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Tell me a little about your career, how did you become a chef?

Ray Wyatt: My name is Ray Wyatt, and I was born in England in a small town called Hastings.

I’ve been a Chef now for 31 years, which sounds strange when I say it, but that’s what it is, I started when I was 15.

I don’t really know why I went to culinary school, none of my family are Chefs but it just ended up being the thing that I chose and here I am still doing it. My business is called Churned, I make ice cream now.

It’s been two years since I retired from being an executive Chef and now my main focus is making high quality ice cream and selling it in markets, venues, weddings, anywhere I can get in really.

How did you find out about Pacojet?

Ray Wyatt: I've known about Pacojet for a long time, two of my friends, one in England, one in Denmark, both use it in their restaurants.

They’re both quite high-end restaurants, and they told me about it in the application of just doing it for ice cream, and I was considering this anyway.

Then once I saw my friend Dave, what he was doing with it, I got really excited about the fact that I can create a high-end product in a very small machine.

Once you got your Pacojet did you find it easy to use? What was your first recipe?

Ray Wyatt: Yes, I mean, they are really easy to use! I’ve got the Pacojet 2 and had never used it before.

I mean it’s very simple, I only use mine for ice cream and sorbet, but I know there are a lot of applications. You can use it for savory, for soups, for sauces, all that stuff.

But my main focus was ice cream, so my first recipe was just vanilla, so the idea is: if you can’t make good vanilla ice cream, you've got no legs to stand on.

So I tried many recipes and tried to focus on the premium custard base which I’m still using to this day after a year, so my main first recipe was just plain vanilla.

Comparing the Pacojet to other ice cream makers, what makes the Pacojet better?

Ray Wyatt: Well, for me portability. Because I bring my machine to events, I have 3 Pacojets now, and I can easily fit those in my van, I can bring those to weddings, to businesses, I can actually make the ice cream in front of the clients.

If I had a Tailor or a Carpigiani i that weighs two or 300 pounds, it’s impossible.

That’s one of the main reasons I looked for Pacojet originally and also, when I’m doing flavors for weddings and events they want to customize their own flavors.

I can actually do that because my Pacojet beakers only hold about one pint, or one liter, of ice cream once it’s actually been pacotized, so by having 81 beakers, if I’ve got four flavors, and that’s 20 beakers per flavor and I can easily customize per client.

How was your experience with our service center? How fast was the service?

Ray Wyatt: It was very fast! And I was quite surprised, my very first machine was a used one I purchased online and there’s a bit of a risk buying a used machine, but I got it and the very first beaker I Pacotized, it didn’t work.

So I thought it was a user error, and it actually wasn’t, so I sent it up to the center in New York and Scott was very nice, he fixed it straight away and got it back within a week.

I’ve got 3 machines now and all 3 machines have been up with Scott. He’s even walked me through on a Zoom call how to fix things myself instead of sending it all the way to New York.

They’ve been fantastic, really good.

Do you believe that Pacojet can be used by home chef's as well as professional chefs?

Ray Wyatt: Absolutely, I believe home chefs can do it!

It’s a very simple machine to use and like I said before, storing the machine, because you won’t be using it on a daily basis as a home cook or a home chef.

You can easily put it away, like you would a food processor or a blender, and then bring it out when you need it. Which you can not really do with the big commercial machines

If you use the small home machines you can make ice cream at home.

but your product will not be as good as using a Pacojet. So it is definitely a better option for the home cook as well as a professional Chef.

What would you say to someone who doesn't have a Pacojet yet?

Ray Wyatt: I would say consider your application.

If you are a professional chef, you’re obviously considering a Pacojet for a specific reason, and it might not always just be ice cream.

So look at some recipes, find someone with a Pacojet that you can go and talk to and see the machine in action, and then, once you feel as if you're committed, look into what type of the Pacojet you need.

Is it the Pacojet 2 Plus or Pacojet Junior…

And then consider the beakers, I didn’t have enough beakers, I only started with 12 and now I have 81.

Depending on how much product you’re going to make and how many flavors, you have to consider how many beakers you need to buy.

What's your favorite recipe made with Pacojet?

Ray Wyatt: That’s tough! My flavors change on a weekly basis. I've made over 200 flavors of ice cream in less than a year, so choosing a favorite one would be difficult.

I share a recipe below which is really delicious, but one of my other favorites is a lemon cheesecake ice cream.

The reason why I like it with the Pacojet, is because, by adding cream cheese to my regular vanilla base (and that’s all you need to do) put cream cheese at the bottom, your vanilla base on top and then lots of lemon and lemon zest.

Once it’s pacotized, you get that rich cheesecake creamy mouth fill.

