PRODUCT REVIEW: Turkey Hill Ice Cream

I've mentioned Turkey Hill in a few other reviews, but decided that it's deserving of its own, full review.

What do you want when you get ice cream? For me, ice cream is simple. It needs only three things: smooth, creamy, mouth-coating texture; strong, natural flavorings; and fillings that are larger than five molecules across. Even in ice cream that pretends to be high-quality, Edy's/Dreyer's for example, fillings are pitiful, flavor is artificial and weak, and there's so much air whipped in that the you get only marginally more calories than by simply breathing.

Turkey Hill isn't that ice cream. It gets everything right. The texture is perfect, the flavor is strong, and the fillings are large and delicious. Their cookies & cream, my favorite flavor, is the best that I have found in the grocery freezer. The peanut butter cup, which is actually sweetened peanut butter swirled into the ice cream, is beyond good. It is hands-down the best peanut butter ice cream in Turkey Hill's segment.

I used to refer to this segment as the half-gallon segment, but, compliments of increasing food costs and a marketing belief that people are stupid and won't notice smaller packages, half-gallons no longer exist.

If you want ridiculous fillings, Turkey Hill is not your brand. They produce the standard flavors with standard fillings. But in that arena, they best even many of the premium brands. And in the brands that are better flavor-to-flavor, like Ben & Jerry's, the differences are usually small. But compare Turkey Hill to other half-gallon brands, and the differences are stark. Turkey Hill is vastly superior to Blue Bunny, Hood, and Breyer's.

In the world of wacky fillings, Turkey Hill doesn't perform as well. While they produce their fair share of CRAZY ice cream, it really doesn't hold up to the premium brands. The kind to which I'm referring when I describe their excellence is their, um, standard(?) brand like the kind pictured in my image. If you stick with that, you'll never be let down.

In the world of non-premium ice cream, Turkey Hill is the bar by which others are measured. It's that good.

Turkey Hill Ice Cream: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Haagen-Dazs vs. Ben & Jerry's

I just bought both a tub of B&J's and H-D's cookie dough ice cream. I keep trying Haagen-Dazs because it just has to be better than it always is. It's the original gourmet ice cream! How the hell is it so disappointing?

I don't know how, but it is. Time and time again, I try it and am let down. It's never bad, certainly, but it's never good and is usually inferior to good half-gallon brands like Turkey Hill. So yeah, continuing, I compared the two and Ben & Jerry's, as always, came out on top. Haagen-Dazs has an excellent finish that B&J's is lacking. It feels like it was made with fresh vanilla. The cookie dough also has a floury taste that makes it taste more like real cookie dough.

Regardless, the Ben & Jerry's vanilla flavor, while not as complex, has much more punch to it. Ben & Jerry's is denser, with a richer, smoother texture to it. The same goes for the cookie dough, which is sweeter than Haagen-Dazs. There's also more of it, and as Ben & Jerry's knows full well, the best ice cream is ice cream that's being used to glue together bits of other things. I tell myself that this will be the last time that I buy Haagen-Dazs, but I'm sure that I'll try again.

So yeah, if you want a cookie dough ice cream, Ben & Jerry's should be at the top of your list.

PRODUCT REVIEW: Breyers Extra Creamy Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Sandwiches

Holy crap, these are terrible. The ice cream texture is icy, the ice cream flavor is artificial, the cookies taste like some kind of floury mess with fake chocolate chips in them.

The chocolate chips are NOT fake, though. They just taste terrible and waxy. The cookie is the way it is, I assume in an attempt to prevent them from becoming too hard when frozen. So, instead of just using real cookies that taste good and accepting that people might have to chew a bit, we have this mess. It tastes and feels like a cookie in which the baker accidentally added too much flour and then also baked the cookie for about half the necessary time.

Everything about this sandwich is bad. It's only redeeming quality is that it is not poisonous.

Breyers Extra Creamy Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Sandwiches: NOT RECOMMENDED

PRODUCT REVIEW: Starbucks Ice Cream

My first product review of some Häagen-Dazs ice cream motivated me to delve into other brands of ice cream that, without said motivation, I would have never otherwise purchased.

I love coffee, but have never been the biggest fan of coffee ice cream. I've always liked my coffee hot and anything below 130-degrees Fahrenheit seems like a crime. But I like Starbucks. Starbucks seems to make decent supermarket products, so I figured, what the hell. This is Starbucks ice cream after a product refresh that happened earlier in the year. They dropped their ice cream bars, which weren't terribly good, and also jettisoned their more complex flavor concoctions like Mud Pie. Perhaps Starbucks' new-found focus in quality and product will result in something a bit more worthy of the name?

