I’m with you! I love, love, love their chocolate custard. I don’t want anything mixed in it or topping it. Just a cup of chocolate custard.
I haven’t seen anything labeled as ice milk for a long time but I think there are a lot of “frozen dairy desserts” that would qualify. Worse, some might not even qualify to be called ice milk (assuming there is some standard, like it must contain some actual milk).
I’m not a huge ice cream fiend. Store bought, I’ll usually pick Talenti.
But the best ice cream I’ve ever had was from Mt. Desert Island Ice Cream in Bar Harbor, Maine. So good, it puts most gelato to shame.
Homemade tm brand ice cream is my new crack. Funnily enough, it seems that the flavors that appeal to me the most are seasonal, like Peaches & Peaches, or Santa’s Cookies. Fun fact I learned from reading about Ben & Jerry’s: Legally, a manufacturer can advertise their product as “homemade” only if it contains strictly ingredients that might be found in a household. So no cargeenan, no guar gum, no nonsense additives. Mr. Rilch is adamant about not eating any ice cream that has more than the bare minimum of ingredients. Which mostly means Haagen Dazs. Which I find boring, because I like a lot of mix-ins. Although H-D has a new sideline (pints only) of liquor-based flavors, such as rum raisin.
As for chocolate, there’s a Russell Stover outlet store in one of the nearby shopping centers. I’ve been fretting about that ever since the announcement that the O was permanently closed. I don’t get to the Burgh that often, but I’m at Russell Stover constantly: holiday chocs, bulk candy, bloopers, premium chocolate, and ice cream. If l lose that…
I’m with cmkeller and Quicksilver.. I’m not so much into the $$$ premium grocery store brands as I am into the local small town homemade product, which almost always uses good fresh ingredients. Like, the “premium ice cream” of 1925.
I’ve been to Country Maid Ice Cream in rural Richfield, Ohio…not TOO rural, an easy drive from both Cleveland and Akron…and to ice cream makers all over New England, which I consider the ground zero of great American ice cream. Mt. Desert Ice Cream in Bar Harbor, Me., is excellent, but so are the old timey guys who’ve been around for decades.
Costco’s Kirkland brand vanilla ice cream may be the best vanilla I’ve ever had. Smooth but hard like good ice cream should be. I used to make my own using the Ben & Jerry’s recipes but there’s really no point to do so if you can buy something better that requires less work and probably costs less overall. If only they’d make a couple more flavors, I’d never need to crank up the ice cream machine again.
Well, maybe I’d get it out for salted caramel gelato. But that’s it.
Publix once came out with a store-brand Peanut Butter Swirl. Their store brands of other items are good, so we tried it out. It was the worst ice cream I’ve ever had. I mean the kids wouldn’t eat it.
Ice Cream brands are like gettin’ a Blow Job. Even the bad ones are still pretty good.
Blue Bell is about the best, ‘store-brand’ ice cream going. No, it’s not a grocery store’s officially branded ice cream. But it’s about the same price and size as those.
For those of you talking about Blue Bell, and therefore probably in Texas, see if you can find Bellefontaine. When she first started selling it, at Central Market in Houston, it was the best Mint ice cream I’d ever had. Staggeringly minty and rich. I think the quality may have gone down a touch with wider distribution, but the mint ice cream is really, really good.
Haven’t seen that before. I’ll keep an eye out. There used to be a New Orleans-based ice cream company that they sold at Central Market in Dallas that was spectacular, but I haven’t seen it in a while.
For GOOD ice cream/gelato, the place to go is the San Crispino gelateria in Rome- it’s about a block north of the Piazza della Rotondo (square in front of the Pantheon). That stuff was insanely good, and we tried pretty much every gelateria we ran across in Rome, Florence and Milan, including GROM and Giolitti.
I’m pretty sure I have no relatives in Arkansas. I don’t think I’ve been in the state.
However, as soon as they are season, I have the cheapest icecream sandwiches in my freezer.
We have Ben & Jerry’s, but that’s only because the bakery hasn’t started making ice cream, which they only have in summer, or because we’re not motivated enough to make our own.
Current favorite ice cream places are Mora Ice Cream, who normally ships to the continental US and a gelato place on Lido island in Venice.
I live in OH so Jenni’s and Graeters are pretty standard in most grocery stores. I don’t know about $14 a pint, maybe $7-10 for the former and $6 for the latter, but it’s much cheaper than going to the ice cream shop which I consider a fairly common outing and way to blow $20 or more for a family.
Häagen-Dazs was “premium” to me as a kid but again fairly typical and we weren’t rolling in dough (or cream). As others have mentioned, part of that was because we weren’t just buying a half gallon every time we shopped but a decent pint was a nice treat every once in awhile.
My kids like Edy’s or whatever cookie dough ice cream and that’s fine with me.
I don’t know if I’ve ever turned down ice cream, though.
Yeah, I’ve been trying more premium ice cream lately and picked up some of their vanilla caramel. this stuff is great. I’ll pick up raspberry cheesecake next time.
They used to make a chocolate brownie/vanilla version but it seems to have disappeared - too bad, it was great.
I’m generally content with store brands, but when I buy ice cream by the cone, I like the small, local places that make their own. My current favorite is called the Jack Frost Dairy Bar, in operation since 1954.
We’re big Blue Bell fans at our house, but it is pricey compared to the regular stuff. Every two months or so Publix will have it on BOGO so we stock up.
My favorite ice cream is Ben and Jerry’s Smores, but when I went to Columbus for the Origins convention I got hooked on Jeni’s Salty Caramel. Now, I will occasionally pay $12.00 a pint for it at the only store near me that carries it. I don’t eat ice cream that often, though.