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).”

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.

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

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.

“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?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.