A little surprisingly, it's good! Not amazing, but very good. Coffee ice cream is a flavor that can be easily borked. Unlike vanilla, which regardless of other peccadilloes like poor texture is always just vanilla, can be seriously nasty if done wrong. The first area is the aftertaste. So many coffee ice creams have this horrid, bitter finish, and with ice cream savored, it's the finish that spends the most time lingering on your tongue.

Our taste buds don't work very well at low temperatures, which is why soft-serve ice cream tastes stronger than hard, scooped ice cream. So when eating hard ice cream, the majority of the flavor really emerges after both your mouth and the flavor compounds in your mouth have a chance to warm up. It's in that process that all the ass-like flavors of bad coffee ice cream come to the fore.

In Starbucks coffee, though, that after taste is a smooth, rich, deep caramel that truly reminds me of fine coffee. There's very little chocolate in it, but the fact that I can pick out any flavor notes is worthy of applause.

The swirls of espresso and coffee are a bit of a gimmick, I found. There's no Starbucks Espresso Concentrate on the ingredients list. Still, Starbucks coffee has a fair amount of coffee bite to it without that nasty bitter flavor. I just happened to have some Turkey Hill Colombian Coffee in the freezer, so I performed a taste test. Turkey Hill is, in my opinion, the best mass-market brand you can buy, so this is some good competition for the 'bucks.

Obviously, the Turkey Hill's texture is inferior. There's a lot more air whipped into the Turkey Hill, resulting in a 66g per 1/2 cup compared to Starbucks' 100g. But as with all Turkey Hill, the flavor is a home run. Very good for the price. It's smooth, sweet, with caramel and no bite. Definitely one of the best coffee flavors in the freezer. The Starbucks is a lot denser and more interesting to chew. It's got a stronger coffee bite to it and carries the aromas from your mouth into your nose much better. It's a more subdued flavor, as well. I assume many people would like this, but the stronger primary taste in the Turkey Hill is very pleasant and I wish the Starbucks had it.

All things considered, this is one of the best coffee ice creams on the shelves. I would not hesitate to recommend it to a fan of the flavor.

Starbucks Coffee Ice Cream: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

PRODUCT REVIEW: Häagen-Dazs Five

I've decided to change this posting to my very first product review. I'll simply use a two-stage rating system of recommended or not recommended.

As I mentioned in my recommendation of Choctal ice cream, I'm frequently unimpressed with so-called "gourmet" ice creams. The texture is usually too icy, the flavor is too mild, or ridiculous flavors and fillings are used as a band-aid over low-quality ice cream.

I've never been impressed with Häagen-Dazs, specifically. I've always found their flavors weak or unpleasant, and the texture has never befitted a product that costs $4 per pint. I tried their Rerserve ice cream chocolate, and it was good, but it came at the same time as the epic Choctal.

So it was with skepticism that I bought some Haagen-Dazs Five. It's their philosophically pure ice cream, where any of the seven available flavors is made with the four primary ice cream ingredients and a flavor. In the end, while I was not totally bowled over, it was good ice cream.

I've only tried the coffee, vanilla, and chocolate flavors, but since the ice cream base is the same for all of the flavors, my analysis should be applicable. The vanilla was very smooth and light. The flavor tastes natural with none of the bite from artificial flavorings. They used both vanilla bean and vanilla extract, and the extract is not noticeable. The flavor lingers on the palate for a long time, which is really nice. Maybe this isn't complete marketing nonsense.

The chocolate was a similar story. It wasn't as strong a flavor, and certainly wasn't epic like Choctal, but it was very smooth with a little bite to it. I've never been terribly impressed with Haagen-Dazs texture, and this ice cream is no different. All three had a faint icy texture to them. The coffee was the only one that had a problem with the flavor. There was a hint of bitterness in the aftertaste, which isn't good since the flavor doesn't hit the palate until it's been on the tongue for a second or two. It wasn't terribly unpleasant, and many people might enjoy it, but I didn't.

Five also stands as a good counterpart to Choctal. I mentioned in the recommendation that most pints of ice cream have four servings, but Choctal wedged in five. The ice cream was so stunningly dense and almost gummy between the teeth. Its texture left all other ice creams wanting. Five is the opposite. It has 3.5 servings, lower fat, and is much lighter and airy. They've whipped in a greater amount of air which is bad, in my book. They advertise that the ice cream has lower fat, but a lot of that is simply because there's less matter in each fluid ounce of ice cream. It's noticeable. Not terribly so, but noticeable.