Top that with some butter fried graham crackers, and you’ve got cheesecake ice cream in a cup and it’s absolutely delicious.

That’s why I love Pacojet. You can customize each beaker so easily.

Do you do sugar-free ice cream? Is it vegan?

Ray Wyatt: We don’t do sugar-free ice cream. We do make vegan ice creams.

We do sugar-free popsicles. I did mess around with sugar-free ice cream, and it is possible, primarily using either honey, agave, maple syrup or stevia.

The 3 previous, like honey, maple, and agave, you’re adding a liquid product to a liquid. So to get the sweetness out of your ice cream you have to have a lot of honey, agave, or maple.

Which means a lot of money, first of all, and then when you're adding more liquids you have to adjust your egg content.

Whereas the vegan recipe that I use is all coconut milk based, so coconut milk is very simple to use, and you can actually make sugar-free ice cream using any base.

You just have to substitute and figure out your balance of eggs to cream or eggs to milk or extra coconut milk.

We have quite a lot of vegan flavors and a lot of vegan followers as well

Tell me a little more about the values of your brand

Ray Wyatt: We try to use compostable packaging, non-plastic coated stickers, and then we also use wooden spoons, when we’re at the market.

So we’re trying to keep it as eco as possible!

Conclusion

Ray Wyatt: Like I mentioned before, from a chef’s standpoint, the most beautiful thing in a restaurant is when you can tell the customer or show the customer, if you have an open kitchen, that you’re producing the ice cream in front of them.

To order.

And they’re not going to get a product that you would buy if you bought it at a store. You’re getting very little air, a very creamy, very rich product.

And the chefs themselves can have 20, 25, 30 beakers in the freezer and so many options, if you can Pacotize it, one portion at a time, which is literally one cornell on the spoon.

So depending on how many customers you have, you switch the beakers out, you can have 3 flavors in 5 minutes, for 3 different customers.

Show us your recipe:

Hello… McFly!

A malted milk ice cream with chocolate malt swirl and crunchy pieces of malt chocolate balls. We came up with this ice cream after being inspired by the 1955 diner scene in Back to the Future.

We wanted to capture the classic malt shop milkshake flavor in an ice cream and ended up with this deliciousness that we called: Hello…McFly!

Ingredients:

Base Recipe (1 beaker)

90 ml Heavy whipping cream
330 ml Milk
100 Grams Egg Yolks
130 grams Dark Brown sugar
1 x pulp scraped from a fresh Vanilla Pod
10 ml Vanilla Extract

For the Malted Milk Ice Cream

1 Recipe of base (above)
50 Grams Barley Syrup
150 Grams Malted milk powder

For the Malted Milk Ripple

(this is a larger recipe than you will need for one beaker)

100 Grams sugar
80 ml Malt Syrup
45 Grams Cocoa Powder
5 ml Vanilla Extract
Pinch of salt

Addition at the end:

Crushed Malteasers/Malted milk ball (amount is up to you).

Method:

In a heavy bottomed saucepan, place the milk and cream. Set on a medium/high heat.

Mix together the sugar, vanilla pulp, vanilla extract and the egg yolks in a large mixing bowl

Once the milk is almost at boiling, pour the heated milk and cream mixture on to the egg yolk mixture and whisk thoroughly.

Strain the mixture into a clean pan and heat over a medium heat stirring constantly with a silicone spatula making sure to scrape the bottom. Heat until the mixture coats the back of the spatula (82C or 179F).

Pour the mix through a strainer into a bowl on ice.

Using an immersion blender, blend in the malted milk powder and barley syrup.

Once chilled, strain into a beaker and freeze overnight or until the temperature is between -18C and -22C (-0.4F-0.7F)

For the Malt Swirl:

Whisk all of the ingredients together in a bowl, strain into a heavy bottomed saucepan and bring up to a boil, simmer until the syrup holds a line when drizzled onto a cold plate. Boiling temperature should be around 101C-112C/215F-234F

Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

To Make the ice cream:

Place a bowl into the freezer at least an hour before making the ice cream.

Place the beaker onto your pacojet and pacotize one time.

Scrape into the bowl and stir in some of the syrup and crushed malted milk balls (amount of syrup and malt balls is up to you)

If you are pacotizing to order, you can simply quenelle onto bed of crushed malted milk balls and drizzle or garnish with the syrup.

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Interview - James Spica

Watch the interview here

Tell me a little about your career, how did you become a chef?

James Spica: I started out as a Technician for the Verizon telephone company, and I worked there for 30 years. While I was there I got two degrees in Art, bachelor's degree and masters degree in fine art.

When my career in technology was coming to an end I got an ice cream machine as a birthday gift and I became completely obsessed with making Ice cream.

