People love fair food, but it’s not often that they’ll form a crowd just to watch someone make it.

That’s what they did Tuesday in the commercial building at the Freeborn County Fair, where they witnessed a food experiment worthy of Mr. Wizard &045; complete with liquid nitrogen tanks and clouds of white mist.

They were watching the creation of Nitro Ice Cream, a fusion of chemistry and cuisine unlike any other treat found at the fair.

When scooped up into a dish or a cone, it doesn’t look much different than ordinary ice cream, but passersby who tried a free sample Tuesday noticed a difference after the first bite.

&uot;They notice that it’s smoother than regular ice cream,&uot; said Ty Shaughnessy, whose uncle, Ed Shaughnessy, runs the Nitro stand.

The ice cream is different than most because it’s frozen almost instantly with liquid nitrogen, which is stored at temperatures around 320 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. Freezing more quickly means the ice crystals that make up the ice cream are much smaller than those formed when freezing takes several hours, like it does with most ice cream.

The tiny crystals create a much denser and smoother product than people are used to.

Other than the quick freeze, there’s not much different about Nitro than any other ice cream; it’s made with regular ice cream mix and comes in vanilla and chocolate flavors.

But after selling the product at fairs all over the Midwest this summer, Shaughnessy is confident that people will quickly be hooked on his brand of frozen treat.

&uot;We just have to get people to try it, and they may not buy it then, but they’ll come back later and bring their friends,&uot; he said.

The idea of using liquid nitrogen to make ice cream isn’t new in science circles, where it’s sometimes used as a classroom experiment. But Nitro’s innovation is a patented machine that mass-produces it.

That innovation came from Shaughnessy’s brother-in-law, T.J. Paskach, a chemical engineer who started messing around with liquid-nitrogen ice cream in 2000 and eventually perfected a machine.

The tall, rectangular contraption is fed by large liquid-nitrogen tanks that pump fluid in through steel tubes. The liquid is highly pressurized until it goes through a valve into another pipe and mixes with air, which instantly causes it to boil and evaporate in a puff of nitrogen steam. At the same instant, liquid ice cream mix is fed into the pipe, where the nitrogen freezes it in less than a second.

The ice cream drops into a bucket as the cool mist pours out around it and puffs upward through a release valve, drawing interested looks from fairgoers.

After Nitro was well received at the 2000 Iowa State Fair, Paskach took it to other fairs and word began to spread. He eventually opened an ice cream shop in the Chicago area and hopes to spawn a franchise. Shaughnessy and his wife Michelle, who live in Lake Forest, Ill., bought a machine and have been on the fair circuit all summer.

The rest of the year, Shaughnessy is a high-school physics teacher.

&uot;These fairs are fun,&uot; he said. &uot;I like meeting all these different people.&uot;

And he thinks he’s got something irresistible for them.

&uot;I’m not just selling ice cream,&uot; he said. &uot;I’m selling love.&uot;

(Contact Dylan Belden at dylan.belden @albertleatribune.com or 379-3439.)