McOmber Family Favorite Strawberry Ice Cream

My son Colton had a birthday awhile back. For birthdays at our house, you get to pick all the meals for the day. Colton asked me for "that amazing strawberry ice cream you made a while ago!" Ok. Well, you have to understand that I have over 200 cookbooks. And I cook out of all of them. I don't do a lot of repeat recipes. When we DO decide to come back to something, sometimes I can't remember which book it was in.I know, I know…there are many ways to keep track of your favorite recipes. But I was lazy, and wasn't keeping track. But I also HATE to disappoint a birthday request. So. I stayed up for hours, late into the night, going through the most likely culprit cookbooks. I remembered this particular recipe was unique because it had white balsamic vinegar in it. I had pretty much given up finding the exact recipe at that point, and resorted to a Google search for "strawberry ice cream white balsamic vinegar". I found some close ones, but they weren't the exact recipe. I decided to make one more pass over my cookbooks, just looking at the titles of each book...seeing if any sparked a memory. One stuck out to me that time. It was called "Third Thursday Community Potluck Cookbook". Barely hoping that this could be it, I searched the index for ice cream. Lo and behold, this was the exact recipe! I am sharing it here so that I NEVER have to search for that recipe again. It will be here among our favorites, for all my kids to come back to in the future whenever they get a hankering for the absolute BEST strawberry ice cream that exists on the face of this earth. Seriously. Give it a try and try to tell me different.  :-)

Ingredients

1 quart fresh strawberries, washed, hulled, and chopped
2 cups sugar, divided
2 Tablespoons white balsamic vinegar
1 quart whole milk
1 vanilla bean, split
1 quart heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon sea salt

In a large bowl, add strawberries, 1 1/2 cups of the sugar, and the vinegar. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours to allow the berries to macerate.

Once the strawberries have sat at least 4 hours move to the next step.

Combine milk and the vanilla bean in a large saucepan over medium heat. Bring to the "scalding point" (little bubbles appearing around the edge of the pan). Remove pan from heat. In a large bowl whisk together the cream, remaining 1/2 cup sugar, and salt. When the sugar and salt have dissolved, remove the vanilla bean. Whisking constantly, pour the milk into the cream mixture. Then stir in the macerated strawberries. Cover and refrigerate until chilled (at least 1 hour). Churn in an ice cream machine, then freeze until ready to serve.

Makes 3 quarts.