I started making very rich ice cream like Mascarpone ice cream and my wife said "You have to make some kind of ice cream that we could eat everyday".

So I made like a creamsicle orange, coconut cream and a Turkish coffee sorbet.

When we had some friends over for dinner they said "wow this is really good". And that was 2010, and I just kept going from there.

I went to the Culinary Institute of America to learn more about cooking. I went to Pennstate agriculture program and ice cream laboratory and I realized: Only the big companies were doing vegan frozen desserts in 2010.

Little, by little, by little, it caught it on and I’m super busy now. Everybody understands plant based frozen desserts now, everybody gets it, it’s not a mystery, people want it.

It feels good to be a little bit ahead of the curve on stuff like that.

Can you apply your knowledge of art to your recipes? How do you do it?

James Spica: I think actually there are two parts to art: there’s the idea, creativity, invention, and then there is the mastery of the technique.

And that was similar to making ice cream. There were flavors I wanted to make, there were ideas, and then there was the technique involved.

There is a lot to know. You can’t just make it out of anything. Now, when someone says to me, I want a Champagne sangria sorbet, well, I know exactly what I have to do to make it work.

So it’s really fun, it’s hard fun.

How did you find out about Pacojet?

James Spica: I was reading a New York Times article, about a young guy who was an information technology specialist, who was getting burned out on the constant deadline and high pressure.

He was in San Francisco, and he started a sorbet company, called Scream sorbet. He was using Pacojet exclusively! I hadn’t heard of anyone using Pacojet for production only in restaurants.

It’s such an amazing tool where you can make one serving of fresh ice cream per customer if you want, or a whole pint...This guy had 5 of them!

I thought the size of the Pacojet was right, and the fact that you didn’t need any kind of special electricity. Beakers fit into a regular freezer, so It was perfect for me!

And the quality of the frozen desert, you can not match this, anywhere! People don’t even get it how good it is… It’s like silk! It makes the most beautiful product ever!

Once you got your Pacojet did you find it easy to use? What was your first recipe?

James Spica: My first recipe was the two flavors I was doing with a home ice cream maker, the Turkish chocolate coffee, and the creamsicle but it makes my product so Much Better. It makes my products so much more creamer.

Then my wife started mentioning flavors that I should make and she was really right on with the Pacojet, everything started coming out just so nicely. I was experimenting more, my flavors was just coming out great. I started with 2 flavors, and by the end of the season I had 5 flavors.

And now I have over a hundred flavors that I rotate through the season, I think I have 17 flavors that I offer at a time. I also make special orders for jobs like cucumber wasabi ice cream, which I did for a catering job last year.

Comparing the Pacojet to other ice cream makers, what makes the Pacojet better?

James Spica: I have an Emery Thompson batch freezer, Emery Thompson invented the batch freezer in 1905 his great-grandson, Steven Thompson, is still running the company.

And the difference is: every single thing in the bath freezer is absolutely critical, like if you don’t have enough fat, if you leave it in the machine for too long, if you don’t have enough sugar. It’s just so critical.

The Pacojet is so forgiving, you make a litre/pint if that doesn’t work you’ve only wasted a pint. It’s so much safer for experimenting.

When I take that beaker out, there is nothing that compares to the silky quality of that ice cream, it’s amazing!

How was your experience with our service center? How fast was the service?

James Spica: Scott is one of a kind, he takes it very seriously, and his, what’s the right word here, his reputation in this kind of service… I’ll give you an example:

The machine wasn't working properly, so I called up Scott, he told me exactly what to do.

He walked me through how to take the machine apart, he got me up and running, now that was until I couldn’t come in, but he saved me.

Another time, the air hose, went up into the machine, so I called him up, he was on vacation, he called up the shop, they sent me the air hose, he talk to me through the installation of the air hose.

He does the things that I need him to do, there is never a question. I live a 125 miles from here, so I wait in the parking lot for Scott and I ask him if he can fix my machine while I wait. He always says yes. The exact kind of service that I need, when I need it.

There are very few people that I’ve met that have the commitment to the product that Scott has, not just the Pacojet itself which is a tool that you can’t compare to anything, but to service this tool, is very specific.

Do you believe that Pacojet can be used by home chef's as well as professional chefs?

James Spica: Absolutely, it’s a little expensive for the average home chef, but some kitchens nowadays have viking stoves and sub zero refrigerators, stainless steel countertops and stone countertops, for making pizza Dough.

People are doing this, and Pacojet is not obviously just a frozen dessert system. You can make so many things with Pacojet, and the size of it, it’s the size of a coffee maker, it could fit on the counter in any home chef space.

