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?
Happy when I get ice cream that doesn’t take 10 minutes to thaw enough to not bend spoons. Never seen anything close to what you’ve described though; just soft enough that you can generally eat it with some force straight from the freezer.
The ice cream I buy is always either so hard your spoon bends or so soft I have to check if the freezer is working. Idk if it’s a brand thing or what.
Could be your freezer cycling up and down. Mine gets real warm right after I load in a week of groceries. I also should probably store more stuff in the freezer for thermal mass.
Do buy in bulk and until recently we only had the little freezer on top of the fridge, so that could very well be it.
Luckly we just recently got one of our big freezers moved into the basement and just got another old one.
I fill milk cartons with water and freeze to fill the voids. Added benefit of having ice blocks for camping/tailgating.
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).
Sounds like your freezer isn’t actually getting cold enough for the ice cream. Semi-melted Tilamook will get whipped-esque if not cold enough. Put a digital thermometer in there for a while and see what temp it’s holding! No ice cream is “drop metal into it and it slides to the bottom” unless it’s not cold enough
As for ice cream consistency, afaik more cream content (which is better ice cream) will be softer at the same temperature compared to ice cream with more water content (shit ice cream). Breyers regular (I think they have a fancy attempt with more cream) is pretty watery, Tilamook is creamed up
(Do you notice a lot of frost on stuff? That is a sign of a bad seal and (humid) air is getting in)
I can buy some ice cream and put it in my freezer, and it’s extremely soft, I can just put a spoon in it with no resistance. I put that exact same ice cream in my parents freezer and it gets so hard that I can’t even scoop it with an ice cream scoop unless I let it thaw out for a few minutes. The temperature it’s stored at absolutely plays a huge difference.
All ice cream (and related desserts) will get harder as they get colder. This is because more water freezes and the fat viscosity increases. If your ice cream isn’t hard enough, your freezer isn’t cold enough.
Take a reliable thermometer and check the temp of your ice cream tub. Is be willing to bet it’s a lot warmer than the USDA recommended 0°F (253 K).
All ice cream (and related desserts) will get harder as they get colder.
It feels like you’re comparing ice cream/desserts that are completely frozen to ice cream/desserts that are partially frozen, which is not what this post is about…
Although if the ice cream does get slightly liquidy before re-freezing, it will be much harder than it was before. This is why one of the most important factors when making ice cream is to continually mix up the ice cream while it freezes.
Assuming 1) you want things to be colder, 2) your budget can accommodate a bit of extra electricity usage and 3) the following actually exists on your appliance, many freezers have a dial somewhere that can be used to set the temperature.
Sometimes it’s coupled to the setting for an attached refrigerator section. Sometimes, yes, it’s an unchangeable setting whether there are other settings elsewhere or not. Might still be worth double-checking.
I always set freezers at -18°C (because that’s the best temp for Jägermeister)
I usually have to set mine out for a while to not bend my spoon, and we usually just get whatever’s on sale or store brand. 🤷🏻♂️
A lot of ice cream makers have started manufacturing a substance which is a little more like plastering putty with sugar mixed in. Presumably it is cheaper than the ice cream substance which they used to make.
I recommend Häagen-Dazs. Turkey Hill is alright but it seems to have succumbed a little bit to the putty consistency. The Costco stuff is decent too. Get vanilla, then mix it up in the bowl with a strong spoon, to soften it, with big chunky chocolate chips (also available from Costco) sprinkled generously within it and then stirred in during the preparation phase.
Hope this helps
Several years ago when I lived in PA I frequented an independent ice cream shop that made their own in house. He complained about all the air added to commercial ice cream lately. He had a conversion rate for how many pounds a gallon should weigh and would weigh his containers to ensure he sold the correct amount. Some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had, and had exotic flavors too such as Kulfi (cardamom) and ginger. Search Nutz about Ice Cream in Bethlehem PA. I was just thinking about him the other day and his ginger ice cream. The eggnog at the end of the year is amazing too. The “regular” flavors year round are good as well. I know he ships across the country, I’ve never looked into it yet.
Oh man, I used to be able to get ginger ice cream at our local Trader Joe’s! (Ginger people brand) that was so damn good!
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.
Varies a lot by brand. Some brands started whipping more air into the chemical slurry they call ice cream in order it to rip us off. You can tell by the weight. Try the heavier pints.
I suppose people complained? Or it’s the substitution of fat for some god awful synth version.
I find Haagan Dazs stays pretty solid. Ben and Jerry’s too. But even then, it’s only just.
Carte d’Or and all its kin I find the same as you, so soft as to be no longer ‘ice’ cream, but rather some sort of sickly sweet whipped soup.
Are you always storing it in the same place in your freezer? Even if your freezer is the correct temperature it can still sometimes have spots where things don’t freeze properly.
Ice cream can’t take a joke these days. Just starts melting down and turning into a puddle at the slightest provocation. Soft.
If it’s soft but cold, that means it’s not dense. If it’s not dense, that means there’s likely a lot of air. Probably almost half.
a 3 gallon pail of their stuff is 15 pounds. Let’s turn that into useful measurements.
3 gallons = 11.356 litres
15 pounds = 6.8 kg.1 ml of water is 1 gram, so if the bucket was full of just water, it would weight nearly double what this bucket weights.
From my time working with the product, I know that Soft-serve is commonly 40% air.
6.8kg is 58.8% of the weight of the ice cream. That’s pretty darn close to 60%Edit: Changed g to gallons to make things less confusing.
Here I am trying to figure out how much air they’re putting into your ice cream if 3 grams of ice cream is 11.356 litres…
That’s poor notation on my part.
I’m the dense one, not the ice cream.
Cheers for fixing it! I figured it out, but I still commented because I thought it was funny, haha
