Rock salt: don’t stop at ice cream

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Using rock salt to make ice cream

Although hundreds of millions of tons of rock salt are used and produced annually, most home consumers are better acquainted with the culinary uses of rock salt and may consider purchasing this product in bulk as several hundred pounds of salt can be purchased for this price. several trips to the grocery store. Salt lasts for years if properly stored, which is why this natural resource is one of the many commodities worth buying in bulk.

Rock salt may be a popular international commodity, but its use in the home is often limited to de-icing the driveway and making frozen desserts by hand. Children are often curious to use this common “ingredient” to make ice cream, but the trick is no culinary secret. In fact, the use of salt to make frozen treats is based on a simple chemical property: when salt is mixed with water, the water freezes at a lower temperature. This means that a heat-conducting surface (like a metal can) can be cooled to below zero by simply adding salt to an ice or water bath.

Lowering the temperature of the heat conducting surface is not important to keeping the food frozen, but rather to freezing the liquid uniformly, giving a creamy ice cream consistency with even freezing all the time.

How much rock salt is needed

In fact, it takes quite a bit of salt to freeze ice cream. Salt and ice should be constantly added to the ice bath to keep it cool and to drive heat away from the ice cream itself. When the ice melts, the temperature stays cool, but the extra ice will freeze the ice cream faster. Several containers of rock salt may be needed, depending on the amount of ice cream produced. After all, one batch of homemade ice cream will never be enough.

What to do with extra salt

The good news is that the water can be reused. In fact, salt water can extend the life of the cleaning detergent and can even be used in a salt bath. After all, various bath products contain salt to facilitate the breakdown of chemicals in the bath water. Extra salt water can be used to clean floors (as a pre-rinse with detergent), defrost a driveway, or prepare a plot for construction as this tends to eliminate plant growth.

Of course, there are many uses for this natural resource, even after using it to make frozen dairy desserts.

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Source by Oriol Domenech