Is ice cream becoming too soft?

I can buy some ice cream and put it in my freezer, and it's extremely soft, I can just put a spoon in it with no resistance. I put that exact same ice cream in my parents freezer and it gets so hard that I can't even scoop it with an ice cream scoop unless I let it thaw out for a few minutes. The temperature it's stored at absolutely plays a huge difference.

i could easily drop a spoon in the tub and watch it cut straight through to the bottom.

Dude, if this is true, your freezer is not cold enough.

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)

"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?

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.

It’s your freezer. I’ve also been buying Tillamook lately because it is softer and creamier: I can scoop it with an ice cream scoop. I certainly can’t drop a spoon in it, nor can I usually scoop it without destroying a normal spoon. I have to assume that you’re either using hyperbole or your freezer is not working correctly

Yes.

Many products are now whipped to increase the volume with less product as a form of shrinkflation and/or include ingredients to reduce ice crystal formation from repeated melting and refreezing to reduce waste and the impact of understaffing in supply chains and grocery stores that lead to product being left out for extended periods. Haagen Dazs recently finally converted all of their flavors. The plain vanilla and vanilla swiss almond were a few of the last ones to change. But it's been a slow progression of different manufacturers over the last couple of decades really.

It's sad because ice cream is my favorite dessert. I eat a lot of it, or at least used to. There are only a few brands with a few flavors remaining that make good "hard" ice cream outside of ice cream shops. But the good shops are so expensive.

Of course store-bought ice cream is soft. Have you noticed that they sell ice cream by volume and not by weight? They just add some more stabilizers, and basically "blow up" the mass with Nitrogen. Every liter of Nitrogen is a liter of ice cream more sold. Basically profit from the air. It is hard to get a cheaper ingredient except maybe water. And that is a bit harder to conceal.

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.

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.

If you really want it harder, you can just turn your freezer’s temperature lower.

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?

It's both. Commercial ice cream is either overchurned to add more air, making it lighter and softer, or uses a lot of additives. You have to buy "premium" brands to get real ice cream, or get it from a local ice cream place.

It also sounds like your freezer is not cold enough. I know because I'm dealing with a similar issue. My freezer is cold enough to keep everything frozen, except ice cream. My freezer was only getting down to 20°F which is cold enough for most things, but ice cream needs 0°F to stay frozen/hard. It's time to buy a new freezer.

Cold Stone is soft because they slap it around on that cold slab of stone before they put it in a cup or cone.

IDK what could be wrong with your store bought. Or maybe what's right... The last few times I've gotten some ice cream, shits rock hard and full of ice crystals from having been melted and refrozen god knows how many times. Maybe your freezer is set too high for the ice cream but not the other things you keep?

I do know a trick to find what ice cream has better ingredients though. Find two or more brands in the same size container, and then see which one actually weighs more. They'll all be in ounces or some fluid measurement, and the weight will be heavier in the ones with fewer fillers like if it was only made using cream, eggs and sugar.

Several years ago when I lived in PA I frequented an independent ice cream shop that made their own in house. He complained about all the air added to commercial ice cream lately. He had a conversion rate for how many pounds a gallon should weigh and would weigh his containers to ensure he sold the correct amount. Some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had, and had exotic flavors too such as Kulfi (cardamom) and ginger. Search Nutz about Ice Cream in Bethlehem PA. I was just thinking about him the other day and his ginger ice cream. The eggnog at the end of the year is amazing too. The “regular” flavors year round are good as well. I know he ships across the country, I’ve never looked into it yet.

Varies a lot by brand. Some brands started whipping more air into the chemical slurry they call ice cream in order it to rip us off. You can tell by the weight. Try the heavier pints.

If it's soft but cold, that means it's not dense. If it's not dense, that means there's likely a lot of air. Probably almost half.

a 3 gallon pail of their stuff is 15 pounds. Let's turn that into useful measurements.

3 gallons = 11.356 litres
15 pounds = 6.8 kg.

1 ml of water is 1 gram, so if the bucket was full of just water, it would weight nearly double what this bucket weights.

From my time working with the product, I know that Soft-serve is commonly 40% air.
6.8kg is 58.8% of the weight of the ice cream. That's pretty darn close to 60%

Edit: Changed g to gallons to make things less confusing.

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.

I have some Tillamook chocolate ice cream that was extremely hard when I scooped some earlier today. When we first get it from the store it is fairly soft though, so my assumption is that my freezer is set to be a lot colder than the one at the store.

Not sure what the exact temp is because it is a numbered dial, but I have a fuzzy recollection that it was about zero degrees F when I checked it a few years ago.

Dunno, I don't eat ice cream much anymore, but this sounds preferable to the solid blocks that bend spoons and you need steel wedges and a splitting maul to get out of the carton.

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.

Your fridge is not working like it should.

A lot of ice cream makers have started manufacturing a substance which is a little more like plastering putty with sugar mixed in. Presumably it is cheaper than the ice cream substance which they used to make.

I recommend Häagen-Dazs. Turkey Hill is alright but it seems to have succumbed a little bit to the putty consistency. The Costco stuff is decent too. Get vanilla, then mix it up in the bowl with a strong spoon, to soften it, with big chunky chocolate chips (also available from Costco) sprinkled generously within it and then stirred in during the preparation phase.

Hope this helps

Ice cream can't take a joke these days. Just starts melting down and turning into a puddle at the slightest provocation. Soft.

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)."

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.

I usually have to set mine out for a while to not bend my spoon, and we usually just get whatever's on sale or store brand. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I suppose people complained? Or it's the substitution of fat for some god awful synth version.

I find Haagan Dazs stays pretty solid. Ben and Jerry's too. But even then, it's only just.

Carte d'Or and all its kin I find the same as you, so soft as to be no longer 'ice' cream, but rather some sort of sickly sweet whipped soup.

You want Trader Joe's. That stuff is so hard that I often use a hot scoop to get it out. I'm OK with a slightly softer texture. Tillamook is my go-to brand. I've never found it to be absurdly soft, but it is easier to scoop than a Häagen-Dazs or TJ's.

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?

Maybe consider getting sorbet or gelato next time?

What brand are you buying?

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.

I had I think tillamook and hagan dazs stacked on top of eachother in my freezer. The hagan dazs was brick hard and the tillamook remained soft and easy to serve. I prefer soft but if you don’t like it give hagan dazs a try.

By your ice cream based on weight. You can't get away from the additives that make it a little fluffier but you can get away from the overturned extra air filled batches. In the mid-eastern US Turkey Hill brand is pretty decently solid. I've also noticed some of the five ingredient only ice creams are solid. Then you have stuff like Häagen-Dazs.

I have this problem every so often. If your freezer is anything like mine, you just keep grabbing ice cream during, or even right after, a defrost cycle. That, or there's something wrong with the defrost cycle itself. Best check your meters and gauges