I normally only eat the regular ice cream, the stuff that is $2-4 for a 48 oz tub. Its good but generally only a couple flavors stand out.
yesterday I decided to get some blue bell vanilla and talenti. Both tasted decently better than the stuff I normally get but who knows how much of that is just wishful thinking.
With Biden and Pelosi spending $14 a pint on Jenis ice cream (too expensive for my tastes personally but to each their own) it made me wonder if I’m missing anything by skipping the more premium ice creams.
I tend to skip the pints so no real experience with ben and jerrys, haggen daaz (are those premium brands?) and I usually just get the 48 oz tubs (walmart brand, breyers, turkey hill, edys, etc) when they are on sale.
But anyway I’m wondering, I’ve only tried blue bell twice. It costs 2x as much per ounce as the cheaper stuff but it tastes better. Talenti is 3x more expensive per ounce (when its on sale) but the stuff I tried yesterday is the best Ice cream I’ve ever tried. I read talenti caramel apple pie is the best flavor so I’ll pick that up next time I’m out.
Do other people notice a meaningful difference in ice cream quality based on price?
The premium ice creams often have less air mixed in, so they are much thicker. (Even scooping it is tough, so I’ve even broken spoons trying to do so.) And the butterfat content is higher.
There is definitely a difference in flavor. The generic stuff often has ice crystals in it and is just bland. I think Edys/Dreyer’s is a decent lower price ice cream, so usually opt for their “slow churned” versions if I’m looking for more than a pint. There are two ice cream food carts in our neighborhood, both of which make it on-site. One does ice cream and the other does gelati. The ice cream place charges $12/quart, last time I checked.
In any case, your point is well taken; I’ve quite an aversion to “meh” foods. Whatever I eat, I like to look forward to it with much relish ( seriously, no pun intended ) and savor it all I can. Eating is not just a mere body function.
We’ve begun eating gelato again lately (Hey! These are uncertain times!) so we always get Talenti if it’s on sale, but last week it was Ben & Jerry’s on sale, so we’re trying that. It’s pretty righteous.
Back in the days when we ate ice cream, we’d eat a big old bowlful with syrup and nuts, but now that we’re eating the good stuff, we only have a few spoonfuls. I think we get six servings out of a pint of gelato.
Also every time I try to eat the mass-produced ice cream, I get an upset stomach. You’d think it was just the high fat content, but when I eat gelato or some fancier ice cream, I have no trouble. (I have the same problem with grocery store sheet cakes.)
There must be some kind of weird emulsifier or additive to the big half-gallon containers of store ice cream.
I generally just like chocolate flavor (boring I know).
I can taste a real quality difference from lesser brands vs Bryers. Bryers just has more chocolate flavoring.
I don’t have much experience with higher priced brands, but like most products, there is diminishing returns. The higher you go, the quality improvement tapers. At some point it is all personal taste and other elements (advertising, conspicuous consumption, etc).
The best ice cream I’ve ever eaten was coconut flavored ice cream made by an elderly woman who cranked her ice cream by hand at Friar’s Bay beach on the French side of St Martin.
She got a ride to the beach with a cooler of ice, her ingredients, and her ice cream maker. She set everything up under a palm tree, sat on a small boulder, and cranked, taking breaks only to smoke an occasional cigarillo.
She spoke no English, but my gf was able to chat her up in French. We hung out with her as a small crowd formed. When her ice cream was ready to serve, she put out a coffee can with a slit cut in the lid and began dishing out heaven.
There was no set price, people just stuffed whatever dollars or euros they thought was right. When the ice cream was all dished out, she cleaned up her stuff and loaded up. Unbeknownst to me, we had offered her a ride back to Marigot, so we took her home.
I like a really good Vanilla ice cream, Breyers is just barely good enough and is better than most others. I can never find Ben&Jerry’s Vanilla, Blue Bell and Haagen Dazs are ok. A couple of local ice cream shops have very good quality vanilla, better than any grocery store brand I’ve had.
I remember eating a lot of gelato while in vacation in Europe and I do not remember tasting a big difference. It seemed to be about the same as good quality ice cream.
Same here. The good stuff made with better ingredients and nice and dense.
My son had some left-over cheap Blue Bunny ice cream the other day that I tried. Terrible. So much air it was like eating artificially flavored frozen fluff.
When you get to this age you simply don’t waste your empty calories on junk.
Ice cream being one of the essential food groups, one should never settle for inferior quality. That said, paying more than $5 for a pint is obscene…though sometimes necessary. Assuming price is no hang-up, I would recommend the Coolhaus line. I have only tried Chocolate Molten Cake, but based on that, I would otherwise have no hesitation about their other flavors. As befitting a superior product, it is not always easy to find.
If you live near a Kroger-owned market, their Chocolate Ganache ice cream is most satisfying. I will, in fact, be having some in the extremely near future. In recent years, I have only seen it in the 48 oz. tub variety.
In the absence of either of the above, I found Tillamook Mudslide a surprisingly agreeable replacement. They have a number of other flavors I have never seen, let alone tried.
Like with all things, there’s diminishing returns at higher price points. There’s a huge difference between the cheapo ice cream and the premium ice cream. There’s a small difference between the premium ice cream and the super ultra deluxe $20 ice cream.
That’s what I was going to say as well. Blue Bell is pretty much the 80th percentile, and while they go up from there, the price difference between say… Blue Bell and one of Graeter’s, Haagen Dazs, Coolhaus, etc… is high, and the differences are much less significant.
Personally, I stick with Blue Bell most of the time; it’s a local Texas brand that’s been around a long time and is super-common everywhere. There’s little point in trying to hunt down some super-premium brand that’s potentially been indifferently handled, if I can get fresh Blue Bell virtually anywhere that sells ice cream.
