Healthier Vegan Pistachio Ice Cream
This Healthier Vegan Pistachio Ice Cream is soOoOo creamy dreamy. This recipe is healthier because it’s low in fat, has less sugar, and it’s full of healthy nutrients from all the pistachios. It’s low fat yet incredibly creamy because the ice cream gets its heavenly silky consistency from creamed pistachios. Raw, unsalted pistachios are soaked overnight and then mixed until creamy in a high speed blender to provide not only fantastic flavour (and colour!), but also smoooth texture to this ice cream. Pieces of roasted pistachio are then added later to provide a bit of crunch and loads more flavour.
The Process
Not gonna lie, this recipe takes a bit of effort if you do all the steps…but it’s SO worth it. I’ll walk you through the process. Raw unsalted pistachios are needed for this recipe, and they need to be out of the shells before you soak the pistachios. After the pistachios have been soaked overnight, then you should peel the skins from the pistachios because otherwise your ice cream will have lots of ugly pieces of pistachio skins and they will make the overall flavour a bit more bitter. But if this doesn’t bother you then of course you can skip peeling off the skins. But I definitely recommend peeling them, for texture and flavour reasons.
The pistachios that are used to provide crunch and extra flavour in this ice cream recipe are first roasted and also peeled before adding to the ice cream. Peeling these pistachios provides a smoother texture, but it’s not as crucial as earlier, so if you just want to take off the loose peels then that’s good too. Then all the next steps are super quick and easy in this recipe! Yay!
In the recipe notes I’ve added an alternative where you can add some full fat coconut milk to give this ice cream a thicker consistency with some coconut flavour as well. Pistachio and coconut make such a lovely flavour combo. But if you don’t like coconut, or if you want just 100% pistachio flavour, skip the coconut milk entirely. This Healthier Vegan Pistachio Ice Cream is such a heavenly treat. It’s got the loveliest silky texture but with a bit of crunch, and absolutely packed with flavour. I hope you like this recipe as much as I do!
Healthier Vegan Pistachio Ice Cream
Equipment
- High Speed Blender
- Ice Cream Machine
Ingredients
- 1 cup raw unsalted pistachios – shelled and soaked overnight
- 550 ml oat cream* I used Oatly's 13% creamy oat
- 100 ml raw sugar
- 1 tbsp corn starch
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp coconut oil **
- pinch of sea salt
- 2-3 tbsp maple syrup to taste
- ⅓ cup lightly roasted unsalted and shelled pistachios for garnish.
Instructions
- First remove the pistachios from their shells.
- Then soak the pistachios overnight. I placed mine in an airtight container, filled it enough so that the pistachios were fully covered in water. Then I placed the container in the fridge overnight. It came to be about 10 hours of soaking give or take.
- Rinse the pistachios after soaking them.
- Peel the skins off of the pistachios.
- Rinse the pistachios again to remove any extra peels hanging around.
- Roast the pistachios for garnish now. Heat the oven to 175°C and roast the pistachios for 8-10 minutes until they smell fragrant.
- Once roasted, peel them and chop the pistachios into small pieces.
- When they're done, let them cool completely before adding to the ice cream.
- In a saucepan bring oat cream, sugar, and corn starch to a boil while whisking the mixture. Lower the heat and make sure the sugar has fully dissolved.
- Mix in coconut oil, vanilla and salt (and coconut milk if you are also using coconut milk) until combined. Remove pan from heat.
- Once the mixture has cooled a bit, pour it into a high speed blender with the soaked pistachios and the maple syrup. Mix until completely smooth and creamy.
- Taste the mixture and add more maple syrup if desired.
- Let the mixture cool completely before adding to your ice cream machine.
- Pour the ice cream mixture into the ice cream machine and add the chopped roasted pistachios. Follow churning instructions for your machine.
- Once the ice cream machine is done churning, store the ice cream in a freezer safe container to harden a bit more before serving. Enjoy when ready!!