Whipped Cream Dispenser Buyers' Guide
Whippers open the door to culinary opportunities far beyond traditional whipped cream. With these tools, chefs can take their dishes to new heights, topping cakes and pastries with fluffy flavored cream, basting meats with savory infusions and marinades, and introducing guests to new flavors with gastronomical wonders like espuma and foams. This guide will help you choose the best whipper for your kitchen.
What Are You Whipping?
The simplest traditional whippers are designed to only whip cream. Cream whippers are available from many companies and range from economical, light-duty aluminum whippers to premium, stainless steel tools for the most serious chefs. Though these whippers are limited to just cream, cooks can get creative by experimenting with infusing their toppings with flavors like amaretto and matcha, or stick to traditional vanilla and chocolate.
If your goal is to serve cutting-edge creations like espumas, foams, and infusions, choose a multipurpose whipper like the iSi Gourmet Whip. These versatile whips are built with heat-resistant components to handle hot ingredients and can be kept warm in water baths as hot as 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Multifunctional whippers can help you achieve the following results and more:
- Aromatization is the process of infusing a liquid or semi-solid food with the flavor of another, usually solid, ingredient. This process is applied to create complex drinks, sauces, marinades, and condiments. The infusion's medium can be oil, syrup, milk, vinegar, coffee, liquor, or a number of other substances. These foods can be infused with any number of ingredients, from herbs and spices to fruits and vegetables.
- Espuma is a typically savory foam made from virtually any type of liquid food, whether originally in that state or pureed from a solid. Pioneered by gastronomical genius Ferran Adria, an espuma can be based on a number of different foods, including cream, potatoes, rice, eggs, and gelatin.
- Filling and decorating foods with infusions and marinades is easy with a gourmet whip and one of several available infusion tips. You can also fill pastas and pastries with creamy fillings.
Insulated whips, such as the iSi Thermo Whip Plus, keep your hot or cold creations near their starting temperatures for as long as a few hours. This frees staff to use their whips in front-of-house cooking demonstrations or to create custom drinks at catered events without having access to heating or cooling equipment.
Sizing Your Whipper
Whippers come in many sizes. Quart whippers are the most popular, but you'll also find pint and even half-pint units. In order to achieve the optimum yield from your whipper and to avoid damaging the device, it's important to not fill the whipper past the maximum fill line marked on the bottle.
A whipper that's used correctly will whip cream to as much as 10 times its original volume, but the cream will still maintain its original weight. That means a pint of whipped cream will yield approximately 16 single-ounce servings, and a full quart will yield about 32 single-ounce servings. If you have a rough understanding of the number of servings you'd like to dispense per batch, then you can get a good estimate of what size whipper you need.
Get the Most from Your Whipper with Accessories
When you're dispensing whipped cream, toppings, and other fluffy ingredients, an assortment of whipper tips can help you put a creative spin on how you present your dishes. Available pieces include the straight tip, tulip tip, and star tip, so you can get your presentation just right.
iSi's rapid infusion tool kit includes a sieve gasket, a ventilation tube, a silicone tube, a cleaning brush, and a recipe book to equip chefs for making flavorful infusions and aromatized creations.
Make sure to keep your whipped cream maker clean and sanitary with the appropriate cleaning tools. Many whippers will include a cleaning brush with your purchase, but they're available separately, too.