All in all, these are very good "default" ice creams. Nothing amazing, but nothing specifically negative. And for many people, you could treat these as a "diet" ice cream. For example, Ben & Jerry's chocolate has 250 calories per 1/2 cup (105g), while Five chocolate has 220 calories per 1/2 cup (102g). Importantly, Five has only 12g of fat compared to B&J's 15g. So Five has fewer servings, smaller servings, and fewer calories. Go ahead, eat a whole pint, because this is as close to diet as you're going to get without having to seriously compromise flavor. And even here, I wonder how much of the textural negatives are from the low fat as they are a result of Haagen-Dazs overall ice cream quality.

Häagen-Dazs Five: RECOMMENDED

RECOMMENDATION: Choctal Ice Cream

Holy cripes, this ice cream is good.

I don't know about any of you, but I'm always disappointed when I try certain high-end ice creams. Häagen-Dazs has its Reserve line of ice cream, which includes the Amazon Chocolate. They have the arrogance to list "flavor notes" on the front of package, as though it's a fine wine, and when I eat it, the texture is too icy, and the chocolate flavor that I think should be hitting me in the face with a rush of chocolate heaven is MIA. Godiva is a similar disappointment, almost as though they forgot they're a chocolate company.

If you feel similarly to me, do I have the ice cream for you. Choctal is the best chocolate ice cream I've ever had. Without a doubt in my mind. It is so dense... you know how Ben & Jerry's usually has four servings, with calorie counts anywhere between 180 and 300-ish. Well Choctal has FIVE servings per container. It's so dense they wedged in another serving. The texture is, at times, other worldly. It's almost gummy, yet creamy and smooth. It is the most satisfying ice cream to chew that I've ever eaten.

The taste is intense. It is that knock-you-in-the-face chocolate that I was seeking. It's dark, rich, and subtly sweet. There's an almost grainy, but not in a bad way, texture to it. Almost as though there's finely ground cocoa nibs directly in the ice cream. Let it melt on your tongue and it bathes your taste buds in an exceptionally smooth flavor. I love it.

I've only tried the Dominican Chocolate, and as you can see on the website, there's three more single origin locations to try. It's available at Dave's Markets (And is available at all Trader Joe's locations, apparently) and may be pricey at six bucks per pint, but it's oh so worth it.

UPDATE 3/19/09: I've tried the Kalimantan variety. It's richer and darker than the Dominican. It's almost like chocolate pudding. I prefer the Dominican because it's brighter, with a bit more bitterness to it. It's texture is also a bit grainier which, I think, adds to the chocolatey-ness.


UPDATE 3/24/09: I tried the Ghana chocolate variety. It's color is far and away the lightest of three. It's flavor is, I think, the most traditional-tasting, as far as chocolate ice cream goes. It's not as fudgey as the Kalimantan, and not as bright as the San Dominican. A little more bitter than the other two, but it has more punch to it than the Kalimantan. I still prefer the San Dominican, personally.

http://www.choctal.com/
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Freeze!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! I chortled in the food!

I love ice cream, but much like the food critic Anton Ego, from Ratatouille, if I don't love it, I don't swallow. I'm generally unimpressed by fancy-pants big brands (I think Häagen-Dazs is remarkably over-priced) and have yet to find a small brand that makes every flavor very well. One brand has good vanilla, and another good chocolate. I can stomach cookies & cream, my favorite, from a single location: The Inside Scoop in North Kingstown.

And, in my mind, the greatest transgression an ice cream manufacturer can make is crappy texture. Ice crystals, OH ICE CRYSTALS, my nemesis. I've tried home-made ice cream so many times I dare not try and count, and every time I am confounded. Every time ice crystals, millions of the little devils, destroying the smooth, creamy texture that my ice cream so rightfully deserved!

And it's so unforunte that, along the way to my stomach, ice cream experiences so many dangers. The plant may make the ice cream badly. The truck shipping it may be stuck in a traffic jam. The store may leave it out too long, or their refrigeration unit may be overwhelmed by the summer heat. When you think about it, it's an absolute wonder that ice cream ever makes it home edible at all! Sometimes I feel like I shouldn't bother. It's always a crap-shoot. Maaaaybe something bad. Maaaaybe something good. I guess we'll never know!

But wait, look, at this web page, light! Light peering through the darkness of crap ice cream! Could it be! Is it true! no... MORE... CRYSTALS! Oh please let this be true. Because, right now, If I want ice cream of any quality whatsoever, I am forced to go to local ice cream places. That's great in the summer, when they're all open and fully stocked, but winter brings the 'closed for season' signs that signal to me no more ice cream until April. This breakthrough could bring salvation to all ice cream lovers. I say again, let it be true!

New Antifreeze Improves Ice Cream (Livescience.com)