Italian made Gelato (meaning “frozen” in Italian) is best known to be a creamier, denser, more flavor-rich version of ice cream. It is entirely different compared to ice-cream – with worldwide competitions and prizes, and a multitude of “best” lists, including the annual “Sherbeth International Festival of Artisanal Gelato” – a competition ranking the best gelato in the world. There is also the “Gelato World Tour” with the mission of educating the world about artisanal gelato, and the “World’s Best Gelato” competition, just to name a few. Ingredients for true gelato are extremely simple: milk, cream, eggs, sugar, and a flavoring. In essence, the more pure and high quality the ingredients, likely the better the resulting gelato.

The main differences between gelato and ice cream are the amounts of fat, sugar, and air – typically, gelato has less of all three of the aforementioned. Authentic gelato is also softer and should be served at a slightly warmer temperature – this helps to further enhance and highlight the soft creamy texture and the intensity of the flavors. While in America, ice cream insinuates a self-indulgence that is “fatty,” full of calories, and sinful; this varies from Italy, where gelato is practically considered to be an everyday necessary food staple, multiple times a day! Truly amazing gelato is denser than ice cream because of the lower amount of air contained in gelato (it is churned at a slower rate) and less “ice” crystals (which attributes to most ice-creams feeling or tasting diluted or “icy”).

Many gelateria’s (establishments that produce gelato) use what is referred to as an Italian “semi-lavorati” or half-worked base (a gelato base refers to the “liquid” gelato that is placed into a machine to be frozen and churned) to make gelato. Typically, pre-made/bagged gelato bases are used by those that don’t have the money for the best ingredients, or they lack the sufficient time, patience, or knowledge to seek the perfection of authentic gelato. Such “half-worked” gelato bases typically are pre-packaged products, with inexpensive shortcuts, that contain pre-measured ingredients, mixed together, and sent as kits to “gelateria’s” that producers can just add some water or milk, even powdered milk, and churn into an ice cream dessert, which is then referred to as “gelato.” Much of the time, these pre-made mixes contain emulsifiers and stabilizers, thickeners, and some bright colored additives; and while some consider it to be “authentic” gelato, it is quite the opposite. Authentic gelato takes time and does not take short-cuts in the quality ingredients that are used to produce the true definition of “authentic” gelato.

At Gevali Gelato, we do not use any pre-made bases; we make all our gelato from scratch, fresh daily, using the best ingredients, that are organic and/or locally produced, whenever possible. We do not add any emulsifiers or stabilizers – we use pure non-ultrapasteurized dairy from local farmers, organic sugar, “fleur-de-lis” salt, and fresh organic eggs (our sorbettos are vegan and therefore do not contain any egg). Our flavorings are all created in-house, organically and carefully combined with our gelato bases – the flavors slowly steeped into each batch we produce. We source fresh produce (organic and locally grown whenever possible) to create our very own fruit compotes, which we mix into our homemade gelato bases, that result in our gelato being enlivened with the rich colors and flavors of the actual produce. Our nut-products are in-house slow roasted and finely ground into a smooth and creamy nut paste. We use pure vanilla paste that we personally scrape from each vanilla bean and use to steep the flavor into our gelatos and sorbettos. Even our caramel is crafted in-house, using raw organic sugar that is patiently caramelized over a hot stove. The chocolates that we use have been carefully researched and hand-selected and all chocolates are bean-to-bar, meaning that the chocolate is made directly from the cocoa bean (the cocoa beans are simply ground into a fine, rich chocolate which does not contain additives, emulsifiers or stabilizers).