How much is a Viking Stove? It’s very expensive, so the same home chef that have a Viking Stove, would probably have no problem having a Pacojet.

What would you say to someone who doesn't have a Pacojet yet?

James Spica: Well, from the frozen desert point of view, I do not see how they could not have one. There’s no downside to it.

The product is so creamy and perfect. You can take your idea from the test batch, make it exactly right and put it into service.

If I had a big restaurant, I would certainly have a Pacojet station in my kitchen. If you needed to make something for one customer, you can even spin off product for one customer.

You can make stuff so costume that it’s a super valuable tool, that again I don’t see the downside to it, I mean: the size, the quality of the product, the way you can customize into your own needs.

What's your favorite recipe made with Pacojet?

James Spica: It’s so simple, strawberry rhubarb ice cream.

Rhubarb is a vegetable, that’s on the bitter side, it’s a very British thing. Strawberry Rhubarb is very British, but it has just 4 ingredients:

Strawberry;
Rhubarb;
Coconut cream;
Agave.

And it’s my best-selling flavor, it’s my signature flavor, nobody has it, and everybody who comes to my frozen dessert stand, every single person comments, they all want it, they all take it.

Four ingredients, you can’t go wrong.

Why vegan?

James Spica: I’m not vegan, but I eat mostly plant based diet, and I’ve been that way almost my whole life.

I live in New York, New York is a place that has many rules and regulations. So if I was going to do Milk or cream, I would have to have a room in my commercial kitchen just for milk, it’s called a milk room.

It has to have a separate drain on the floor, it has to have separate sanitation and I have to be inspected by the health department. There are so many rules. With the Pacojet I can avoid all that by going vegan.

And really good dairy is only about 9% fat, and to make really good ice cream you need 14% fat. Coconut milk and coconut cream have 17% fat.

It comes in a can, so it’s not dairy, so I don’t need a milk room, I don’t need the health department, I only have one inspector from the department of agriculture and market.

It made my business so much more possible, and the timing of it seems right to me. At the time, not a lot of people were doing non dairy frozen desserts, so I became a unique offering and I became a curiosity, a lot of people were interested in what are you doing?

It became a niche of marketing for me. And I fit right into that because my products are so good, nobody says “oh I miss dairy”. It’s just delicious, so it’s pretty helpful.

Have you tried to make sugar-free ice cream?

James Spica: To make really good ice cream, you need sweetener, because sugars (agave, cane sugar…) inhibit freezing. When you inhibit freezing, you keep your ice crystals very small, and that’s why it’s creamy. Because you have tiny little ice crystals.

If you have less than 15% sugar, the ice crystals are bigger. So you can’t really make a sugar-free, I mean people use things like aspartame which is an alcohol made from sugar.

Alcohol, fat and sugar inhibit freezing, so you want to have a combination of those things. You can use salt, salt as well inhibits freezing, but you don’t want too much salt.

But people use salt in frozen dessert recipes, so you get to that point where you have a creamy product.

So far, I’ve not been able to do a sugar free flavor. I’ve done ice pops that were made with overripe fruit. But that’s a lot of sugar on overripe fruit.

Conclusion

James Spica: I did say this already but, I have friends in the ice cream business, when I visit their store I see their milk room and I see what they do to make their products. I ask them: why wouldn’t you get a Pacojet just to do test patches?

Because you can make small test patches and you don’t have to commit to 6 gallons of ONE ice cream, and they’re like: well it's expensive, and I say: but don’t you see how in a long run it’s not expensive? Because you’re not wasting anything you’re making a pint test batch and once you have it worked out you can make as much as you want.

It’s funny too because people don’t always see the value of things they haven't done before. But again, I don’t see what the downside would be to have a Pacojet in your kitchen.

The size of it and the utility of it, it does so many different things, even the different blade kits (I just use 1 blade) but there are blade kits for that, puree, fruit… Really, it changes the way you use your kitchen.

Show us your recipe:

Strawberry Rhubarb vegan Ice Cream

Ingredients

20 ounces/ ( 756 g) of strawberries fresh or frozen;

8 ounces/ (302 g) of rhubarb;

1 pint (0.47 l) of organic coconut cream - Native Forest brand;

Half cup of raw organic agave - Wholesome Sweeteners brand;

Procedure:

If the strawberries are frozen, defrost to room temperature. Cut the rhubarb into 1 inch (2.54 cm) pieces and cooked in the microwave for 4 minutes.

Combine all ingredients in the blender for 2 minutes on high. Pour into Pacojet beakers and freeze. I like to have the surface temperature of the mix frozen to -3 degrees F, and spin the beakers at 2 to 3 degrees F.