I can’t imagine I’m the first person to figure this out but in case I am.
Did you know you can freeze carbonated soft drinks and end up with a really refreshing light and fluffy kind of sorbet like treat?
You can do it two ways.
1.Open the bottle and pour the soda into a plastic ice cream tub and put it in the freezer, I don’t like what this does to the texture of the resulting frozen treat.
2.Just freeze the soda in plastic bottle, once it is solid let it thaw a little until there is a layer of liquid and then open it over a glass or the sink cuz some is gonna overflow. Now use scissors to cut the bottle in half to get the frozen soda slug out. Has a better texture this way.
Fruit flavors taste better, guarana soda is delicious and smells amazing like this!
Neat. Maybe it’s because pouring the soda, and then leaving the soda in a non-airtight container releases too much carbonation? I’m going to try this now, only into a ziplock bag and report back tomorrow.
If you have one of those frozen-bowl type ice cream makers, those are great for turning soda into slurpee-type drinks too, and you can pick any flavor you like.
Hmm I was googling “frozen soda” and I see a lot of people talking about explosions and giant messes in their freezers.
I don’t know about cans or glass bottles, but I’ve never had a plastic unopened soda bottle explode on me even if they are frozen solid. Some comes out when you open it but just doing it over a glass or bowl is enough to catch it.
But I do live pretty much on the equator, so yea it is hot 24/7/365 and even with the chest freezer on the highest setting it isn’t that cold and takes several hours to freeze water so YMMV. Take your own risk with a messy freezer:p
It is actually pretty common to be able to buy frozen sodas at corner stores, the clerk might ask whether you want it now or later. Answer later and they’ll give you one from the freezer rather than the fridge, thing will be thawed out in 30 minutes anyway.
I was thinking about the explosion thing too. I’d think bottles have a much better seal than a ziplock. I hope **pancakes3 **didn’t have trouble with the bag opening - that CO2 wants to escape!
They sell double walled mugs with a liquid sealed between the walls. Pop in the freezer until solid. Remove and add soda or fruit type drink and stir. Instant slushy. I’ve heard it works with beer too, but never tried it. No chance of a freezer explosion either.
I’ve frozen a lot of bottles and cans accidentally - I’ve put them in to chill them quickly and then forgotten about them.
The only one that exploded was a 2-litre plastic bottle - I’m guessing it’s a matter of the ratio between volume of liquid and available space for expansion. Much higher ratio for a typical 2-litre bottle for the smaller ones I had frozen (tho’ I’ve no idea about cans).
It was pretty impressive - I had gone to bed and was woken by the the explosion. The bottle was in the top “quick freeze” part of the freezer that had a solid metal shelf under it. The blast bent the shelf quite noticeably and blew the freezer door open. The weird thing was THERE WAS NO MESS. The mangled plastic bottle remains were on the floor but no sticky residue anywhere. I mean, this was 2 litres of cream soda, where did it go? Maybe it was all blasted onto the existing ice-up walls of the freezer. The whole bottom of my house did smell strongly of cream soda for some time, mind you.
I have one of those and it does work, but it only holds about half a cup so it doesn’t last very long. And then it’s six hours in the freezer until it can be used again.
I put it in an empty mason jar instead of a plastic bag. It turned out… acceptable but there was a good amount of separation between the syrup and the water. I chopped at it with a spoon, shook it up, and refroze it. It’s a close imitation of sorbet but not really the same thing. FWIW, I used Izzie sodas.
I’ve had Izzie I think, isn’t that the one that has only fruit juice for sweetener and flavoring? I remember it having a very mild flavor, which probably doesn’t lend itself so well to this purpose.
Do you have a Mexican grocery near you? They usually carry a kaleidoscope of fruit flavor sodas which are heavily sweetened with real sugar, which is the kind I’ve had luck with.
It is indeed very mild, but it was all I had on hand. There is a smorgasbord of ethnic grocers near me. I’ll try for the ones with real sugar. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t sorbet-y. Too icy. The mason jar did decent job (though I don’t have anything else for comparison) in keeping in the carbonation. The slush-sorbet was still fizzing after I shook it up to refuse the ice and syrup.