Itim Kathi (ไอติมกะทิ)

The Ice Cream Thailand Churns by Hand

ไอติม is Thai for ice cream, borrowed from English, and กะทิ is coconut milk — the name tells you the whole dish. Before electric machines reached the country, the street version was churned by hand in a steel cylinder packed in salted ice, and the base it held was not cream and eggs but coconut milk. Aroifin's classic recipe keeps that base to the letter: coconut milk, sugar, salt, cornflour and vanilla — cooked gently until it thickens, frozen, re-blended, frozen again.

The cook matters more than the freeze. Aroifin's rule is to dissolve the sugar, salt and cornflour into the milk before the pot sees any heat, then hold it at a low flame — the moment you boil it hard the coconut milk แตกมัน, splits into oil and water, and the ice cream comes out grainy. Kapook's no-machine version scales the same idea up to a litre of pasteurised coconut milk, and both sources agree the blend between freezes is what replaces the churn.

But the street identity lives in the toppings. The classic cart serves ไอติมกะทิถั่วดำ — black beans in the base, poured into moulds on sticks or knotted into little plastic bags — alongside candied pumpkin, ลูกชิด (palm seed), barley, corn and roasted peanuts, often scooped into a bread roll or a hollowed young coconut. TrueID's ครัวพิศพิไล version makes exactly that: black beans soaked overnight, their cooking water stirred into the base with sweetened condensed milk, frozen around a stick. And Kapook's machine version shows the dish in its fancier dress — coconut water and pandan leaves in the base, egg white and whipping cream churned to a custard.

The Recipe (street classic, from Aroifin)

The black-bean stick (TrueID, ครัวพิศพิไล): 500 ml coconut cream, 200 g sweetened condensed milk, 120 g dried black beans soaked overnight and boiled soft, 300 ml of the bean water, 35 g cornflour, ½ tsp salt, 1 tsp vanilla — cooked, strained, poured over beans in moulds with sticks, frozen overnight. The smallest batch (TrueID, munpurple): 250 ml coconut milk, 50 ml plain milk, 30 g sugar, ¼ tsp salt, 1½ tbsp cornflour — the only source that adds fresh milk. The churned version (Kapook): 1 cup coconut water simmered with 3–4 pandan leaves, 3 cups coconut milk, 1¼ cups sugar, ½ tsp salt, 1 egg white whipped with the remaining sugar and 1½ cups whipping cream, plus ⅛ tsp xanthan gum if you like — churned in a machine or frozen 3–4 hours.

The Method

1. Dissolve cold. Off the heat, stir the sugar, salt and cornflour into the coconut milk until nothing is grainy. Aroifin's order — the flour never gets a chance to lump.
2. Cook low. Set over a low flame and whisk constantly as it warms; add the vanilla and keep whisking until the mix thickens. Aroifin's warning: low heat only, or the coconut milk แตกมัน — splits into oil and water and the ice cream turns grainy. Kapook's version stops at the first bubbles at the edge of the pot, then cools.
3. First freeze. Cool the mix, pour into a lidded container, freeze 3–4 hours until half-set.
4. Blend and refreeze. Beat the half-frozen mix smooth with a blender or hand mixer — this is the step that replaces the machine — level the surface and freeze overnight. Wongnai's home version does the same: freeze a night, re-blend, freeze another 1–2 hours.
5. Serve the street way. Scoop and top with roasted peanuts; add khao niew mun, red beans, barley, luk chit or corn as you like — or serve it inside bread or a young coconut shell, as Aroifin suggests. For the black-bean stick, spoon the beans into moulds, pour the base over, add sticks and freeze once — TrueID's version needs no second blend.

Where Thai Sources Disagree

How Western Versions Get It Wrong

• Making it a dairy custard. Western "coconut ice cream" is usually cream-and-yolk ice cream with coconut flavouring. The Thai base is coconut milk thickened with cornflour — no eggs, no dairy. TrueID's 50 ml of fresh milk is the most dairy any source allows.
• Skipping the cook. The Thai method cooks the flour into the milk before freezing. Mix-and-freeze shortcuts give you a grainy ice block, not the soft street texture.
• Boiling the coconut milk. Hard boiling splits it (แตกมัน). Every Thai source keeps the pot low or just-bubbling; Aroifin is explicit that high heat ruins the texture.
• Serving it plain. The dish is the whole cart: roasted peanuts, black beans, sticky rice, corn, palm seed. A naked scoop is only half the recipe — Thai sources list the toppings as part of it.
• One freeze, no blend. The freeze-blend-refreeze cycle is what stands in for the churn. A single hard freeze produces exactly the icy texture the Thai method is built to avoid.

UK Ingredient Notes

• Coconut cream and milk: full-fat tinned coconut milk (Chaokoh, Aroy-D) at any UK supermarket or Thai grocer; block coconut cream at Thai supermarkets. Check the label — Aroifin warns that coconut milk padded with water or palm oil makes the ice cream grainy.
• Cornflour, sugar, vanilla: standard supermarket items.
• Black beans (ถั่วดำ): dried at any UK supermarket; soak and boil as in the recipe, or use tinned and skip the soak.
• Luk chit (palm seed), ลูกชิด: tinned or bottled at Thai grocers; barley and red beans from any supermarket.
• Pandan leaves (ใบเตย): frozen at Thai grocers, for Kapook's churned version.
• Young coconut for the serving shell: fresh at Thai grocers in season; otherwise serve in bread or bowls.
• No machine needed: the freeze-blend-refreeze works with a hand blender — Wongnai and Aroifin both build their recipes around it.

Sources

This recipe is translated from the following Thai-language sources. Where they disagree, we've said so.