Pistachio ice cream is kind of hard to find these days. The one place i found it, Baskin Robbins, has nut fragments in the ice cream. I really hate ice cream with chunks in it.
Is there now, or has there ever been, a pistachio flavored ice cream that is green and just has the pistachio flavor without the chopped nut pieces?
The Unknown Chef
Well the cheaper stuff is just vanilla ice cream with green food colouring and almond extract, pistachios have no real strong flavour, the more premium types like B&R or Haagen Daz or even Ben and Jerrys would have real nut pieces and pistachio paste in the ice cream base, pistachio paste is like peanut butter made from mashed pistachio nuts, it adds a bit of flavour, I made real pistachio ice cream and Italian style gelato this way when I was a chef.
Often the lesser brands use chips of almonds not pistachios.
Anonymous
Not if you make it yourself. What I did is ground the pistachios to nut butter (it takes a lot more work than peanuts or almonds), then made a standard custard and put them in the blender together to achieve smoothness, then strained out any bits. It was a bright brownish green. You can also chop and soak the nuts in the milk a couple hours, then proceed with the custard, stick it all in the blender, then strain out the nuts.
barbara
Make it yourself at home and you can have it EXACTLY how you want it.
The green comes from food coloring, BTW.