Freezer – professional equipment for making hard or soft ice cream. In today’s article, we will only talk about freezers for soft ice cream.
How does a Freezer Work?
Externally, the freezer is a square or rectangular structure with four main zones:
- Hopper for receiving milk or yogurt mixture;
- Refrigerated cylinder for freezing the mixture;
- Compartment for issuing the finished product;
- The control panel allows you to control the level of the mixture, temperature, degree of saturation with air, etc.
The milk or yogurt mixture is placed in a hopper, and from there into a cooled cylinder, where it is constantly mixed with paddles. The output is a delicate creamy ice cream, which has increased in volume due to saturation with air. The finished product is unloaded into bowls, paper cups, or waffle cones using levers.
Soft ice cream freezer mixes easily with syrups, nuts, biscuits, chocolate balls, and other toppings for endless dessert possibilities.
Types of Freezers for Ice Cream
Freezers for the production of soft ice cream are compact desktop or mobile floors. The former is chosen for indoor installation, the latter is more suitable for street trading. Floor freezers are usually designed for several flavors and have a higher capacity (up to 500 portions per hour).
When choosing an ice cream cart, first of all, decide on the performance. The desired number of servings per hour must be multiplied by the average weight of a serving of ice cream – 70 g, as a result, the productivity in kg / h will be obtained. This calculation will allow you to choose a model that can fully provide the establishment with ice cream and not overpay for excess capacity.
Also, freezers are divided into one- and three-horn (there are freezers with a large number of horns, but this is rather rare). A single-track freezer has one refrigerated mix vat and makes only one flavor of ice cream, while a three-track freezer has two hoppers and makes three types of ice cream at once – one from each hopper and a mixture of them.
How to use: options, care, and nuances
Freezers with a refrigerated hopper are better suited for the production of yogurt ice cream since, without constant cooling, the mixture can ferment. For milk mixtures, such problems are not typical.
When diluting the mixture, strictly follow the recipe. A mixture that is too liquid and highly diluted will freeze when frozen, the ice cream will turn out to be hard and interspersed with ice.
When working with three-arm freezers, use mixtures of the same consistency and fat content in both hoppers. This will ensure that the freezer works correctly and the ice cream consistency is correct in all three cones.
Freezers are often equipped with a pump, which allows you to get more ice cream from a smaller amount of mixture. In addition, ice cream from an apparatus equipped with a pump turns out to be more tender and fluffy.
Another useful option is overnight storage: the unused mixture can be left in the hopper, which will be cooled to the required temperature, and nothing will happen to the mixture during the waiting time.
Wash your freezer regularly: every day at the end of your shift, or every two days for models with overnight storage. Washing the hopper is also required when changing the taste of the mixture.