Ice-cream dipping cabinet and gelato display guide

Three temperatures, three jobs

The serving temperature depends on the recipe: gelato with less air and fat is usually served a little warmer than conventional ice cream. Ask your ice-cream supplier or recipe maker for the scooping temperature their product is designed for, and set the cabinet to that, not to the coldest it can go.

Dipping cabinets and gelato displays

A dipping cabinet is usually a chest-style freezer with tubs set into the well, accessed through sliding lids or a glass top, sometimes with a curved glass canopy so customers can see the flavours. A gelato display is an upright serve-over case with pans laid out at an angle under curved glass, lit to show colour and texture. Dipping cabinets are simpler, cheaper to run and more forgiving of warm rooms; gelato displays sell the product visually but demand more from the room and the refrigeration.

Tempering: moving stock from storage to the cabinet

Tubs come out of the storage freezer far too hard to scoop. They need to warm gradually to serving temperature — 'tempering' — usually by moving them into the dipping cabinet well before they are needed, often the night before. Taking tubs out to soften on a counter is a poor substitute: the outside melts while the centre stays hard, and partly melted ice cream refreezes into coarse ice crystals. Plan cabinet space for tubs that are tempering as well as tubs in use.

Glass, fogging and frost

• Curved glass canopies and gelato fronts fog in humid weather; heated or double-glazed glass reduces it.
• Frost on the inside of the glass usually means humid air is getting in — check covers and rear doors.
• Night covers or lids reduce frost and save energy when the parlour is closed.
• Keep glass clean; smears and condensation make colourful product look dull.

Hot shop fronts and mall kiosks

Many parlours open onto a street or a mall corridor and sit under bright lights. A display freezer working against a 40 °C shop front has to remove far more heat than one in an air-conditioned café. Ask the supplier at what room temperature the cabinet holds its serving temperature, keep it out of direct sunlight and away from open doors, and give the condenser the clearance it needs. Kiosks with little ventilation can trap the cabinet's own heat; plan an exhaust path.

Power cuts and melted stock

During a power cut, keep lids and covers closed; a dipping cabinet with closed lids holds temperature far better than an open gelato case. If ice cream has visibly melted and refrozen, its texture suffers and the safe course is to follow your supplier's guidance and food-safety policy rather than simply refreezing and selling. Ask whether the cabinet's controller delays compressor restart after power returns, to protect it from short-cycling.

Hygiene at the scoop

• Use a dipper well with running potable water, or a clean-scoop routine your food-safety plan approves.
• Wipe drips from tub rims and the cabinet well during the day; sugary spills freeze and build up.
• Defrost and clean the cabinet according to the maker's schedule.
• Keep allergen-containing flavours, such as nut flavours, with their own scoops.

Don't forget the storage freezer

The dipping cabinet is not where stock should live. A separate storage freezer at −18 °C or colder holds deliveries and back-up tubs; chest freezers suit this job well because they lose little cold when opened. Size the storage freezer for your largest delivery plus a weekend's sales, and keep it near the parlour so tempering transfers are quick. If you make ice cream or gelato in-house, freshly churned product should be hardened quickly in a shock freezer before it goes into storage; putting soft product straight into a storage freezer freezes it slowly, forming larger ice crystals and a coarser texture, and warms everything else already inside.