You don't actually salt the ice cream. You put salt on ice surrounding the unfrozen cream. Salty ice cream (with the amount of salt necessary to freeze it) wo

You don't actually salt the ice cream. You put salt on ice surrounding the unfrozen cream. Salty ice cream (with the amount of salt necessary to freeze it) would be gross. Available soluble salt ions lower the melting point of the water to the point where the water-ice would very much prefer to be salt-water at the same temperature. But a phase change requires energy, too. The energy required to melt the ice and dissolve the salt is taken first from cooling of the sugar-water in the cream, then from phase-changing it to solid crystals, then from cooling the solid-phase materials. If the setup has a paddle, that is mainly to transport heat from the center of the cream vessel to the conductive walls, and thereby regulate the size of the crystals. Cooling beer cans in liquid water by adding salt does not rely on freezing point depression, but the heat of solution for NaCl in H2O, which also contributes slightly to the ice cream system above. You want cold beer fast? Use potassium nitrate (KNO3, saltpeter), as it has nine times the enthalpy of solution as NaCl.