I decided to purchase store bought ice cream after years of just buying from places like Cold Stone. It seems to me most ice cream manufacturers have very soft ice cream now despite storing it in a freezer for a week straight. I could easily drop a spoon in the tub and watch it cut straight through to the bottom. The consistency is now kind of disgusting because it feels like I’m eating whipped cream instead of something that should be semi solid. So far I’ve tried Tillamook, Dryer’s, and Target’s in house brand and they all have that same mushy texture.
Before anyone suggests it’s my freezer, I’ve kept it relatively uncluttered and everything else stays frozen just fine. I also make sure not to purchase those tubs of “Frozen Dairy Dessert”. What happened? Is this some cost cutting measure or are customer’s preferences really going to extremely soft textures?
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Might depend on the flavor as much as anything else. I buy the Tillamook Mountain Huckleberry from time to time and never noticed it being soft.
Ingredients are pretty much what I expect from any good ice cream:
https://www.tillamook.com/products/ice-cream/mountain-huckleberry
“Cream, Skim Milk, Milk, Sugar, Huckleberries, Water, Pasteurized Egg Yolks, Cornstarch, Guar Gum, Vanilla Extract, Citric Acid, Tara Gum, Natural Flavor, Fruit Juice (color).”
Where are you finding this magic ice-cream. I fucking love soft fluffy ice-cream but everything i buy turns to stone in short order.
You may also have a freezer not working correctly: should follow OP’s recommendation of de-cluttering, but also clean the door seal and make sure it’s in good shape, and remove any ice accumulation.
Most consumer freezers will run a de-icing stage. They intentionally warm up for a little bit to melt accumulated ice. However when you melt ice cream then refreeze without churning, it freezes harder. A non-cluttered freezer should complete its de-icing without melting ice cream. A freezer with an effective door seal will have more consistent temperatures (and use less energy), without melting ice cream.
Alternatively, many chest freezers do not have a de-icing cycle so ice cream should remain softer despite the lower temperature those run at. Unfortunately I can’t claim to have verified this because ice cream gets consumed too quickly and never makes it to the chest freezer
I’m actually using a cheat freezer, it’s brand new too lol. I’m pretty sure the ice-cream gods just hate me
Tillamook has a weird fluffly texture and would be good otherwise. I haven’t had Breyer in a while, but recall that is used to be good. The Ultra Premium, or whatever dumb name it has, at Aldi is good.
That’s disappointing.
Breyer’s has become an unrecognizable watery filth
It’s a shame because they used to be pretty good a few decades ago.
Yeah. They used to be the OG good stuff. No more. 😢
Cold Stone is soft because they slap it around on that cold slab of stone before they put it in a cup or cone.
IDK what could be wrong with your store bought. Or maybe what’s right… The last few times I’ve gotten some ice cream, shits rock hard and full of ice crystals from having been melted and refrozen god knows how many times. Maybe your freezer is set too high for the ice cream but not the other things you keep?
I do know a trick to find what ice cream has better ingredients though. Find two or more brands in the same size container, and then see which one actually weighs more. They’ll all be in ounces or some fluid measurement, and the weight will be heavier in the ones with fewer fillers like if it was only made using cream, eggs and sugar.
i think ice cream shops in general keep their ice cream at higher temperatures than a typical residential freezer. our freezers at home are super cold for maximum preservation, but ice cream shops are more concerned about optimum ice cream consistency for single servings.
Experimenting with the freezer’s settings didn’t cause too much of a change with the ice cream’s texture. Max and minimum temperatures had pretty much no impact. I’ve even opened the tub right after purchasing and it still had the same issue. If the store’s freezers couldn’t keep it somewhat solid, then I can only assume it’s deliberately been made this way now.
Sorry you’re having this issue. It doesn’t line up with my recent experiences with ice cream. I’d recommend trying a different freezer (or multiple different freezers) with the same brand and see if the hardness is different. My bet is it’s not cold enough.
Maybe consider getting sorbet or gelato next time?
Real gelato is soft.
Dunno, I don’t eat ice cream much anymore, but this sounds preferable to the solid blocks that bend spoons and you need steel wedges and a splitting maul to get out of the carton.
Yes.
Many products are now whipped to increase the volume with less product as a form of shrinkflation and/or include ingredients to reduce ice crystal formation from repeated melting and refreezing to reduce waste and the impact of understaffing in supply chains and grocery stores that lead to product being left out for extended periods. Haagen Dazs recently finally converted all of their flavors. The plain vanilla and vanilla swiss almond were a few of the last ones to change. But it’s been a slow progression of different manufacturers over the last couple of decades really.
It’s sad because ice cream is my favorite dessert. I eat a lot of it, or at least used to. There are only a few brands with a few flavors remaining that make good “hard” ice cream outside of ice cream shops. But the good shops are so expensive.
Start making your own. It’s so fun and rewarding.
I have some Tillamook chocolate ice cream that was extremely hard when I scooped some earlier today. When we first get it from the store it is fairly soft though, so my assumption is that my freezer is set to be a lot colder than the one at the store.
Not sure what the exact temp is because it is a numbered dial, but I have a fuzzy recollection that it was about zero degrees F when I checked it a few years ago.
Tillamook chocolate is so fucking good tho
Copious amounts of gums and max overruns (adding air) together result in softer texture when frozen, which the average consumer likes, and higher yields, which the producer likes.
Essentially you’re buying 40% air with most brands, and the other 60% is not entirely cream & sugar & flavors. Try gelato or a local producer.
What brand are you buying?
Please see the post. Tillamook, Dryer’s, and Target’s in-house brand.
Those don’t sound like any brands I’ve ever seen or heard of, which was why I was confused (and which might explain the problem).
i could easily drop a spoon in the tub and watch it cut straight through to the bottom.
Dude, if this is true, your freezer is not cold enough.
I will second this, please buy a thermometer or two. I like the ones that tell you the min/max temp its recorded. (Random example, never bought this particular one, check reviews etc.
I looked at multiple sources to double check the correct temperature, many agree that the freezer should be at 0°F (-18°C)). Water freezes (and by extention most everything else) at 32°F (0°C), siginficatly higher than the recommended 0. Here’s the sceinific Wikipedia article about why, TLDR: not every food freezes at 0°C, so set freezer low enough everything will freeze.
I found this article that goes over all kinds of food storage info (fridge and how the produce drawers work, freezer temp, pantry etc.)
https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/refrigerator-freezer-use-and-temperature-tips
While you wait for your thermometer, ensure
nothing is blocking the freezer vents(you said you did that) and turn that thing up.The non-scientific, not recommended check; Your icecream should roughly be something in between a rock and butter. If its a rock, its too cold, and its its butter/soup its too warm.
If you really want it harder, you can just turn your freezer’s temperature lower.
You want Trader Joe’s. That stuff is so hard that I often use a hot scoop to get it out. I’m OK with a slightly softer texture. Tillamook is my go-to brand. I’ve never found it to be absurdly soft, but it is easier to scoop than a Häagen-Dazs or TJ’s.
There was a minor scandal a few years ago where brands like Bryers were injecting air into their ice cream so they could do shinkflation without changing the size of the packaging. But I haven’t noticed anything like that with Tillamook, which we almost always have in the house.
Your fridge is not working like it should.
