What Big Food Did to Ice Cream • Hacker News Board

Re: What Big Food Did to Ice Cream

#71

Post by voakbasda » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 4:36 AM UTC

cyberax wrote: post #40

voakbasda wrote: post #10

We have a milk cow. We prep our ice cream from scratch in about 5 minutes: two cups of raw milk, 1/4 cup maple syrup, 1t-1T vanilla, 1/4t salt, and 6-8 raw egg yolks. Blend everything in a quart jar with an immersion blender and pour into a Cuisinart ice cream maker. AFAIK, you literally cannot buy anything close to this good. As a small farmer, I have nothing good to say about the USDA or FDA. I would rant further,…

This kind of recipe is wildly irresponsible to actually sell. Raw unpasteurized milk _will_ cause health issues when used in large quantities. Ditto for raw egg yolks. I lived on a farm during summers as a child, but I will not touch raw milk ever again after getting hospitalized with a bacterial infection from it. And the milk was from our cow, btw. Egg yolks are safer, especially if you take care to extract them pr…

We test every batch of milk for coliform and aerobic bacteria. I would never consume milk raw otherwise, and I would never recommend others do so either.

And we would never even think about selling it, despite knowing that our milk and eggs are demonstrably safe. My recipe makes one quart, so not sure why you inferred and implied that I am selling it.

Re: What Big Food Did to Ice Cream

#72

Post by voakbasda » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 4:37 AM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #42

voakbasda wrote: post #10

We have a milk cow. We prep our ice cream from scratch in about 5 minutes: two cups of raw milk, 1/4 cup maple syrup, 1t-1T vanilla, 1/4t salt, and 6-8 raw egg yolks. Blend everything in a quart jar with an immersion blender and pour into a Cuisinart ice cream maker. AFAIK, you literally cannot buy anything close to this good. As a small farmer, I have nothing good to say about the USDA or FDA. I would rant further,…

Milk, not cream?

Raw Jersey milk is 25-30% cream. You only need to add cream (back) to store bought milk.

Re: What Big Food Did to Ice Cream

#73

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:01 AM UTC

cyberax wrote: post #70

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I ate a lot of pistachio gelato and the one she told me "I think it's good" tasted like coffee (reported by multiple family members), so I had to explain her what good pistachio is. I can totally make mistakes in which one is the best, but identifying which ones are egregiously bad is way easier

You might be surprised, but a lot of people actually like "bad" versions more. I don't like regular ice-cream it's just too rich for me. I experimented with making aerated (well, nitrogenated) ice-cream myself 20 years ago when I had access to a lab.

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Re: What Big Food Did to Ice Cream

#74

Post by ginkoin613 » Wed, Jul 15, 2026, 7:19 AM UTC

charamis wrote: post #41

riffraff wrote: post #32

On the European side of the pond, single packaged industrial ice cream is also gone to shit. A Magnum or Cornetto used to be a well sized very tasty snack. In Italy the "cucciolone" (an ice cream sandwich) was literally marketed as being "10 bites". All of those are now tiny bland things that nobody should buy. The Magnum Company (neé Algida/Walls/etc) is a fucking disaster and everybody should stop buying their prod…

And their prices have gone through the roof too!

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Re: What Big Food Did to Ice Cream

#75

Post by luckydata » Wed, Jul 15, 2026, 8:37 PM UTC

msftgreed wrote: post #23

luckydata wrote: post #19

As an immigrant I thought for a while now that all ice cream in USA taste like shit, despite my wife saying I'm imagining things... Now I know why.

There's still a few brands, you'll just end up paying through the nose for them.

the brand the author of the article points at as "good" makes me want to vomit, my wife receives a large quantity of it every year from a service provider she works with as a christmas gift and it's my job do melt it and dump it down the drain since nobody in the family can stand it.

I'm open to suggestions!

Re: What Big Food Did to Ice Cream

#76

Post by msftgreed » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 5:24 AM UTC

luckydata wrote: post #75

msftgreed wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still a few brands, you'll just end up paying through the nose for them.

the brand the author of the article points at as "good" makes me want to vomit, my wife receives a large quantity of it every year from a service provider she works with as a christmas gift and it's my job do melt it and dump it down the drain since nobody in the family can stand it. I'm open to suggestions!

You can name the brand... Häagen‑Dazs? Graeters?

In any case, why would you melt and drain it? That makes zero sense. You don't have friends who would take it? Or a food bank? Or a local Food Not Bombs?

It's totally fine to not like a brand, zero objections there, but like, why waste it?