That potato chip thread inspired me to start this one.
Best: In recent years, Breyer’s Thin Mint ice cream. I was eating it out of the container, and realized it was going to make me sick if I took another bite. It was that good, and that’s why I haven’t purchased it since. In the distant past, we have a local dairy called Whitey’s that had Malted Moose Tracks briefly many years ago. That was every bit as good, and my figure thanks them for not continuing to make it commercially available.
Worst: Can’t think of a really bad flavor right now, although Halo Top has a really weird texture. You also have to eat it right away or it gets a “skin” on it. It appears that they put something in it to increase its volume to make it appear low-calorie.
Weirdest: I’ve never been to Japan, but I’ve heard that shrimp, garlic, wasabi, etc. are indeed available as ice cream flavors.
Ben & Jerry’s has tried some flavors that didn’t work out so well. “Hot Chocolate” was chocolate ice cream with jalapeno peppers in it, and there was one flavor that had gummy worms in it. They hadn’t planned on the worms freezing rock-hard solid.
Dreyers had once – once – Chilly Chili, vanilla with a mole ribbon and spicy Spanish peanuts. Alas, after a couple weeks when, I assume, the batch ran out it was never repeated.
Worst was Yankee Doodle from a company I don’t remember. It was Neapolitan with blueberry replacing the chocolate so, red white and blue. It didn’t taste bad but when it started melting the three colors would blend into a highly unappetizing magenta.
IMHO, the key to good ice cream is quality, not flavour, and the best purest ice cream flavour that can be appreciated for the undisguised quality of the actual ice cream is vanilla. In terms of mass-market availability, IMHO the best generally available vanilla ice cream is Haagen-Dazs, though I’m sure there are better ones that are homemade or in specialized markets.
I would also acknowledge Haagen-Dazs strawberry ice cream as acceptable because vanilla ice cream and strawberries are a match made in heaven, but if strawberries are going to be involved I much prefer the ice cream to be pure vanilla with fresh strawberries on top.
All other ice creams are an abomination. I have spoken.
Grand Ole Creamery, an old fashioned ice cream shop in St. Paul has a flavor so basic that it is wonderful paired with just about anything. The flavor is cream. No flavors or fruits added. Honestly, it pairs with just about everything, including garlic, or licorice, or pesto. With cream flavor, I can add whatever I want provided it is available in local markets.
There’s another local ice cream shop, one that makes theirs on-site, that has a licorice-flavored ice cream. I had a sample, and it was good but I like black licorice anyway, but to me, it would work better as a topping than as a whole scoop.
Blue Bell had Little Debbie Oatmeal patty IC for a short spell. They tweaked the vanilla flavor slightly to be closer to the creme filling and tossed in chunks of oatmeal. Yum! Hopefully they’ll have it back in stores soon; I think they’re testing regional response. Come on, BB, I’m only one man!
Publix, a company with good generics, had a chocolate peanut butter ice cream, a good flavor (in theory). It was so vile we couldn’t ingest it, or convince any of our pets to. Garbage.
Well not exactly ice-cream, but in India we have something called kulfi. There are many flavors, but essentially it’s thickened milk, mixed with flavorings , fruits, nuts etc etc, and then frozen.
One of the most interesting is Bhang Kulfi or marijuana kulfi!
