantly, until the mixture comes to a simmer. Reduce the heat to low, add the cocoa powder, xanthan gum, and salt and continue to whisk until the cocoa powder is dissolved and the mixture looks glossy, about 3 minutes.
Turn off the heat, add the chocolate pieces, and let them sit for a minute. Whisk until the chocolate is completely melted and combined. Let cool to room temperature and then use immediately or store it in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.
Reprinted with permission from 'America's Most Iconic Ice Creams: A Salt & Straw Cookbook' by Tyler Malek and JJ Goode. (Clarkson Potter, 2025).
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