Homemade Turkish Ice Cream made with salep powder. Perfectly thick and stretchy as it traditionally has to be. Both with its unique flavor and consistency, it is not like other ice creams you have tasted.
Why is Turkish ice cream sticky?
Ice cream is called dondurma in Turkish. What makes it different from other ice creams around the world is its consistency and flavor. If you have tasted it in Turkey or somewhere else, you know what I mean. Turkish Ice Cream has an elastic texture and a unique flavor thanks to salep, which is the powder of orchid bulbs. Although it has the flavor of salep, it is known as plain ice cream –sade dondurma in the country and nobody calls it salep ice cream.
I made it at home for the first time and it turned out pretty amazing, as yummy and gummy as the ones we buy from vendors or cafes. Don’t worry if you don’t have an ice cream maker, this recipe doesn’t require one.
Turkish ice cream is very dense and chewable, so it doesn’t melt easily and you might find it completely different from the regular smooth ice creams you know. If you are an ice cream fan, I highly recommend that you taste this traditional Turkish ice cream. If there is a list of foods to taste before you die, this chewy ice cream must be on the top!
What is salep?
Salep is also the name of an aromatic winter drink, which is a combination of milk, sugar and the powdered orchid bulbs. It thickens the milk as it boils and gives its unique flavor to the mixture. As Harold McGee claims in his article named Ice Cream That’s a Stretch at The New York Times, this divine ice cream might have been discovered when salep drink was accidentally frozen.
Genuine salep is really pricy here as it has been a rare product even in Turkey, but a very small amount will be enough for you so you don’t have to pay much. The question is, can you find it abroad? I’m not sure if it is sold at middle east markets, but I guess you can find it at online markets.
This ice cream is a perfect dessert on its own, but you can also serve it alongside with some fruit desserts like this Grilled Pineapple with Ice Cream.
See our other recipe videos here:
Elastic Turkish Ice Cream
Turkish ice cream has a chewy and elastic texture and an aromatic flavor coming from salep. No ice cream maker is needed for this recipe!
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 50 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour
- Yield: 6 1x
- Category: Dessert
- Cuisine: Turkish
Ingredients
- 4 cups milk
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 tsp salep
- 1 tsp vanilla powder
Instructions
- Combine salep, sugar and vanilla powder in a bowl.
- Heat the milk a little and add salep mixture gradually. Make sure that no lumps are left. Stir constantly. It reaches the pudding consistency as it is cooked.
- Bring the heat to the lowest and cook for 30-40 minutes.
- Let it cool.
- Transfer it to a bowl and put in the freezer . Let it sit there for 30 minutes.
- Take it out and whisk constantly with a fork for 2-3 minutes. Scrape the ice cyristals you see around the top of the container. Put it back into the freezer.
- Repeat this 4-5 times in every 30 minutes. You will see how it stretches when whisking. If you whisk it letting it stretch, it’s better.
- Transfer the mixture in an airtight container and freeze for 5 hours.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 dollop
- Calories: 218
- Sugar: 43.2g
- Sodium: 100.1mg
- Fat: 1.3g
- Carbohydrates: 46.2g
- Protein: 6.1g
- Cholesterol: 3.3mg
Keywords: turkish ice cream, salep, homemade ice cream
Salep is available in the form of pure roots by name of “sohlab dana” at local pansari stores if you dig deeper into the spice merchant markets, it is quite cheap as compare to the prepared counterpart. Also the icecream calls for gum mastic which is quite pricy and is available at local pansari store with the name of “mastagi younani”.
My milk and salep mixture never reaches pudding consistency, what do I do?
★★
Hi Ahmed!
It is probably because of the quality of salep powder you are using. I sometimes have the same issue. What I do in such cases is whisking one tablespoon of cornstarch and about 1/4 cup cold milk in a small bowl until smooth and then add it into the simmering salep mixture. This gives the pudding some consistency. Hope this helps.
So we would need only the Salep ? How about dondurma? Do I have to get it too? Are they the same?
Hi Ash, dondurma is the Turkish translation of ice cream. So you need only salep.
It took me a while to find salep powder. It’s quite rare in the US. In case anyone else is wondering, you can buy some on etsy or alibaba. I wasn’t able to find pure salep powder on amazon.
I ended up getting some from here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/MeseloponLtd
I can’t yet attest to the quality of the salep powder as it hasn’t yet arrived.
I lived in Turkey for quite a while and this is my favorite ice cream in the world. Looking forward to making it 🙂
You are guilty of international orchid smuggling. It is illegal to transport orchids or their parts across borders without a ton of paperwork, and some orchids can’t be transported at all because they are endangered. Turkey’s orchids are nearly extinct because of this, and now they have started in on smuggling orchids from Iran and Greece to fill the demand. There are orchid-free salep recipes and products.
Calm down May.
You need to make an amendment to this reciepe.
“If you are not using original Turkish salep, you will require a thickening agent such as mastic. As without this your mixture will not thicken.”
I spent so much time trying to figure out why it didn’t thicken 😞😞😞
Is sugar a must for this? Because I’ve used stevia instead and stirred it consistently for 30 minutes without it thickening the slightest noticeable amount.
Here are my ingredients (2/3 of original recipe’s volume):
500ml of milk
1 teaspoon of salep/sugar mixture (the way Syrian vendors sell it in my city)
1.5 teaspoons of sugar
2 mastic buds (used in most other recipes)
4 teaspoons of stevia
Never used stevia in this recipe. Thanks for sharing what changes you’ve made. How was the result?
Thanks for your reply! After not achieving any thickening after 30 minutes of stirring, I decided to go the old fashioned way we Arabs cook milk or salep by, adding a bit of cornstarch that is. As soon as it cooled down, it yielded a surprisingly similar result to the dondurma in your pictures, albeit a tad less smooth/consistent. Still has two thirds of the elasticity though. My family and I LOVED it!
★★★★★
Could it be because of the different types of salep we use? I never add any cornstarch when making salep. Thank you for sharing your experience though. I’m glad your family and you loved it!
Hi every body
Im sahar from iran
We make ice cream with this reciepe but we also add saffron , rose water and pestachiue.
GIVE it a try, wont be disappointed 😉
Hi Sahar! Adding saffron and rose water is a brilliant idea! I’m sure it has an amazing color! Thanks for sharing the idea with us here!
You’re welcome dear 😊
I really love dondurma ice cream. I made it and the consistency was fantastic. It was a bit too sweet for my taste buds but overall fantastic and easy. Next time I’ll be making this is will add mastic which is actually the way they serve dondurma here (in Greece. I don’t know if it’s in the original recipe.) Thank you for sharing this.
Thanks Katerina for sharing your experience and ideas here! The consistency is amazing, isn’t it? As for mastic, I’m sure it will enrich the flavor. Personally I don’t like its flavor much though.