Is there anything you could use as a substitute for rock salt when making ice cream?

This page explains why rock salt is better than table salt, though both will work:

http://www.ehow.com/about_6639256_add-salt-ice-ice...

I don't know how much ice cream can be made with $20 of salt, but many people just buy an ice cream maker so they never need to buy salt (....and don't have to do the shaking/mixing themselves). Not sure how much the cost of salt over time would pay for an ice cream maker.

Cuisinart makes one of the best and most commonly available ones (for about $50) --so salt never needed, just a tad of electricity: http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-ICE-20-Automatic-2...

(Most people just make small amounts of homemade ice cream at one time though which doesn't require a lot of salt, unless they have a large hand-cranked ice cream maker:

http://www.google.com/images?q=how+to+make+homemad...

http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+make+homemad... )

You could also switch to making sorbet (with or without a machine) and then not need salt either:

http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+make+sorbet+...

The purpose of making any of these yourself is not really to save money (especially compared to cheap ice creams, etc), but to use only the ingredients and amounts of them you want, not use additives/gels/etc, and be able to make any flavor you can dream up in a half hour or so, or in a few hrs for "hard" ice cream.

Rock Salt Substitute

Substitute For Rock Salt

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RE:

Is there anything you could use as a substitute for rock salt when making ice cream?

I went to buy some rock salt yesterday but I saw that it was $20... I thought that was a bit ridiculous, you could probably buy gallons of ice cream for that much. Is regular salt that expensive?

Anyway, I was wondering if there was a more affordable way to make your own ice cream?

A coarser grind salt, like kosher, will do better than table salt. The whole idea is to make water's freezing temp LOWER than the usual 32ºF... which freezes the ice cream. I/C needs to be around zero to freeze.

If you use a finer grain salt than rock, monitor closely, pour off melted water often, and add more ice/salt often.

More expensive but any sodium chloride salt will do. Table salt or kosher or sea salt.

You can use ANY kind of salt - just buy the cheapest table salt.

use regular salt but you will need a lot of it.