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?
There are 2 types of ice cream:
Real ice cream, made with nothing more than milk, cream, sugar, and flavoring (vanilla, chocolate, whatever)
And bullshit ice cream that starts with a custard (aka Philly Style).
Real ice cream freezes hard, Philly style always stays softer.
Then there’s “overrun” which is a measure of how much air is trapped in the ice cream. Cheaper brands have higher overrun rates, and it makes ice cream softer.
French style starts with a custard. Philly style omits the egg yolks.
yeah, fuck these snowflakes
If you really want it harder, you can just turn your freezer’s temperature lower.
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.
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.
I fill milk cartons with water and freeze to fill the voids. Added benefit of having ice blocks for camping/tailgating.
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.
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
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.
“Is my freezer the problem? No, it’s every ice cream manufacturer that’s wrong.”
I’ve bought Target’s store brand ice cream fairly recently and it was a perfectly normal consistency, for what it’s worth. Maybe it’s regional?
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. 😢
I bought Tillamook because their cheese is good and I thought they’d make other good dairy. It seems like a rip off though. It’s fluff, so it weighs nothing. A serving of Tillamook has 30% less ice cream than a serving of regular stuff - 95 grams in 2/3 cup compared to 136 grams in 2/3 cup. The ingredient list isn’t as bad as others, but it’s got some odd stuff. In comparison, the Aldi stuff is just straight ice cream.
Ice cream can’t take a joke these days. Just starts melting down and turning into a puddle at the slightest provocation. Soft.
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)
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).”
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.
Just to clarify, what temperature do you set your freezer at and does it stay that temp of do you notice it fluctuating more than a few degrees throughout the day?
I don’t have a thermocouple to slide into the freezer but I can confidently say water and even broth (which should have a freezing point depression due to the added salt) stays frozen no matter what temperature setting I pick and the time of day. It’s very likely then that it stays below 0 degrees C.
Freezers average -15 to -20C. Saying that your freezer temp is below 0 is like saying your fridge is above 0 - there’s a wide range there, and doesn’t give us much info to work with.
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.
